The Song of the Sirens and Other Stories/The Swimmers
THE SWIMMERS
THE SWIMMERS
Liburni, cum vadosa loca obsedissent, capitibus tantum eminentibus fidem fecerunt hosti alti maris ac triremem, quae eos oersequebatur, implicatam vado ceperunt.
Julius Frontinus, STRATEGEMATICON, II, V, 43
THE inner waiting-room of the imperial palace was just then at its fullest. Togaed senators bulged in creaking armchairs; couriers, gaudy in embroidered habiliments, lounged everywhere. Military-men, fresh from the frontier and uncomfortable in parade-uniforms, fidgeted impatiently. Some of Rome's richest land-owners, ship-owners, or money lenders, fuming hot in their oppressive state-togas, collogued in low voices. Women were many too, and the rustle of skirts and the flutter of fans pervaded the apartment. There was much moving about, changing of seats and rambling from group to group. The buzz of talk was continuous, but mostly under breath. For an atmosphere of uneasiness pervaded the place. Elated faces, eager for an interview, were few. A rumor had been circulated that the Emperor was out of sorts. An adept might have inferred as much from the demeanor of the two tall pretorians who guarded the inner door or from the air of the silked and jeweled pages who came and went softly. The difference was subtle, and would have wholly escaped a stranger, but it was real. To the best of his ability neither guard nor any one of the pages gave any sign. There were men present who would have given their weight in gold for a hint as to the form of the Emperor's ill humor: whether it was flaring rage, sullen vindictiveness, or, worst of all, his dreaded ironical blandness. To none was any hint given. They conjectured in vain. But imperial irritation cast a gloom over the assembly. A subdued and anxious gathering they were for the most part.
If the Emperor's wrath might be supposed to threaten any one in particular, his displeasure plainly impended over one alcove, midway of the windows on the side opposite the sun. Its shaded recess was tenanted by a man and two women. They had sat together, almost without stirring, since the first comers were admitted. No one had spoken to them, no one had accosted them, no one had greeted them, even in passing. Those who approached their nook, sheered off at sight of them. The alcoves on either side of theirs were filled with indifferent courtiers, insolently sure of their own standing, without cares, whiling away their time with mere chatter. No other groups settled near them and those least distant drew away as much as possible. They were ignored with sedulous caution.
The man wore the uniform of a Commodore, but was without sword, scabbard or sword-belt. His blue cloak hung stringily behind him, he sat lifelessly, his broad shoulders stooped over his big sunken chest. His cropped hair had a suggestion of waviness even in its shortness. He should have been handsome had he not seemed so dispirited. His complexion was of a peculiar hue, as it were, of youthful flesh, long tanned by wind and sun, grown pallid for lack of light and air. His attitude could hardly have been more listless, more hopeless. His pale blue eyes had in them no sparkle, no light at all. They stared out of the window over the city roofs glittering in the sun or at walls or floor, unseeing, gazing anywhere except at the young woman who sat by him, holding one of his hands in both of hers. She was a sort of human doll, very graceful, and very pretty, even while in tears, manifestly a pampered beauty who had lived all her life on admiration.
The elaborate arrangement of her lusterless gold hair had been a good deal disturbed. She had reddened her eyes with weeping, and they filled with tears again and again, she dabbing at them ineffectually with a pitiful wad of a drenched handkerchief. At intervals she gave way to sobbing, leaning against her mother, who half held her, half supported her.
The three had spoken seldom and then in whispers.
"You ought to have let us try, Bassus," the girl moaned. "You ought to have let us try," she reiterated.
"You did right, Corinna," he told her. "It was braver of you. And remember, it was wisest. Anything you might have done would only have sealed my doom. If I have any chance it is only because we have kept silent and made no move."
"But it is so dreadful!" she said, "to get you back after all that nightmare of grief and uncertainty and horror, to watch you recover and then to have to keep silent and remain inactive and see you go to death unhelped! To regain you only to lose you again! Oh, it is too dreadful!"
His face was the face of a man who beheld death close, indeed. But collapsed as he was he made a brave effort.
"Try to think of the brighter side of things," he urged.
"There isn't any brighter side to any of it," she declared.
"Yes there is," he insisted, "at the worst of it he can only order me to death, and I ought to have died long ago. No man has any right to survive such a fiasco. I should have died with my men."
"Judging from your wounds," Corinna's mother put in, "you tried hard enough!"
"I did indeed!" he ejaculated, "and that is some comfort. And if I die now there are other comforts. For me death will be better than degradation, than living on in contempt, out of service and despised."
"We could be married at once," Corinna sobbed, "and live all our lives at Sirmio. What could be lovelier than that? What would disgrace and shame matter there together?"
"I could not be happy, sweetheart," he said gently, "even there, even with you, if I were dishonored."
"If you had let me do as I wanted," she insisted, "you might have been vindicated."
"There can be no exoneration," Bassus maintained, sadly, "no extenuation even, for a commander who loses a whole squadron of warships to an inferior enemy and is himself the sole survivor. And if there were anything to be said in my favor it would have no weight. I must be made an example of. There is no use trying to deceive our minds. I go to death. My only chance is one of his whims. It is a small chance. Let us hope till the end. But even if death is a certainty for me, let us not forget what we have to rejoice over."
"Rejoice?" the girl whispered bitterly. "Joy? For us?"
"Rejoice that you have made me glad," he said. "A man has but one life. I have had much joy in mine. My misfortune has brought me more joy than I should have thought possible. I knew I loved you, I was wild with elation at the thought of returning successful and marrying you. But what was that to the joy of knowing that you loved me well enough to cling to me, a failure, an outcast, a prisoner! Your first letter was a joy too great to be described. I thrilled with ecstasy at the thought of your loving me well enough to burden your estates to ransom me!"
"And it was all for nothing," the girl wailed. "If you have to die anyhow."
"Not all for nothing," he argued, "there are deaths and deaths. It is bad enough to have to die young. But to die clean and fed and clothed as a Roman should be is far less terrible than to die as I should have died, racked with fever, starved to a skeleton, slashed with festering wounds, shackled in a vile hovel in the mountains, a sty, dark, noisome, filthy and verminous. You saved me from all that."
"But what use was it," she repeated, "if I must lose you after all."
"Even if I must die now," he said, "I had all the bliss of coming back to life and love under your care. I can go bravely remembering all those delicious hours of solicitude and affection; and you must always remember how much it meant to me, how utterly I reveled in it all."
The inner portal opened and between the immobile guards there staggered out a specter of a general, gray-cheeked, too brow-beaten to hide his condition from the throng. The room fell silent as he tottered through it to the outer portal. After he was gone conversation was even more subdued than before.
Presently a page approached the three in the alcove.
"Bassus?" he queried, curtly.
Bassus stood up.
Regardless of the throng Corinna clung to him, kissing him repeatedly, and sobbing.
"Be brave, dear," he said, gently disengaging her arms from his neck. "A scene can only worsen my slender chances. Be brave. Goodby."
He kissed her gravely once; kissed her mother, pressed a hand of each, and followed the page.
In the small private-audience room Bassus found an Emperor not irate nor glum, nor sarcastic, but plainly and unaffectedly ill in body, haggard and worn with worry, weary in mind and weighed down in spirit with care and disappointments. He was leaning back in a deep armchair upholstered in green leather, against which his face showed also an almost greenish tinge. His neck was scrawny and stringy to the edge of the dark crimson, elaborately embroidered robe which wrapped him about to his ankles. His feet were on a hassock and the gold thread eagles worked on his light blue shoes showed conspicuously. There was a low backless chair beside him.
He looked at Bassus with no symptom of his dreaded dissimulation, but openly wrathful in expression, his eyes glaring, one just visible across the bridge of his hooked nose.
He spoke harshly.
"Are you well enough to talk to me? Mind, I won't be bothered with any more unrepaired wrecks. If you need nursing go back and get well."
"I am entirely myself again," Bassus asserted.
"Sit down," the Emperor commanded, motioning to the low chair beside him. "No, don't hesitate, sit down!"
Bassus, bowing deeply in silence, obeyed.
The Emperor glowered at him.
"I am cursed with bunglers everywhere," he said.
"I am one of them!" Bassus admitted. "I know it. I was surprised at your sending for me."
"I suppose," the Emperor ruminated peevishly, "I should have sent you word to make away with yourself. I didn't want to see you or to talk with you. But I need some of the information you might give me for the benefit of the next man who is to try where you failed and then"
He broke off and fidgeted fretfully.
"I'm ashamed of it," he went on, "but I am consumed with curiosity to know by what recondite imbecility you arranged for such a complete disaster."
Bassus sat silent.
"So I sent for you," the Emperor concluded.
"Thank you, Sir," Bassus said respectfully.
"Now you are here," the Emperor demanded, "what have you to say for yourself?"
"Nothing," Bassus replied simply.
"This is your last chance!" the Emperor admonished him.
"Why say anything?" Bassus gloomed. "You know all the facts, you have made up your mind!"
"Assumption of disfavor," the Emperor told him, "is sometimes as foolish as assumption of favor. And you err. I have not all the facts and my mind is not made up. Speak out."
"If I knew what you think you do not know," Bassus began.
"I do not know," the Emperor cut in, "whether Vespillo behaved as a cowardly subordinate to you or as a prudent husband of his own ship."
"No fault can be found with Vespillo," Bassus told him straightforwardly. "Frankly I believe he hated me and was glad to see me in trouble, but he did exactly what he should have done. If he had attempted to come to our rescue he would have lost his own ship to a certainty. Nothing he could have done could have helped us a particle."
The Emperor's yellow gray face became almost animated, almost flushed.
"Pollux!" he exclaimed. "There comes the puzzle of it again! How could you lose five men-of-war at once and to a horde of naked pirates? You were supposed to have an overwhelming force at your command, and you get gobbled up like a sausage by a mastiff. Explain! Tell me your story, man, come closer."
Bassus hitched his chair sideways and leaned over.
"I knew they had gathered a big flotilla at Toluca," he began, "a bigger flotilla than they had ever before got together. I knew they were planning some more outrageous venture, farther than they had ever raided and for a greater prize most likely. I judged them elated and rash and thought it the right time for a surprise. There were no better triremes afloat than my six and they were in perfect condition to the last spike, to the last rope. My rowers were all sturdy men and they were well fed and fresh. I trusted all my commanders absolutely, except Vespillo, and I knew he would do his plain duty, though he might trick me on any ambiguous order. The weather suited us. There was no high wind, but favorable breezes all the while, with much fog and rain, so that we had every chance of approaching unseen. We actually sighted not one vessel all the way up to Mexa. There we anchored in the seaward harbor. The scouts and our other friendlies uniformly reported no signs of wariness at Toluca, but much roistering and recklessness. Meanwhile it poured rain in torrents, yet our measures kept all the men healthy and everything ready.
"The second night after our anchoring it stopped raining and fell dead calm. We could hear the roaring of the uncountable brooks tearing down the sides of the mountains back of Mexa all over the island. About midnight it cleared, with a fine booming wind. I had the hawsers buoyed out ready on the instant. Before dawn a fisherboat of one of our friendlies brought word that the flotilla was coming out. We slipped our cables and were off, round the south end of Mexa and straight before the wind for Berega, which was exactly between us and the mouth of Toluca harbor. We drew up to Berega before it was really light. I knew my gentry relied wholly upon sails and that it was rush or nothing, for of course they could out-distance us before the wind on the open sea, and if they once scattered we could catch only a few in the maze of inlets. So we stored sails, lowered yards and unstepped masts and generally stripped. It was done promptly and we were under way again. As we rounded the north headland of Berega the sun came up over Apson directly ahead. It was as fine a picture as a man ever looked at. The sky all blue without a cloud, except some crimson streamers from the sunrise, Apson black against the redness, its shadow shortening on the sea in front of us, the sea emerald green up at the margin of the yellowish water that fanned out from Toluca harbor, where all the rivers converged their swollen torrents of freshet-mud. Well out on the yellow fan was the flotilla, scudding side on to the wind, as their fashion is; not an oar among them all. And to the left the slopes of Gifetta, rosy in the sun, overlooking everything."
"You have the localities better than I," the Emperor put in. "I know them only as nameless islands and mountains. Go on."
"The flotilla was in a sort of crescent formation, bulged toward us, about two miles from tip to tip and each tip about two miles from the nearest shore. They were all heeling over in our direction, every sail bellying out, every felucca running evenly with every other, a magnificent spectacle.
"The instant they sighted us the most amazing alteration in their movement took place. They seemed seized with a mad panic. The feluccas yawed crazily about, rammed each other, ran together by threes and fours, and hung, held by a jumble of shattered masts, intertangled yards and snarled cordage. Those that ran free zigzagged about, now aback, their lateen sails slatting in the wind, now ducking and scooting this way and that.
"The masthead lookout called that all the crews had jumped overboard at once and were swimming back toward the harbor.
"I judged that we could catch up with them and run them down long before they reached it, and my chief pilot agreed. I had detailed Vespillo to act as a reserve and he had aboard spare crews and extra marines and all that sort. I signaled him to fall behind, to seize and man all the feluccas worth capturing and to ram or burn the rest at his discretion. Then I signaled the others for battle-front full speed. We gathered way abreast, two of them on each side of me. Through the feluccas we drove, veering aside so as not to be delayed by ramming any. Between the flotilla and the harbor all the water was yellowed by the outrush of the freshets. Across it we could see the swimmers, ten thousand black heads bobbing in the current, not scattered much but swimming in a fairly compact crescent. It looked like an annihilation for the enemy, for they were all of a mile from any beach still, and the current was against them. There was no noise, our crews were quiet and I could hear the time-beaters' gongs on the other triremes ringing sharp and quick in perfect unison with ours. The oars dipped and flashed, we were at top speed, all of twenty miles an hour, and the bobbing heads seemed just where we had first sighted them.
"'The current is too much for them,' Euphranor chuckled to me as we stood on the upper platform, 'they are practically stationary.'
"I gave the order, the lookout signaled, and all together the five ships swept round in a wide curve so as to take the strung-out swarm of swimmers diagonally and drown as many as possible at the first onset. We came among them at terrific speed. I was standing with my feet wide apart and my arms stretched out leaning with both hands braced against the platform bulwark rail. So I was not thrown down like most of the rest, and saw the whole thing. For as we drove into the mass of heads we ran hard and fast aground, all five ships at once. Half the oars snapped, of course, so we were utterly helpless. Nearly every standing man was hurled flat or flung overboard or from his platform to the deck or into the waist. We were in the utmost confusion. Anyhow, as against undisciplined irregulars, we had no boarding netting out, being all for the attack and defense unthought of.
"And as we struck the whole ten thousand savages stood up and yelled."
"Stood up!" the Emperor interjected. "Stood up?"
"Yes, Sir," Bassus went on. "Stood up, not a man of them over knee deep and many not ankle deep!"
"On what?" the Emperor queried, mystified.
"On the bar," Bassus explained. "Mud-flat or sand-bank or whatever it was. You see, the water was all so muddied no one could see the difference between deep and shoal water by color as in dry weather. The current was far slower than we thought, and not a ripple showed the shallows. Those rascals had been belly flat on the mud, going through the motions of swimming, to trap us."
The Emperor threw back his head and laughed.
"Pollux!" he exclaimed. Then he laughed again, a genuine hearty laugh that lasted long. He wiped his eyes and surveyed Bassus, his expression altered from grim sternness to a tolerant smile.
"The weather helped them," he chuckled. "Everything helped them. They fooled your pilots, they fooled you, they would have fooled me if I had been there, they were wily."
"And brave too," Bassus assured him. "They took their chances which were to be run down. Some were certain to perish as we drove into them, many did. Tanno's ship was on our port quarter as we made our curve, and I could see the heads smash like melons under her cut-water. Yet not a man made any attempt to escape by standing up. They played their game of pretending to swim until we were all aground."
"Yes," said the Emperor, "the scoundrels were brave. But just think of the glee the scamps must have been in, of the hilarity they shook with, their backs barely awash, realizing what was coming."
He laughed again, heartily.
"They had you trapped of course," he said, "and what happened then?"
The commodore's face darkened.
"They yelled again and came at us. They swarmed up the oars, up the sides of the ships, over the bulwarks, like rats, like ants. I had a moment's glimpse of the other ships, each like a bear at bay buried under a pack of dogs. After that one glance I had no eyes except for my own ship, and soon I could see nothing beyond my own sword's length, as long as I could see anything."
"The Ripustians respected you, I gathered," the Emperor remarked.
"They never hinted it to me," Bassus replied with a wry face.
"I inferred," likewise the Emperor pursued, "that they did not treat you any too well."
"Shackles riveted on my ankles," Bassus told him. "Cross bar, between them; chains a plenty. I was about as comfortable as an animal in a cage, no cleaner, and not much better fed."
"You've no love for the Ripustians, that's plain," the Emperor drawled, still smiling.
"Not a bit," said Bassus fervently.
"You'd like to get even with them, I presume?" the Emperor asked.
"Just wouldn't I," Bassus ejaculated.
"I've a notion to let you try again," the Emperor said.
"Sir!" Bassus exclaimed.
"No," said the Emperor. "Don't stand up. Stay where you are. I fancy no man is likely to display more zeal against the Ripustians than you would. And after your experiences I doubt if any man living could be more prudent and wary than you will be. Likewise you are too angry to be timid. You can't raise Euphranor to life again, but you will find one of his family or some other pilot as good. No one will choose pilots or crews or ships better than you and I've a notion I can manage to impress it upon my army and navy that your case will not establish a precedent and that losing a squadron will not assure promotion to any one else. No, no thanks, let me talk. I was a good deal interested in you by Corinna's behavior. After seeing her, still more after listening to her chatter, anyone would have expected her to shrug her shoulders, forget you, and marry anyone convenient within a year. When she besieged her guardians until they mortgaged her estates and ransomed you the gossips were all agog. I heard of it. And then I felt uneasy. I expected her to unleash on me not only all your relations, but her own uncountable, pertinacious clan. Nobody has so much as hinted at intervention in your behalf. They have let me alone, all of them. They have had the marvelous good sense to pay me the compliment of supposing I can make up my mind rationally for myself. That makes me like Corinna and like you too. I'm going to give you another chance. She deserves you and you deserve her. Did you come here alone?"
"No, Sir," said Bassus simply. "Corinna and her mother came with me."
The Emperor clapped his hands twice.
A page came, was given his orders, and in a moment ushered in Corinna and her mother.
"No," said the Emperor sharply. "No kneeling! No hand-kissing! Sit down, all three of you. I meant to be severe with Bassus, to make an example of him. But he made me laugh! The first real laugh I have had in months. I had a soft spot in my heart for him anyhow. The man who transformed the most fickle and capricious coquette in Rome into a paragon of constancy deserves consideration. He is a marvel. So I'm going to give Bassus a chance to do better against the Ripustians. This time he shall have ten ships, if he wants that many, and he can pick his choice of ships, men and stores at Ravenna or at Misenum also, if he likes.
"But there are two conditions. First, you two must be married to-day. Not any later day, but to-day. In the second place you must report him well enough for duty before he so much as smells at an arsenal. I'll give you two months if a month won't suffice. I think one month might do."
"And now, one question, Corinna," the Emperor said, fixing her with his big, dark eyes; "was it your idea to let me alone without bothering me with pleas and petitions, or was it Bassus that suggested it?"
"It was Bassus," Corinna answered. "In his first letter to me, before anything else, he wrote: 'Don't intercede with the Emperor!' And he repeated it in that letter and in every other."
"Good," said the Emperor, "that is one more reason for reinstating him. He has sense. And so have you. You have been docile in a difficult matter. You will be an obedient wife. Go now and get married. No, no thanks! No thanks! Go and get married. And come back a month from now and show me how fat he is.
"And now go, I've less pleasant and more pressing business to transact."