Presently, with a slow, solemn smile on her haughtily curved lips, she extended one hand and arm, snow-white and glittering with jewels, and made an imperious gesture to command silence. Instantly a profound hush ensued. Lifting a long, slender, white wand, at the end of which could be plainly seen the gleaming silver head of a Serpent, she described three circles in the air with a perfectly even, majestic motion, and as she did this, her marvellous eyes turned toward Theos, and dwelt steadily upon him.
He met her gaze fully, absorbing into his inmost soul the mesmeric spell of her matchless loveliness,--he saw, without actually realizing the circumstance, that the whole vast multitude around him had fallen prostrate in an attitude of worship,--and still he stood erect, drinking in the warmth of those dark, witching, sleepy orbs that flashed at him half-resentfully, half- mockingly, . . and then, . . the beauty-burdened ship began to sway gently, and move onwards,--she, that wondrous Siren-Queen was vanishing,--vanishing!--she and her kneeling maidens, and music, and flowers,--vanishing ... Where?
With a start he sprang from his post of observation,--he felt he must go after her at all risks,--he must find out her place of abode,--her rank,--her title,--her name! ... All at once he was roughly seized by a dozen or more of hands,--loud, angry voices shouted on all sides.. "A traitor! ... a traitor!" ... "An infidel!"
"A spy!" "A malcontent!"
"Into the river with him!"
"He refuses worship!" "He denies the gods!"
"Bear him to the Tribunal!".. And in a trice of time, he was completely surrounded and hemmed in by an exasperated, gesticulating crowd, whose ominous looks and indignant mutterings were plainly significant of prompt hostility. With a few agile movements he succeeded in wrenching himself free from the grasp of his assailants, and standing among them like a stag at bay he cried: "What have I done? How have I offended? Speak! Or is it the fashion of Al-Kyris to condemn a man unheard?"
No one answered this appeal,--the very directness of it seemed to increase the irritation of the mob, that pressing closer and closer, began to jostle and hustle him in a threatening manner that boded ill for his safety,--he was again taken prisoner, and struggling in the grasp of his captors, he was preparing to fight for his life as best he could, against the general fury, when the sound of musical strings, swept carelessly upwards in the ascending scale, struck sweetly through the clamor. A youth, arrayed in crimson, and carrying a small golden harp, marched sedately between the serried ranks that parted right and left at his approach,--thus clearing the way for another personage who followed him,--a graceful, Adonis-like personage in glistening white attire, who wore a myrtle-wreath on his dark, abundant locks, and whom the populace--forgetting for a moment the cause of their recent disturbance--greeted with a ringing and ecstatic shout of "HAIL! SAH-LUMA!"