“Immediately, nothing.  He is with Caesar, and, as you see, the enemies of the Imperator are not likely, at present, to work his friends much mischief.  Yet it is singular that his chief enemy and yours are so near akin.  Lucius Ahenobarbus, son of Domitius, is thirsting for Drusus’s blood.”

“If I had my sword!” muttered Demetrius, clapping his hand to his thigh.  “It is not too late to run after the fugitives!”

“Come, come,” remonstrated Agias, feeling that his newly found cousin was indeed a fearful and wonderful man after twelve years of lawless and godless freebooter’s life.  “At my lodgings we will talk it all over; and there will be time enough to scheme the undoing of Domitius and all his family.”

And with these words he led the sanguinary sea-king away.

* * * * *

Agias indeed found in Demetrius a perfect mine of bloody romance and adventure.  It had been the banking clerk’s misfortune, not his fault, that every man’s hand had been against him and his against every man.  Demetrius had been declared an outlaw to Roman authority; and Roman authority at that time stretched over very nearly every quarter of the civilized world.  Demetrius had been to India, to intercept the Red Sea traders.  He had been beyond the Pillars of Hercules and set foot on those then half-mythical islands of the Canaries.  He had plundered a hundred merchantmen; he had fought a score of Roman government galleys; he had been principal or accessory to the taking of ten thousand lives.  All this had been forced upon him, because there was no tolerable spot on the planet where he might settle down and be free from the grasp of punishment for a crime he had never committed.

Demetrius had boldly come up to Rome on a light undecked yacht.[158] The harbor masters had been given to understand that the captain of the craft was an Asiatic princeling, who was visiting the capital of the world out of a quite legitimate curiosity.  If they had had any doubts, they accepted extremely large fees and said nothing.  The real object of the venture was to dispose of a large collection of rare gems and other valuables that Demetrius had collected in the course of his wanderings.  Despite the perturbed state of the city, the worthy pirate had had little difficulty in arranging with certain wealthy jewellers, who asked no questions, when they bought, at a very large discount, bargains of a most satisfactory character.  And so it came to pass, by the merest luck, that the two cousins were thrown together in a crowd, and partly Agias, through his dim childish recollections of his unfortunate relative, and partly Demetrius, through memories of his uncle’s boy and the close resemblance of the lad to his father, had been prompted first to conversation, then to mutual inquiries, then to recognition.

  [158] A celox of one bank of oars, a small ship much used by
  the pirates.