[161] The official residence of the Pontifex Maximus.

“St!" whispered Demetrius.  “I saw a light moving.”

Agias stared into the darkness.

“There,” continued the pirate, “see, it is a lantern carefully covered!  Only a little glint on the ground now and then.  Some one is creeping along the wall to enter the house of the Vestals!”

“I see nothing,” confessed Agias, rubbing his eyes.

“You are no sailor; look harder.  I can count four men in the gloom.  They are stealing up to the gate of the building.  Is your sword ready?  Now—­”

But at this instant Demetrius was cut short by a scream—­scream of mortal terror—­from within the Atrium Vestae.  There were shouts, howls, commands, moans, entreaties, shrieks.  Light after light blazed up in the building; women rushed panic-struck to the doorway to burst forth into the night; and at the open portal Agias saw a gigantic figure with upraised long sword, a Titan, malevolent, destroying, terrible,—­at the sight whereof the women shrank back, screaming yet the more.

“Dumnorix!” shouted Agias; but before he spoke Demetrius had leaped forward.

Right past the sword-wielding monster sprang the pirate, and Agias, all reckless, was at his heels.  The twain were in the atrium of the house.  A torch was spluttering and blazing on the pavement, shedding all around a bright, flickering, red glare.  Young Vestals and maid-servants were cowering on their knees, or prone on cushions, writhing and screaming with fear unspeakable.  A swart Spanish brigand, with his sabre gripped in his teeth, was tearing a gold-thread and silk covering from a pillow; a second plunderer was wrenching from its chain a silver lamp.  Demetrius rushed past these also, before any could inquire whether he was not a comrade in infamy.  But there were other shouts from the peristylium, other cries and meanings.  As the pirate sprang to the head of the passage leading to the inner house, a swarm of desperadoes poured through it, Gauls, Germans, Africans, Italian renegadoes,—­perhaps ten in all,—­and in their midst—­half borne, half dragged—­something white!

“Io triumphe!” called a voice from the throng, “my bird will leave her cage!”

“The lady!  Gabinius!” cried Agias, and, without waiting for his cousin, the young Greek flung himself forward.  One stroke of his short sword sent a leering negro prone upon the pavement; one snatch of his hand seized the white mantle, and held it—­held it though half a dozen blades were flashing in his face in an eye’s twinkling.  But the prowess of twenty men was in the arm of Demetrius; his sword was at once attacker and shield; with a single sweeping blow he smote down the guard and cleft the skull of a towering Teuton; with a lightning dart he caught up the ponderous long sword of the falling brigand, passed his own shorter weapon to his left hand, and so fought,—­doubly armed,—­parrying