He had quitted Pelusium the night before.  The strong wind had driven the trireme before it so swiftly that it was difficult for even the sea gulls to follow.  It was easy for the listeners to believe this; for the storm outside howled louder and louder, whistling through the open hall where the servants had gathered.  Most of the lamps and torches had been blown out, the pitch-pans only sent forth still blacker clouds of smoke, lit by red and yellow flames, and the closed lanterns alone continued to diffuse a flickering light.  So the wide space, dim with smoke, was illumined only by a dull, varying glimmer.

One of the porters had furnished wine to shorten the hours of waiting; but it could only be drunk in secret, so there were no goblets.  The jars wandered from mouth to mouth, and every sip was welcome, for the wind blew keenly, and besides, the smoke irritated their throats.

The freedman, Beryllus, was often interrupted by paroxysms of coughing, especially from the women, while relating the evil omens which were told to his master in Pelusium.  Each was well authenticated and surpassed its predecessor in significance.

Here one of Iras’s maids interrupted him to tell the story of the swallows on the “Antonius,” Cleopatra’s admiral galley.  He could scarcely report from Pelusium an omen of darker presage.

But Beryllus gazed at her with a pitying smile, which so roused the expectations of the others that the overseer of the litter and baggage porters, who were talking loudly together, hoarsely shouted, “Silence!”

Soon no sound was heard in the open space save the shrill whistling of the wind, a word of command to the harbour-guards, and the freedman’s voice, which he lowered to increase the charm of the mysterious events he was describing.

He began with the most fulsome praise of Cleopatra and Antony, reminding his hearers that the Imperator was a descendant of Herakles.  The Alexandrians especially were aware that their Queen and Antony claimed and desired to be called “The new Isis” and “The new Dionysus.”  But every one who beheld the Roman must admit that in face and figure he resembled a god far more than a man.

The Imperator had appeared as Dionysus, especially to the Athenians.  In the proscenium of the theatre in that city was a huge bas-relief of the Battle of the Giants, the famous work of an ancient sculptor—­he, Beryllus, had seen it—­and from amid the numerous figures in this piece of sculpture the tempest had torn but a single one—­which?  Dionysus, the god as whose mortal image Antony had once caroused in a vine-clad arbour in the presence of the Athenians.  The storm to-night was at the utmost like the breath of a child, compared with the hurricane which could wrest from the hard marble the form of Dionysus.  But Nature gathers all her forces when she desires to announce to short-sighted mortals the approach of events which are to shake the world.