After midnight the storm was still raging with unheard-of fury; it swept the palm thatch from many of the houses, and beat the stream with such violence that it was like a surging sea.  The full unbroken force of the flood beat again and again on the promontory on which stood the statues of the Imperial couple.  Shortly before the first dawn of light the little tongue of land, which was protected by no river wall, could no longer resist the furious attack of the waters; huge clods of soil slipped and fell with a loud noise into the river and were followed by a large mass of the cliff, with a roar as of thunder the plateau behind sank, and the statue of the Emperor which stood upon it began to totter and lean slowly to its fall.  When day broke it was lying with the pedestal still above ground, but the head was buried in the earth.

At break of day the citizens left their houses to inquire of the fishermen and boatmen what had occurred in the harbor during the night.  As soon as the storm had abated, hundreds, nay thousands, of men, women and children thronged the landing-place round the fallen statue—­they saw the land-slip and knew that the current had torn the land from the bank and caused the mischief.  Was it that Hapi, the Nile-god, was angry with the Emperor?  At any rate the disaster that had befallen the image of the sovereign boded evil, that was clear.

The Toparch, the chief municipal authority, at once set to work to reinstate the statue which was itself uninjured, for Hadrian might arrive in a few hours.  Numerous men, both free and slaves, crowded to undertake the work, and before long the statue of Hadrian, executed in the Egyptian style, once more stood upright and gazing with a fixed countenance towards the harbor.  Sabina’s was also put back by the side of her husband’s and the Toparch went home satisfied.  With him most of the starers and laborers left the quay, but their place was taken by other curious folks who had missed the statue from its place, where the land had fallen, and now expressed their opinions as to the mode and manner of its fall.

“The wind can never have overturned this heavy mass of limestone,” said a ropemaker:  “And see how far it stands from the broken ground.”

They say it fell on the top of land-slip,” answered a baker.

“That is how it was,” said a sailor.

“Nonsense!” cried the ropemaker.  “If the statue had stood on the ground now carried away, it must have fallen at once into the water and have sunk to the bottom—­any child can see that other powers have been at work here.”

“Very likely,” said a temple-servant who devoted himself to the interpretation of signs:  “The gods may have overset the proud image to give a warning token to Hadrian.”

“The immortals do not mix in the affairs of men in our day,” said the sailor; “but in such a fearful night as this peaceful citizens remain within doors and so leave a fair field for Caesar’s foes.”