Last Days of Pompeii Part 34

With that his head drooped on His son's breast-his arms relaxed their grasp. Olinthus caught him by the hand-the pulse had ceased to beat! The last words of the father were the words of truth-Death had been more kind!

Meanwhile Glaucus and Nydia were pacing swiftly up the perilous and fearful streets. The Athenian had learned from his preserver that Ione was yet in the house of Arbaces. Thither he fled, to release-to save her! The few slaves whom the Egyptian had left at his mansion when he had repaired in long procession to the amphitheatre, had been able to offer no resistance to the armed band of Sall.u.s.t; and when afterwards the volcano broke forth, they had huddled together, stunned and frightened, in the inmost recesses of the house. Even the tall Ethiopian had forsaken his post at the door; and Glaucus (who left Nydia without-the poor Nydia, jealous once more, even in such an hour!) pa.s.sed on through the vast hall without meeting one from whom to learn the chamber of Ione. Even as he pa.s.sed, however, the darkness that covered the heavens increased so rapidly that it was with difficulty he could guide his steps. The flower-wreathed columns seemed to reel and tremble; and with every instant he heard the ashes fall cranchingly into the roofless peristyle. He ascended to the upper rooms-breathless he paced along, shouting out aloud the name of Ione; and at length he heard, at the end of a gallery, a voice-her voice, in wondering reply! To rush forward-to shatter the door-to seize Ione in his arms-to hurry from the mansion-seemed to him the work of an instant! Scarce had he gained the spot where Nydia was, than he heard steps advancing towards the house, and recognized the voice of Arbaces, who had returned to seek his wealth and Ione ere he fled from the doomed Pompeii. But so dense was already the reeking atmosphere, that the foes saw not each other, though so near-save that, dimly in the gloom, Glaucus caught the moving outline of the snowy robes of the Egyptian.

They hastened onward-those three. Alas! whither? They now saw not a step before them-the blackness became utter. They were encompa.s.sed with doubt and horror!-and the death he had escaped seemed to Glaucus only to have changed its form and augmented its victims.

Chapter VI

CALENUS AND BURBO. DIOMED AND CLODIUS. THE GIRL OF THE AMPHITHEATRE AND JULIA.

THE sudden catastrophe which had, as it were, riven the very bonds of society, and left prisoner and jailer alike free, had soon rid Calenus of the guards to whose care the praetor had consigned him. And when the darkness and the crowd separated the priest from his attendants, he hastened with trembling steps towards the temple of his G.o.ddess. As he crept along, and ere the darkness was complete, he felt himself suddenly caught by the robe, and a voice muttered in his ear: 'Hist!-Calenus!-an awful hour!'

'Ay! by my father's head! Who art thou?-thy face is dim, and thy voice is strange.

'Not know thy Burbo?-fie!'

'G.o.ds!-how the darkness gathers! Ho, ho!-by yon terrific mountain, what sudden blazes of lightning!'-How they dart and quiver! Hades is loosed on earth!'

'Tush!-thou believest not these things, Calenus! Now is the time to make our fortune!'

'Ha!'

'Listen! Thy temple is full of gold and precious mummeries!-let us load ourselves with them, and then hasten to the sea and embark! None will ever ask an account of the doings of this day.'

'Burbo, thou art right! Hush, and follow me into the temple. Who cares now-who sees now-whether thou art a priest or not? Follow, and we will share.'

In the precincts of the temple were many priests gathered around the altars, praying, weeping, grovelling in the dust. Impostors in safety, they were not the less superst.i.tious in danger! Calenus pa.s.sed them, and entered the chamber yet to be seen in the south side of the court. Burbo followed him-the priest struck a light. Wine and viands strewed the table; the remains of a sacrificial feast.

'A man who has hungered forty-eight hours,' muttered Calenus, 'has an appet.i.te even in such a time.' He seized on the food, and devoured it greedily. Nothing could perhaps, be more unnaturally horrid than the selfish baseness of these villains; for there is nothing more loathsome than the valor of avarice. Plunder and sacrilege while the pillars of the world tottered to and fro! What an increase to the terrors of nature can be made by the vices of man!

'Wilt thou never have done?' said Burbo, impatiently; 'thy face purples and thine eyes start already.'

'It is not every day one has such a right to be hungry. Oh, Jupiter! what sound is that?-the hissing of fiery water! What! does the cloud give rain as well as flame! Ha!-what! shrieks? And, Burbo, how silent all is now! Look forth!'

Amidst the other horrors, the mighty mountain now cast up columns of boiling water. Blent and kneaded with the half-burning ashes, the streams fell like seething mud over the streets in frequent intervals. And full, where the priests of Isis had now cowered around the altars, on which they had vainly sought to kindle fires and pour incense, one of the fiercest of those deadly torrents, mingled with immense fragments of scoria, had poured its rage. Over the bended forms of the priests it dashed: that cry had been of death-that silence had been of eternity! The ashes-the pitchy streams-sprinkled the altars, covered the pavement, and half concealed the quivering corpses of the priests!

'They are dead,' said Burbo, terrified for the first time, and hurrying back into the cell. 'I thought not the danger was so near and fatal.'

The two wretches stood staring at each other-you might have heard their hearts beat! Calenus, the less bold by nature, but the more griping, recovered first.

'We must to our task, and away!' he said, in a low whisper, frightened at his own voice. He stepped to the threshold, paused, crossed over the heated floor and his dead brethren to the sacred chapel, and called to Burbo to follow. But the gladiator quaked, and drew back.

'So much the better,' thought Calenus; 'the more will be my booty.' Hastily he loaded himself with the more portable treasures of the temple; and thinking no more of his comrade, hurried from the sacred place. A sudden flash of lightning from the mount showed to Burbo, who stood motionless at the threshold, the flying and laden form of the priest. He took heart; he stepped forth to join him, when a tremendous shower of ashes fell right before his feet. The gladiator shrank back once more. Darkness closed him in. But the shower continued fast-fast; its heaps rose high and suffocatingly-deathly vapors steamed from them. The wretch gasped for breath-he sought in despair again to fly-the ashes had blocked up the threshold-he shrieked as his feet shrank from the boiling fluid. How could he escape? he could not climb to the open s.p.a.ce; nay, were he able, he could not brave its horrors. It were best to remain in the cells, protected, at least, from the fatal air. He sat down and clenched his teeth. By degrees, the atmosphere from without-stifling and venomous-crept into the chamber. He could endure it no longer. His eyes, glaring round, rested on a sacrificial axe, which some priest had left in the chamber: he seized it. With the desperate strength of his gigantic arm, he attempted to hew his way through the walls.

Meanwhile, the streets were already thinned; the crowd had hastened to disperse itself under shelter; the ashes began to fill up the lower parts of the town; but, here and there, you heard the steps of fugitives cranching them warily, or saw their pale and haggard faces by the blue glare of the lightning, or the more unsteady glare of torches, by which they endeavored to steer their steps. But ever and anon, the boiling water, or the straggling ashes, mysterious and gusty winds, rising and dying in a breath, extinguished these wandering lights, and with them the last living hope of those who bore them.

In the street that leads to the gate of Herculaneum, Clodius now bent his perplexed and doubtful way. 'If I can gain the open country,' thought he, 'doubtless there will be various vehicles beyond the gate, and Herculaneum is not far distant. Thank Mercury! I have little to lose, and that little is about me!'

'Holla!-help there-help!' cried a querulous and frightened voice. 'I have fallen down-my torch has gone out-my slaves have deserted me. I am Diomed-the rich Diomed-ten thousand sesterces to him who helps me!'

At the same moment, Clodius felt himself caught by the feet. 'Ill fortune to thee-let me go, fool,' said the gambler.

'Oh, help me up!-give me thy hand!'

'There-rise!'

'Is this Clodius? I know the voice! Whither fliest thou?'

'Towards Herculaneum.'

'Blessed be the G.o.ds! our way is the same, then, as far as the gate. Why not take refuge in my villa? Thou knowest the long range of subterranean cellars beneath the bas.e.m.e.nt-that shelter, what shower can penetrate?'

'You speak well,' said Clodius musingly. 'And by storing the cellar with food, we can remain there even some days, should these wondrous storms endure so long.'

'Oh, blessed be he who invented gates to a city!' cried Diomed. 'See!-they have placed a light within yon arch: by that let us guide our steps.'

The air was now still for a few minutes: the lamp from the gate streamed out far and clear: the fugitives hurried on-they gained the gate-they pa.s.sed by the Roman sentry; the lightning flashed over his livid face and polished helmet, but his stern features were composed even in their awe! He remained erect and motionless at his post. That hour itself had not animated the machine of the ruthless majesty of Rome into the reasoning and self-acting man. There he stood, amidst the crashing elements: he had not received the permission to desert his station and escape.

Diomed and his companion hurried on, when suddenly a female form rushed athwart their way. It was the girl whose ominous voice had been raised so often and so gladly in antic.i.p.ation of 'the merry show'.

'Oh, Diomed!' she cried, 'shelter! shelter! See'-pointing to an infant clasped to her breast-'see this little one!-it is mine!-the child of shame! I have never owned it till this hour. But now I remember I am a mother! I have plucked it from the cradle of its nurse: she had fled! Who could think of the babe in such an hour, but she who bore it? Save it! save it!'

'Curses on thy shrill voice! Away, harlot!' muttered Clodius between his ground teeth.

'Nay, girl,' said the more humane Diomed; 'follow if thou wilt. This way-this way-to the vaults!'

They hurried on-they arrived at the house of Diomed-they laughed aloud as they crossed the threshold, for they deemed the danger over.

Diomed ordered his slaves to carry down into the subterranean gallery, before described, a profusion of food and oil for lights; and there Julia, Clodius, the mother and her babe, the greater part of the slaves, and some frightened visitors and clients of the neighborhood, sought their shelter.

Chapter VII

THE PROGRESS OF THE DESTRUCTION.

THE cloud, which had scattered so deep a murkiness over the day, had now settled into a solid and impenetrable ma.s.s. It resembled less even the thickest gloom of a night in the open air than the close and blind darkness of some narrow room. But in proportion as the blackness gathered, did the lightnings around Vesuvius increase in their vivid and scorching glare. Nor was their horrible beauty confined to the usual hues of fire; no rainbow ever rivalled their varying and prodigal dyes. Now brightly blue as the most azure depth of a southern sky-now of a livid and snakelike green, darting restlessly to and fro as the folds of an enormous serpent-now of a lurid and intolerable crimson, gushing forth through the columns of smoke, far and wide, and lighting up the whole city from arch to arch-then suddenly dying into a sickly paleness, like the ghost of their own life!

In the pauses of the showers, you heard the rumbling of the earth beneath, and the groaning waves of the tortured sea; or, lower still, and audible but to the watch of intensest fear, the grinding and hissing murmur of the escaping gases through the chasms of the distant mountain. Sometimes the cloud appeared to break from its solid ma.s.s, and, by the lightning, to a.s.sume quaint and vast mimicries of human or of monster shapes, striding across the gloom, hurtling one upon the other, and vanishing swiftly into the turbulent abyss of shade; so that, to the eyes and fancies of the affrighted wanderers, the unsubstantial vapors were as the bodily forms of gigantic foes-the agents of terror and of death.

The ashes in many places were already knee-deep; and the boiling showers which came from the steaming breath of the volcano forced their way into the houses, bearing with them a strong and suffocating vapor. In some places, immense fragments of rock, hurled upon the house roofs, bore down along the streets ma.s.ses of confused ruin, which yet more and more, with every hour, obstructed the way; and, as the day advanced, the motion of the earth was more sensibly felt-the footing seemed to slide and creep-nor could chariot or litter be kept steady, even on the most level ground.

Sometimes the huger stones striking against each other as they fell, broke into countless fragments, emitting sparks of fire, which caught whatever was combustible within their reach; and along the plains beyond the city the darkness was now terribly relieved; for several houses, and even vineyards, had been set on flames; and at various intervals the fires rose suddenly and fiercely against the solid gloom. To add to this partial relief of the darkness, the citizens had, here and there, in the more public places, such as the porticoes of temples and the entrances to the forum, endeavored to place rows of torches; but these rarely continued long; the showers and the winds extinguished them, and the sudden darkness into which their sudden birth was converted had something in it doubly terrible and doubly impressing on the impotence of human hopes, the lesson of despair.

Frequently, by the momentary light of these torches, parties of fugitives encountered each other, some hurrying towards the sea, others flying from the sea back to the land; for the ocean had retreated rapidly from the sh.o.r.e-an utter darkness lay over it, and upon its groaning and tossing waves the storm of cinders and rock fell without the protection which the streets and roofs afforded to the land. Wild-haggard-ghastly with supernatural fears, these groups encountered each other, but without the leisure to speak, to consult, to advise; for the showers fell now frequently, though not continuously, extinguishing the lights, which showed to each band the deathlike faces of the other, and hurrying all to seek refuge beneath the nearest shelter. The whole elements of civilization were broken up. Ever and anon, by the flickering lights, you saw the thief hastening by the most solemn authorities of the law, laden with, and fearfully chuckling over, the produce of his sudden gains. If, in the darkness, wife was separated from husband, or parent from child, vain was the hope of reunion. Each hurried blindly and confusedly on. Nothing in all the various and complicated machinery of social life was left save the primal law of self-preservation!

Through this awful scene did the Athenian wade his way, accompanied by Ione and the blind girl. Suddenly, a rush of hundreds, in their path to the sea, swept by them. Nydia was torn from the side of Glaucus, who, with Ione, was borne rapidly onward; and when the crowd (whose forms they saw not, so thick was the gloom) were gone, Nydia was still separated from their side. Glaucus shouted her name. No answer came. They retraced their steps-in vain: they could not discover her-it was evident she had been swept along some opposite direction by the human current. Their friend, their preserver, was lost! And hitherto Nydia had been their guide. Her blindness rendered the scene familiar to her alone. Accustomed, through a perpetual night, to thread the windings of the city, she had led them unerringly towards the sea-sh.o.r.e, by which they had resolved to hazard an escape. Now, which way could they wend? all was rayless to them-a maze without a clue. Wearied, despondent, bewildered, they, however, pa.s.sed along, the ashes falling upon their heads, the fragmentary stones dashing up in sparkles before their feet.

'Alas! alas!' murmured Ione, 'I can go no farther; my steps sink among the scorching cinders. Fly, dearest!-beloved, fly! and leave me to my fate!'

'Hush, my betrothed! my bride! Death with thee is sweeter than life without thee! Yet, whither-oh! whither, can we direct ourselves through the gloom? Already it seems that we have made but a circle, and are in the very spot which we quitted an hour ago.'

'O G.o.ds! yon rock-see, it hath riven the roof before us! It is death to move through the streets!'

'Blessed lightning! See, Ione-see! the portico of the Temple of Fortune is before us. Let us creep beneath it; it will protect us from the showers.'

He caught his beloved in his arms, and with difficulty and labor gained the temple. He bore her to the remoter and more sheltered part of the portico, and leaned over her, that he might shield her, with his own form, from the lightning and the showers! The beauty and the unselfishness of love could hallow even that dismal time!

'Who is there?' said the trembling and hollow voice of one who had preceded them in their place of refuge. 'Yet, what matters?-the crush of the ruined world forbids to us friends or foes.'

Ione turned at the sound of the voice, and, with a faint shriek, cowered again beneath the arms of Glaucus: and he, looking in the direction of the voice, beheld the cause of her alarm. Through the darkness glared forth two burning eyes-the lightning flashed and lingered athwart the temple-and Glaucus, with a shudder, perceived the lion to which he had been doomed couched beneath the pillars-and, close beside it, unwitting of the vicinity, lay the giant form of him who had accosted them-the wounded gladiator, Niger.

That lightning had revealed to each other the form of beast and man; yet the instinct of both was quelled. Nay, the lion crept nearer and nearer to the gladiator, as for companionship; and the gladiator did not recede or tremble. The revolution of Nature had dissolved her lighter terrors as well as her wonted ties.

While they were thus terribly protected, a group of men and women, bearing torches, pa.s.sed by the temple. They were of the congregation of the Nazarenes; and a sublime and unearthly emotion had not, indeed, quelled their awe, but it had robbed awe of fear. They had long believed, according to the error of the early Christians, that the Last Day was at hand; they imagined now that the Day had come.

'Woe! woe!' cried, in a shrill and piercing voice, the elder at their head. 'Behold! the Lord descendeth to judgment! He maketh fire come down from heaven in the sight of men! Woe! woe! ye strong and mighty! Woe to ye of the fasces and the purple! Woe to the idolater and the worshipper of the beast! Woe to ye who pour forth the blood of saints, and gloat over the death-pangs of the sons of G.o.d! Woe to the harlot of the sea!-woe! woe!'

And with a loud and deep chorus, the troop chanted forth along the wild horrors of the air, 'Woe to the harlot of the sea!-woe! woe!'

The Nazarenes paced slowly on, their torches still flickering in the storm, their voices still raised in menace and solemn warning, till, lost amid the windings in the streets, the darkness of the atmosphere and the silence of death again fell over the scene.

There was one of the frequent pauses in the showers, and Glaucus encouraged Ione once more to proceed. Just as they stood, hesitating, on the last step of the portico, an old man, with a bag in his right hand and leaning upon a youth, tottered by. The youth bore a torch. Glaucus recognized the two as father and son-miser and prodigal.

'Father,' said the youth, 'if you cannot move more swiftly, I must leave you, or we both perish!'

'Fly, boy, then, and leave thy sire!'

'But I cannot fly to starve; give me thy bag of gold!' And the youth s.n.a.t.c.hed at it.

'Wretch! wouldst thou rob thy father?'

'Ay! who can tell the tale in this hour? Miser, perish!'

The boy struck the old man to the ground, plucked the bag from his relaxing hand, and fled onward with a shrill yell.

'Ye G.o.ds!' cried Glaucus: 'are ye blind, then, even in the dark? Such crimes may well confound the guiltless with the guilty in one common ruin. Ione, on!-on!'

Chapter VIII

ARBACES ENCOUNTERS GLAUCUS AND IONE.

ADVANCING, as men grope for escape in a dungeon, Ione and her lover continued their uncertain way. At the moments when the volcanic lightnings lingered over the streets, they were enabled, by that awful light, to steer and guide their progress: yet, little did the view it presented to them cheer or encourage their path. In parts, where the ashes lay dry and uncommixed with the boiling torrents, cast upward from the mountain at capricious intervals, the surface of the earth presented a leprous and ghastly white. In other places, cinder and rock lay matted in heaps, from beneath which emerged the half-hid limbs of some crushed and mangled fugitive. The groans of the dying were broken by wild shrieks of women's terror-now near, now distant-which, when heard in the utter darkness, were rendered doubly appalling by the crushing sense of helplessness and the uncertainty of the perils around; and clear and distinct through all were the mighty and various noises from the Fatal Mountain; its rushing winds; its whirling torrents; and, from time to time, the burst and roar of some more fiery and fierce explosion. And ever as the winds swept howling along the street, they bore sharp streams of burning dust, and such sickening and poisonous vapors, as took away, for the instant, breath and consciousness, followed by a rapid revulsion of the arrested blood, and a tingling sensation of agony trembling through every nerve and fibre of the frame.

'Oh, Glaucus! my beloved! my own!-take me to thy arms! One embrace! let me feel thy arms around me-and in that embrace let me die-I can no more!'

'For my sake, for my life-courage, yet, sweet Ione-my life is linked with thine: and see-torches-this way! Lo! how they brave the Wind! Ha! they live through the storm-doubtless, fugitives to the sea! we will join them.'

As if to aid and reanimate the lovers, the winds and showers came to a sudden pause; the atmosphere was profoundly still-the mountain seemed at rest, gathering, perhaps, fresh fury for its next burst; the torch-bearers moved quickly on. 'We are nearing the sea,' said, in a calm voice, the person at their head. 'Liberty and wealth to each slave who survives this day! Courage! I tell you that the G.o.ds themselves have a.s.sured me of deliverance. On!'

Redly and steadily the torches flashed full on the eyes of Glaucus and Ione, who lay trembling and exhausted on his bosom. Several slaves were bearing, by the light, panniers and coffers, heavily laden; in front of them-a drawn sword in his hand-towered the lofty form of Arbaces.

'By my fathers!' cried the Egyptian, 'Fate smiles upon me even through these horrors, and, amidst the dreadest aspects of woe and death, bodes me happiness and love. Away, Greek! I claim my ward, Ione!'

'Traitor and murderer!' cried Glaucus, glaring upon his foe, 'Nemesis hath guided thee to my revenge!-a just sacrifice to the shades of Hades, that now seem loosed on earth. Approach-touch but the hand of Ione, and thy weapon shall be as a reed-I will tear thee limb from limb!'

Suddenly, as he spoke, the place became lighted with an intense and lurid glow. Bright and gigantic through the darkness, which closed around it like the walls of h.e.l.l, the mountain shone-a pile of fire! Its summit seemed riven in two; or rather, above its surface there seemed to rise two monster shapes, each confronting each, as Demons contending for a world. These were of one deep blood-red hue of fire, which lighted up the whole atmosphere far and wide; but, below, the nether part of the mountain was still dark and shrouded, save in three places, adown which flowed, serpentine and irregular, rivers of the molten lava. Darkly red through the profound gloom of their banks, they flowed slowly on, as towards the devoted city. Over the broadest there seemed to spring a cragged and stupendous arch, from which, as from the jaws of h.e.l.l, gushed the sources of the sudden Phlegethon. And through the stilled air was heard the rattling of the fragments of rock, hurtling one upon another as they were borne down the fiery cataracts-darkening, for one instant, the spot where they fell, and suffused the next, in the burnished hues of the flood along which they floated!

The slaves shrieked aloud, and, cowering, hid their faces. The Egyptian himself stood transfixed to the spot, the glow lighting up his commanding features and jewelled robes. High behind him rose a tall column that supported the bronze statue of Augustus; and the imperial image seemed changed to a shape of fire!

With his left hand circled round the form of Ione-with his right arm raised in menace, and grasping the stilus which was to have been his weapon in the arena, and which he still fortunately bore about him, with his brow knit, his lips apart, the wrath and menace of human pa.s.sions arrested as by a charm, upon his features, Glaucus fronted the Egyptian!

Arbaces turned his eyes from the mountain-they rested on the form of Glaucus! He paused a moment: 'Why,' he muttered, 'should I hesitate? Did not the stars foretell the only crisis of imminent peril to which I was subjected?-Is not that peril past?'

'The soul,' cried he aloud, 'can brave the wreck of worlds and the wrath of imaginary G.o.ds! By that soul will I conquer to the last! Advance, slaves!-Athenian, resist me, and thy blood be on thine own head! Thus, then, I regain Ione!'

He advanced one step-it was his last on earth! The ground shook beneath him with a convulsion that cast all around upon its surface. A simultaneous crash resounded through the city, as down toppled many a roof and pillar!-the lightning, as if caught by the metal, lingered an instant on the Imperial Statue-then shivered bronze and column! Down fell the ruin, echoing along the street, and riving the solid pavement where it crashed!-The prophecy of the stars was fulfilled!