st looked around I saw
that my other ships were following. I had not given this order, and was
terribly startled. When I sought Alexas, he had vanished. The centurion
whom I sent to order the nauarch to give the signal to the other ships
to return to the battle, reported that the captain's dead body has just
been borne away, but that the command should be given. How this was done
I do not know, but it produced no effect, and no one noticed the anxious
waving of my handkerchief.

"We had left Antony's galley--he was standing on the bridge--far behind.

"I had waved my hand as we passed close by, and he hurried down to bend
far over the bulwark and shout to me. I can still see his hands raised
to his bearded lips. I did not understand what he said, and only pointed
southward and in spirit wished him victory and that this separation
might tend to the welfare of our love. But he shook his head, pressed
his hand despairingly to his brow, and waved his arms as though to give
me a sign, but the Antonias swept far ahead of his ship and steered
straight towards the south.

"I breathed more freely, in the pleasant consciousness of escaping a
two-fold danger. Had I remained long before Antony's eyes, looking as I
did then, it might--

"Wretched blunder of a wretched woman, I say now. But at that time I
could not suspect what a terrible doom I had brought down in that hour
upon ourselves, my children, perhaps the whole world; so I remained
under the thrall of these petty fears and thoughts until wounded men
were carried past me. The sight distressed me; you know how sensitive I
am, and with what difficulty I endure and witness suffering.

"Charmian led me to the cabin. There I first realized what I had done. I
had hoped to aid in crushing the hated foe, and now perhaps it was I
who had built for him the bridge to victory, to sovereignty, to our
destruction. Pursued by such thoughts, as if by the Furies, I paced
restlessly to and fro.

"Suddenly I heard a loud noise on deck. A crashing blow seemed to shake
the huge ship. We were pursued! A Roman galley had boarded mine! This
was my thought as I grasped the dagger Antony had given me.

"But Charmian came back with tidings which seemed scarcely less terrible
than the baseless fear. I had angrily commanded her to leave me because
she had urged me to revoke the command to turn back. Now, deadly pale,
she announced that Mark Antony had left his galley, followed me in a
little fiv