thick, confused, yet through them
all ran the vision of Cornelia, and the conviction that he was never
to see her again. He looked back. The soldiers at the head of the
bridge had taken alarm and were marching down to complete the arrest.
He looked before. The lictors, the troops, the stupid cattle and their
stolid drivers, and the great black-sided warehouses, casting their
gloomy shadow over the rippling river. Down stream; not a skiff seemed
stirring. The water was plashing, dancing, glancing in the sunshine.
Below the wooden bridge the spars of a huge merchantman were just
covering with canvas, as she stood away from her quay. Up stream (the
views were all compressed into the veriest moment)--with the current
came working, or rather drifting, a heavy barge loaded with timber.
Only two men, handling rude paddles, stood upon her deck. The barge
was about to pass under the very arch upon which stood the handful of
entrapped Caesarians. A word, a motion, and the last hope of escape
would have been comprehended by the enemy, and all would have been
lost. But in moments of extreme peril it is easy to make a glance full
of pregnancy. Antonius saw the face of his friend--saw and understood;
and the other seemingly doomed men understood likewise. In an instant
the barge would pass under the bridge!

"Fellow," replied Antonius (the whole inspection of the situation,
formation of the plot, and visual dialogue had really been so rapid as
to make no long break after the lictor ceased speaking), "do you dare
thus to do what even the most profane and impious have never dared
before? Will you lay hands on two inviolate tribunes of the plebs, and
those under their personal protection; and by your very act become a
_sacer_--an outlaw devoted to the gods, whom it is a pious thing for
any man to slay?"

"I have my orders, sir," replied the head lictor, menacingly. "And I
would have you know that neither you nor Quintus Cassius are reckoned
tribunes longer by the Senate; so by no such plea can you escape
arrest."

"Tribunes no longer!" cried Antonius; "has tyranny progressed so far
that no magistrate can hold office after he ceases to humour the
consuls?"

"We waste time, sir," said the lictor, sternly. "Forward, men; seize
and bind them!"

But Antonius's brief parley had done its work. As the bow of the barge
shot under the bridge, Curio, with a single bound over the parapet,
sprang on to its deck; after him leaped Quintus Cass