shriek, and then the heavy
plunge far down in the dark abysses of the earth.

THE RED STAR

The house of Theodosius, the famous eastern merchant, was in the best
part of Constantinople at the Sea Point which is near the Church of
Saint Demetrius. Here he would entertain in so princely a fashion that
even the Emperor Maurice had been known to come privately from the
neighbouring Bucoleon palace in order to join in the revelry. On the
night in question, however, which was the fourth of November in the
year of our Lord 630, his numerous guests had retired early, and there
remained only two intimates, both of them successful merchants like
himself, who sat with him over their wine on the marble verandah of his
house, whence on the one side they could see the lights of the shipping
in the Sea of Marmora, and on the other the beacons which marked out the
course of the Bosphorus. Immediately at their feet lay a narrow strait
of water, with the low, dark loom of the Asiatic hills beyond. A thin
haze hid the heavens, but away to the south a single great red star
burned sullenly in the darkness.

The night was cool, the light was soothing, and the three men talked
freely, letting their minds drift back into the earlier days when they
had staked their capital, and often their lives, on the ventures which
had built up their present fortunes. The host spoke of his long journeys
in North Africa, the land of the Moors; how he had travelled, keeping
the blue sea ever upon his right, until he had passed the ruins of
Carthage, and so on and ever on until a great tidal ocean beat upon a
yellow strand before him, while on the right he could see the high rock
across the waves which marked the Pillars of Hercules. His talk was
of dark-skinned bearded men, of lions, and of monstrous serpents. Then
Demetrius, the Cilician, an austere man of sixty, told how he also had
built up his mighty wealth. He spoke of a journey over the Danube and
through the country of the fierce Huns, until he and his friends had
found themselves in the mighty forest of Germany, on the shores of the
great river which is called the Elbe. His stories were of huge men,
sluggish of mind, but murderous in their cups, of sudden midnight broils
and nocturnal flights, of villages buried in dense woods, of bloody
heathen sacrifices, and of the bears and wolves who haunted the forest
paths. So the two elder men capped each other's stories and awoke each
other's memori