On they tramped, their hands bound
behind them, clad in full armour, but wearing a woman's distaff where
the sword should have been, and round their necks the placards which
proclaimed their shame. The brutal Roman mob hooted them also, that mob
which ever loved spectacles of cruelty and degradation, calling them
cowards. One of the men, a bull-necked, black-haired fellow, suffered it
patiently, remembering that at even he must be set free to vanish where
he would. The other, who was blue-eyed and finer-featured, having gentle
blood in his veins, seemed to be maddened by their talk, for he glared
about him, gnashing his teeth like a wild beast in a cage. Opposite to
the house of Marcus came the climax.
"Cur," yelled a woman in the mob, casting a pebble that struck him on
the cheek. "Cur! Coward!"
The blue-eyed man stopped, and, wheeling round, shouted in answer:
"I am no coward, I who have slain ten men with my own hand, five of them
in single combat. You are the cowards who taunt me. I was overwhelmed,
that is all, and afterwards in the prison I thought of my wife and
children and lived on. Now I die and my blood be on you."
Behind him, drawn by eight white oxen, was the model of a ship with the
crew standing on its deck.
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