The Last Days of Pompeii
Page 52
Chapter IX
THE DESPAIR OF THE LOVERS. THE CONDITION OF THE MULTITUDE.
GLAUCUS turned in gratitude but in awe, caught Ione once more in hisarms, and fled along the street, that was yet intensely luminous. Butsuddenly a duller shade fell over the air. Instinctively he turned tothe mountain, and beheld! one of the two gigantic crests, into which thesummit had been divided, rocked and wavered to and fro; and then, with asound, the mightiness of which no language can describe, it fell fromits burning base, and rushed, an avalanche of fire, down the sides ofthe mountain! At the same instant gushed forth a volume of blackestsmoke--rolling on, over air, sea, and earth.
Another--and another--and another shower of ashes, far more profuse thanbefore, scattered fresh desolation along the streets. Darkness once morewrapped them as a veil; and Glaucus, his bold heart at last quelled anddespairing, sank beneath the cover of an arch, and, clasping Ione to hisheart--a bride on that couch of ruin--resigned himself to die.
Meanwhile Nydia, when separated by the throng from Glaucus and Ione, hadin vain endeavored to regain them. In vain she raised that plaintivecry so peculiar to the blind; it was lost amidst a thousand shrieks ofmore selfish terror. Again and again she returned to the spot wherethey had been divided--to find her companions gone, to seize everyfugitive--to inquire of Glaucus--to be dashed aside in the impatience ofdistraction. Who in that hour spared one thought to his neighbor?Perhaps in scenes of universal horror, nothing is more horrid than theunnatural selfishness they engender. At length it occurred to Nydia,that as it had been resolved to seek the sea-shore for escape, her mostprobable chance of rejoining her companions would be to persevere inthat direction. Guiding her steps, then, by the staff which she alwayscarried, she continued, with incredible dexterity, to avoid the massesof ruin that encumbered the path--to thread the streets--and unerringly(so blessed now was that accustomed darkness, so afflicting in ordinarylife!) to take the nearest direction to the sea-side.
Poor girl!--her courage was beautiful to behold!--and Fate seemed tofavor one so helpless! The boiling torrents touched her not, save bythe general rain which accompanied them; the huge fragments of scoriashivered the pavement before and beside her, but spared that frail form:and when the lesser ashes fell over her, she shook them away with aslight tremor,' and dauntlessly resumed her course.
Weak, exposed, yet fearless, supported but by one wish, she was a veryemblem of Psyche in her wanderings; of Hope, walking through the Valleyof the Shadow; of the Soul itself--lone but undaunted, amidst thedangers and the snares of life!
Her path was, however, constantly impeded by the crowds that now gropedamidst the gloom, now fled in the temporary glare of the lightningsacross the scene; and, at length, a group of torch-bearers rushing fullagainst her, she was thrown down with some violence.
'What!' said the voice of one of the party, 'is this the brave blindgirl! By Bacchus, she must not be left here to die! Up, my Thessalian!So--so. Are you hurt? That's well! Come along with us! we are for theshore!'
'O Sallust! it is thy voice! The gods be thanked! Glaucus! Glaucus!Glaucus! have ye seen him?'
'Not I. He is doubtless out of the city by this time. The gods whosaved him from the lion will save him from the burning mountain.'
As the kindly epicure thus encouraged Nydia, he drew her along with himtowards the sea, heeding not her passionate entreaties that he wouldlinger yet awhile to search for Glaucus; and still, in the accent ofdespair, she continued to shriek out that beloved name, which, amidstall the roar of the convulsed elements, kept alive a music at her heart.
The sudden illumination, the bursts of the floods of lava, and theearthquake, which we have already described, chanced when Sallust andhis party had just gained the direct path leading from the city to theport; and here they were arrested by an immense crowd, more than halfthe population of the city. They spread along the field without thewalls, thousands upon thousands, uncertain whither to fly. The sea hadretired far from the shore; and they who had fled to it had been soterrified by the agitation and preternatural shrinking of the element,the gasping forms of the uncouth sea things which the waves had leftupon the sand, and by the sound of the huge stones cast from themountain into the deep, that they had returned again to the land, aspresenting the less frightful aspect of the two. Thus the two streamsof human beings, the one seaward, the other from the sea, had mettogether, feeling a sad comfort in numbers; arrested in despair anddoubt.
'The world is to be destroyed by fire,' said an old man in long looserobes, a philosopher of the Stoic school: 'Stoic and Epicurean wisdomhave alike agreed in this prediction: and the hour is come!'
'Yea; the hour is come!' cried a loud voice, solemn, but not fearful.
Those around turned in dismay. The voice came from above them. It wasthe voice of Olinthus, who, surrounded by his Christian friends, stoodupon an abrupt eminence on which the old Greek colonists had raised atemple to Apollo, now timeworn and half in ruin.
As he spoke there came that sudden illumination which had heralded thedeath of Arbaces, and glowing over that mighty multitude, awed,crouching, breathless--never on earth had the faces of men seemed sohaggard!--never had meeting of mortal beings been so stamped with thehorror and sublimity of dread!--never till the last trumpet sounds,shall such meeting be seen again! And above those the form of Olinthus,with outstretched arm and prophet brow, girt with the living fires. Andthe crowd knew the face of him they had doomed to the fangs of thebeast--then their victim--now their warner! and through the stillnessagain came his ominous voice:
'The hour is come!'
The Christians repeated the cry. It was caught up--it was echoed fromside to side--woman and man, childhood and old age, repeated, not aloud,but in a smothered and dreary murmur:
'THE HOUR IS COME!'
At that moment, a wild yell burst through the air--and, thinking only ofescape, whither it knew not, the terrible tiger of the desert leapedamongst the throng, and hurried through its parted streams. And so camethe earthquake--and so darkness once more fell over the earth!
And now new fugitives arrived. Grasping the treasures no longerdestined for their lord, the slaves of Arbaces joined the throng. Oneonly of all their torches yet flickered on. It was borne by Sosia; andits light falling on the face of Nydia, he recognized the Thessalian.
'What avails thy liberty now, blind girl?' said the slave.
'Who art thou? canst thou tell me of Glaucus?'
'Ay; I saw him but a few minutes since.'
'Blessed be thy head! where?'
'Crouched beneath the arch of the forum--dead or dying!--gone to rejoinArbaces, who is no more!'
Nydia uttered not a word, she slid from the side of Sallust; silentlyshe glided through those behind her, and retraced her steps to the city.She gained the forum--the arch; she stooped down--she felt around--shecalled on the name of Glaucus.
A weak voice answered--'Who calls on me? Is it the voice of the Shades?Lo! I am prepared!'
'Arise! follow me! Take my hand! Glaucus, thou shalt be saved!'
In wonder and sudden hope, Glaucus arose--'Nydia still? Ah! thou, then,art safe!'
The tender joy of his voice pierced the heart of the poor Thessalian,and she blessed him for his thought of her.
Half leading, half carrying Ione, Glaucus followed his guide. Withadmirable discretion, she avoided the path which led to the crowd shehad just quitted, and, by another route, sought the shore.
After many pauses and incredible perseverance, they gained the sea, andjoined a group, who, bolder than the rest, resolved to hazard any perilrather than continue in such a scene. In darkness they put forth tosea; but, as they cleared the land and caught new aspects of themountain, its channels of molten fire threw a partial redness over thewaves.
Utterly exhausted and worn out, Ione slept on the breast of Glaucus, andNydia lay at his feet. Meanwhile the showers of dust and ashes, stillborne aloft, fell into the wave, and scattered their snows o
ver thedeck. Far and wide, borne by the winds, those showers descended uponthe remotest climes, startling even the swarthy African; and whirledalong the antique soil of Syria and of Egypt (Dion Cassius).