directly before her eyes distressed him as much as it could not fail to
alarm her.

In fact, the young mother had waited from early dawn with increasing
anxiety for her husband. As the sun rose higher, and the strokes of the
oars propelling two hundred galleys, the shrill whistle of the flutes
marking the time, the deep voices of the captains shouting orders, and
the blasts of the trumpets filling the air, were heard far and near
around the island, she became so overwhelmed with uneasiness that she
insisted upon going to the shore, though hitherto she had not been
permitted to take the air except under the awning stretched for the
purpose on the shady side of the house.

In vain the women urged her not to let her fears gain the mastery and to
have patience. But she would have resisted even force in order to look
for him who, with her child, now comprised her world.

When, leaning on Helena's arm, she reached the shore, no boat was in
sight. The sea was covered with ships of war, floating fortresses,
moving onward like dragons with a thousand legs whose feet were the
countless rowers arranged in three or five sets. Each of the larger
galleys was surrounded by smaller ones, from most of which darted
dazzling flashes of light, for they were crowded with armed men, and from
the prows of the strong boarding vessels the sunbeams glittered on the
large shining metal points whose office was to pierce the wooden sides of
the foe. The gilded statues in the prows of the large galleys shone and
sparkled in the broad radiance of the day-star, and flashes of light also
came from the low hills on the shore. Here Mark Antony's soldiers were
stationed, and the sunbeams reflected from the helmets, coats of mail,
and lance-heads of the infantry, and the armour of the horsemen quivered