Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/292

Rh Othello madness that believes what it adores dishonoured.

At last their march paused; the silence was broken by the noise of loosened tongues; there were stir, and tumult, and the clash of arms around them; they had joined their comrades,—they had brought their prisoner to their captain to be judged. Under some mighty pillars of yellow travestine, the lonely relics of some forgotten temple, four or five score of black-browed, loose-harnessed soldiers, the worst of a worthless army, were scattered, lying full-length in the shade, taking their noonday meal, or slaking their thirst at a sluggish noxious streamlet stealing by the columns' base amongst the violet-roots. They had been checked a moment in their search by the sea for the fugitives; and lay like hot, panting, ferocious dogs, ready to rise and use their teeth at a moment's tempting.

They swarmed round him like a pack of wolves, but no change came on his face; with a hundred soldiers beside him, lean, savage, ruffianly, for the most part, as any Abruzzian banditti, with the glitter of their steel, the muzzles of their carbines, the yelling of their oaths, the clamour of their triumph about him where he stood powerless in their midst, they could not tell that he even saw