Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/169

 those huge blocks of Pelasgic or Tyrrhene architecture have seen the storms of centuries when Alexander was yet unborn and Christ and Cæsar names unknown. Three thousand years and more the sea has raged at them in its furies of autumn and of winter, but it has only been able to displace, never been able to destroy them.

At these vast blocks, which tax the strength of yoked oxen, a gang of galley-slaves was working; the overseer was near them with his whip, as though they were wild beasts of an arena and he their tamer.

One of them, a Hercules in build, and burnt black with the sun on all his naked limbs and throat, looked up and saw her and knew her.

It was Saturnino. He had not yet been moved from Orbetello since his capture there.

She looked at the great black figure of the man with a pity that quenched the scorn she had always felt for the baseness of his theft. She knew his story: the great Saturnino as the country side still called him! And he was working there as elephants do in timber-gangs, old before his time, calcined with sun and powder, bent but massive still, with