Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/238

 on sixteen hundred wagons. It would be deposited entire in the treasury. Each man would be paid his allotted stipend at once and in addition in place of any division of booty; would receive the amount of two years' wages, paid in silver.

At that word the storm burst. The roar of the angry men drowned Pompey's voice and swelled into a tide of sound that seemed capable of drowning all the noises in the world. It lasted on, roar following roar in pulsations, blent into one unbroken cataract of noise. All the men were gesticulating and here and there a naked sword flashed aloft above the mob. The tossing sea of waving arms and contorted faces made a terrible spectacle. Mucia realized instantly the fatuity of Clodius and Caesar's unerring prescience. She knew her last hour had come, unless Pompey was strong to save. She knew that upon him hung, not only her life but the lives of all those about her, that upon him depended the salvation of Rome and of all the Roman world. She realized how imbecile had been any pretensions of Clodius towards keeping in hand and guiding the tempest he had aroused. She had a staggering prophetic vision of what the platform she stood on might look like at sunset, her draggled corpse among others heaped pell-mell. Equally clear did she behold the impending