The City of Delight

From his position, he could see the port to the east packed with

lifeless vessels. The stretches of stone wharf and the mole were

vacant and littered with rubbish. The yard-arms of abandoned

freighters were peculiarly beaded with tiny black shapes that moved

from time to time. Far out at sea, so far that a blue mist embraced

its base and set its sails mysteriously afloat in air, a great galley,

with all canvas crowded on, sped like a frightened bird past the port

that had once been its haven.

A strange compelling odor stole up from the city. Costobarus glanced

down into his garden below him. It was a terraced court, with

vine-covered earthen retaining walls supporting each successive tier

and terminating against a domed gate flanked on either side by a tall

conical cypress.

He noted, on the flagging of the walk leading by flights of steps down

to the gate, a heap of garments with broad brown and yellow stripes.

Wondering at the untidiness of his gardener in leaving his tunic here

while he worked, Costobarus looked away toward the large stones that

lay here and there in gutters and on grass-plots, remnants of the work

of the Roman catapults the previous summer. In the walls of houses

were unrepaired breaches, where the wounds of the missiles showed. On

a slight eminence overlooking the city from the west center-poles of

native cedar which had supported Roman tents were still standing. But

no garrison was there now, though the signs of the savage Roman

obsession still lay on the remnants of the prostrate western wall. So

as Costobarus' gaze wandered he did not see far above that heap of

striped garments in his garden walk, fixed like an enchanted thing,

moveless, dead-calm, a great desert vulture poised in air. Presently

another and yet another materialized out of the blue, growing larger

as they fell down to the level of their fellow. Slowly the three

swooped down over the heap on the garden walk. The tiny black shapes

that beaded the yard-arms in port spread great wings and soared

solemnly into Ascalon. The three vultures dropped noiselessly on the

pavement.

Cries began suddenly somewhere nearer and instantly the tremendous

booming of a great oriental gong from the heathen quarters swept heavy

floods of sound over the outcry and drowned it. The vultures flew up

hastily and Costobarus saw them for the first time. A chill rushed

over him; revulsion of feeling showed vividly on his face. He shut the

window.

Noon was high over Ascalon and Pestilence was Cæsar within its walls.

It was the penalty of warfare, the long black shadow that the passage

of a great army casts upon a battling nation. Physicians could not

give it a name. It seized upon healthy victims, rent them, blasted

them and cast them dead and distorted in their tracks, before help

could reach them. It passed like fire on a high wind through whole

countries and left behind it silence and feeding vultures.