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.