What was the hideous fatality that threatened his sovereign?  It was approaching, it must come if no one—­aye, if no one should be found to stand between him and the impending blow, and to receive in his own breast—­in his own heart, bared to receive the wound—­the spear hurled by the vengeful god.  And he—­he, and he alone was the one who might do this.

The thought flashed into his mind like a sudden blaze of light; and if he should find the courage to devote himself to death for his dear master all his sins against him would be expiated; then—­then—­oh, how lovely a thought!—­then might he not find entrance into the gates of that realm of bliss which Selene’s prayers had opened to him?  There he would see his mother again and his father, and by and bye his brothers and sisters—­but now, at once in a few minutes Her whom he loved and who had trodden the ways of death before him.

An exquisite sense of hope such as he had never felt before flooded his soul.  There lay the Nile—­here was a boat.  He gave it a strong push into the stream and with a powerful leap, as when hunting he had often sprung from rock to rock, he jumped into the boat.  He had just seized an oar when Mastor, who had been desired by the Emperor to seek him, recognized him in the moonlight and desired him to return with him to the tents.

But Antinous did not obey.  As he pushed out into the stream he called out: 

“Greet my Lord from me—­greet him lovingly, a thousand times, and tell him Antinous loved him more than his life.  Fate demands a victim.  The world cannot dispense with Hadrian, but Antinous is a mere nonentity, whom none will miss but Caesar, and for him Antinous flings himself into the jaws of death.”

“Stay-stop! hapless boy, come back!” shouted the slave, and leaping into a boat he followed that of the Bithynian, which, impelled by strong and steady strokes, flew away into the current.

Mastor rowed with all his might, but he could not gain upon the boat he was pursuing.  Thus in a wild race both reached the middle of the stream.  There, the slave saw Antinous fling away his oar, and an instant later he heard Antinous call loudly on the name of Selene, and then, in helpless inactivity, he saw the lad glide into the waters, and the Nile swallowed in its flood the noblest and fairest of victims.

CHAPTER XXII

A night and a day had slipped away since the death of the Bithynian.  Ships and boats from every part of the province had collected before Besa to seek for the body of the drowned youth, the shores swarmed with men, and cressets and torches had dimmed the moonlight on river and shore all through the night; but they had not yet succeeded in finding the body of the beautiful youth.