Suddenly a whistle was heard from near the prow, where Anicetus was standing. The whistle was followed by a frightful crash. The gay canopy over the Empress had been weighted with lead, and so contrived that by the pulling of a rope it could be freed from its supports. Down it rushed upon the heads of the unsuspecting victims. Crepereius, who was standing up, was instantly crushed to death; but not so the two ladies. They were protected by the side of the boat and of the couch on which the Empress was resting. Half stunned by the terrible accident, they had scarcely realised what had occurred before they saw the galley in a state of indescribable confusion. Only a few of the sailors shared the hideous secret with Anicetus; and as the machinery had failed to act--for the loosing of the canopy ought to have been accompanied by the dissolution of the vessel--they rushed to the larboard in order to upset the boat by their weight. Those who had not been warned of the intended murder rushed to the starboard to prevent an accident. Fierce cries and discordant commands sounded on every side. Half wild with selfish terror, Acerronia struggled from the débris of the canopy and screamed out, ‘I am the Empress; help the mother of the Cæsar.’ A shower of fierce blows, dealt on her head with oars and boat-hooks, was the answer to her cry and the punishment of her faithlessness. In a moment she too lay outstretched in death. Agrippina was sobered by peril from the fumes of the Falernian of which she had plentifully partaken, and was enabled, by her familiarity with guilty plots, to take in at a glance the significance of the scene. She kept perfect silence. The murder of Acerronia showed her that it was her own life which was being deliberately attempted under pretence of a shipwreck; but she clung fiercely to that life, horrible as it had become, and little as she could now hope ultimately to escape the machinations of her son. Taking advantage of the confusion and the darkness, she dropped herself unobserved into the sea. She was a good swimmer, and boldly struck out for the land; though she then first became conscious that during the scuffle she had received a wound in the shoulder, either from the falling canopy or from the oar of one of the conspirators. Every stroke was painful; she was weighted by her heavy robes, and she doubted whether her strength would hold out; but still she swam for the land with all her remaining force. Surely the silent stars had never looked down on a stranger scene! Here was a matron who but recently had swayed the world, a half-deified Empress, the great-granddaughter of Augustus, the daughter of Germanicus, the wife and priestess of one deified Emperor, and the mother of the reigning Cæsar, swimming for her life in the jewelled robes which she had worn at the imperial banquet--swimming for her life in the dark waves, which became phosphorescent at every stroke, and thus trying