When Titus ascertained that the chiefs of the rebel party were slain, he commanded his soldiers to cease from carnage; but he sent to inform his father that numbers of the inhabitants had escaped in boats, and had pushed out to sea beyond the reach of the archers. Vespasian immediately had several vessels prepared, and embarked a detachment of troops to pursue the fugitives to the middle of the lake. The light boats of the poor Galileans could offer no resistance to the Roman vessels, and they could only row swiftly round them, and endeavour to annoy the legionaries by throwing stones and darts among them, which merely served to irritate their pursuers. The shores were lined with hostile troops; and if they attempted to take refuge in some creek or rocky inlet, they were met by fierce enemies, or followed by the Roman barks, and pierced by their long spears, as they stood above them on their lofty decks. Many of the boats were crushed by the larger vessels, and when the drowning crew rose above the water, they were transfixed by the arrows and lances of their infuriated foes. The surface of the lake, that so lately sparkled in peaceful beauty, was broken with forms of death and struggles of agony; its blue waters were tinged with blood, and for several days a corrupt vapour rose over its whole extent, bearing fearful witness to the multitude of slaughtered human beings that were concealed beneath. The verdant shores were scattered over with disfigured and unburied corpses, swollen and decaying beneath the burning sun; and the Romans themselves loathed to look upon the dreadful work of their own hands. Marcellus was not yet inured to scenes of cruelty and blood; and his heart sickened when he beheld the smiling, and in his eyes sacred, shores of the Galilean sea thus polluted with the remains of such ruthless barbarity.