The unchained elements had raged that night with equal fury over the Nile city of Besa. The citizens of this ancient town had done all they could to give the Imperial traveller a worthy reception. The chief streets had been decked with ropes of flowers strung from mast to mast and from house to house, and by the harbor, close to the river shore, statues of Hadrian and his wife had been erected. But the storm tore down the masts and the garlands, and the lashed waters of the Nile had beaten with irresistible fury on the bank; had carried away piece after piece of the fertile shore, flung its waves, like liquid wedges into the rifts of the parched land; and excavated the high bank by the landing-quay. After midnight the storm was still raging with unheard-of fury; it swept the palm thatch from many of the houses, and beat the stream with such violence that it was like a surging sea. The full unbroken force of the flood beat again and again on the promontory on which stood the statues of the Imperial couple. Shortly before the first dawn of light the little tongue of land, which was protected by no river wall, could no longer resist the furious attack of the waters; huge clods of soil slipped and fell with a loud noise into the river and were followed by a large mass of the cliff, with a roar as of thunder the plateau behind sank, and the statue of the Emperor which stood upon it began to totter and lean slowly to its fall. When day broke it was lying with the pedestal still above ground, but the head was buried in the earth. At break of day the citizens left their houses to inquire of the fishermen and boatmen what had occurred in the harbor during the night. As soon as the storm had abated, hundreds, nay thousands, of men, women and children thronged the landing-place round the fallen statue--they saw the land-slip and knew that the current had torn the land from the bank and caused the mischief. Was it that Hapi, the Nile-god, was angry with the Emperor? At any rate the disaster that had befallen the image of the sovereign boded evil, that was clear. The Toparch, the chief municipal authority, at once set to work to reinstate the statue which was itself uninjured, for Hadrian might arrive in a few hours. Numerous men, both free and slaves, crowded to undertake the work, and before long the statue of Hadrian, executed in the Egyptian style, once more stood upright and gazing with a fixed countenance towards the harbor. Sabina's was also put back by the side of her husband's and the Toparch went home satisfied. With him most of the starers and laborers left the quay, but their place was taken by other curious folks who had missed the statue from its place, where the land had fallen, and now expressed their opinions as to the mode and manner of its fall. "The wind can never have overturned this heavy mass of limestone," said a ropemaker: "And see how far it stands from the broken ground."