"Of course I was taken prisoner, so perhaps I've no right to speak. But I do still think of myself as a shipmate, I'm a sailor, too, for pleasure, and we're all on this same keel together. So if you would hear my words--" "Be still!" said Eodan. "This is nothing worth talking about." Hwicca came from her cabin. "What is it?" she asked. "What has happened?" She looked so young and alone that a Power seized upon Eodan. Willy-nilly, he must go to reassure her. And meanwhile Flavius waved an angry Tjorr aside, casually, and went on: "I understand you turned pirate to escape Rome's crosses. But have you gained much, when your own captain begins to crucify you, one by one? Why, this youth was the spokesman of your liberty. Will you listen to him cry in his agony tomorrow? If so, you will deserve the cross yourselves. And you will get it! What does the captain care? He is only going to Egypt. It is nothing to him if he kills one of you outright and hangs up another to keep you awake with dying groans. So you, already undermanned, are overcome at your first battle. What of it, says your captain, safely ashore--" "Now that's muck-bespattered enough!" growled Tjorr. "One more word from anybody and I'll spray his brains on deck." "Hail, free companions of the sea," declaimed Flavius, and stepped aside. Phryne left the pail, her body glistened wet as she ran, and when she caught Eodan's hands her own were like some river nymph's. He remembered again cool forest becks in the North, when he was small and the world a wonder. "Eodan," she cried. "You'll not do any such thing!" "But he would have--" "He did not succeed. And even if he had, would it restore what I lost? Eodan, I am the one wronged, and I should give judgment." He felt himself suddenly exhausted--O great dark Bull, breathe sleep upon me! He said to her: "Well ... thus did we Cimbri set blood price. What would you have me do to this animal?" Phryne looked into the boy's liquid eyes and saw how his thin chest went up and down, up and down with terror. "Let him go," she said. "He will not harm me again." Quintus fell to his knees. "I am your slave, bright goddess of mercy," he sobbed. Eodan snapped, "Had you kept still, I would have let you go wholly free. You jabber too much. Ten lashes!" Hwicca's lips thinned. "You are too soft, Eodan," she said. "I would have put him on the yardarm." He checked a cruel retort and walked from her. While the needful work was being done, he heard Flavius speak low by the rail with a crewman. "It is true--a violently rebelling slave may not live. However, this case is unusual. I have influence, and of course it is always possible in case of mutiny ... Hm, shall we say a few loyal souls had been manumitted beforehand and thus did not come under the law? Much would depend on the testimony of any Roman citizen."