And she had not urged the Herod's death for his sake, and thereby imperiled her own living with Flaccus; she had sent him a passport to Capri and one to Misenum, and rescued him from the admiring eyes of other women, to make sure of him--and he had flung her away, at last! "He will starve me to death: drown me in the Mamertine!" Caligula raged under his breath. "Starve me, I say! Speak, corpse! What shall I do!" Her rage by this time had so filled her that it meant to have expression or have her life. "Kill him!" she hissed through her teeth. It was Marsyas' sentence, but it fell upon Tiberius. Caligula ceased to tremble and stared at her with a strange look in his bird-like eyes. "How?" he asked. She seized one of the pillows and brought it down over the seat of the divan, and held it firmly as if to prevent it from being thrown off. "Thus!" she said venomously. "But the nurses and Charicles, the physician," Caligula protested, fearing nevertheless that his protest might hold good. "Put them out! Will they dare resist the coming emperor? Have Macro aid thee, so he dare not tell upon thee." She was becoming cool. It would be good to vent her murderous impulses on something. Caligula gazed at her with fascination in his face. "Come, then, thou, and see it done! Neither shalt thou talk," he said suddenly. She stepped to his side, but before she reached the exit of the inclosure, she stopped and looked squarely into his eyes. "Herod hath a slave who hath wronged me," she said. "Which one?" he demanded. "The Essene!" "Nay, take vengeance on some other, then, for He is my friend! I have vowed him favor!" "Why?" she demanded. "Nay; do not stop--thou art to see this thing done! Why do I promise the Essene favor? Because, forsooth, he made an emperor of me! Come!" CHAPTER XXIX IN EXTREMIS Marsyas left the promontory at once. He had hired one of the public passenger boats to cross from Baiae to Misenum and the boatman had waited for the return of his fare. Many went as he was going, but they were patricians singly and in groups that passed him, with sober faces and without a word to each other. He recognized senators, aediles, consuls, duumvirs, praetors, legates all hurrying toward the landing. All noble Misenum seemed suddenly to have determined on an exodus. An anxious and distressed company they were, and had Marsyas' own brain been less hot with anger, he might have meditated on the meaning of it all. By the time he reached the bay, the sunset-reddened water was covered with light-running coasters, by the signs on aplustre or vexillum, a fleet of patrician craft making across the bay to Neapolis, or scudding for the open sea and Ostia. He saw one or two vessels approaching Misenum, hailed by departing ones, and, after a colloquy, turned back.