Perpetua Author:Sabine Baring-Gould Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill BAUDILLAS, THE DEACON The chain of priests and priestesses could not restrain the mob that thrust forward to the great basin to see the result. Excl... more »amations of every description rose from the throng. " He fell in !" " Nay, he cast himself in. The god will withdraw the holy waters. It was impious. The fountain is polluted." " Was it not denled when a dead tomcat was found in it ? Yet the fountain ceased not to flow." "The maiden floats!" " Why should the god pick out the handsomest girl ? His blood is ice-cold. She is not a morsel for him," scoffed a red-faced senator. "He rises ! He is swimming." " He has grappled the damsel." " He is striking out! It is well! It is well !" " Encourage not the sacrilegious one ! Thou makest thyself partaker in his impiety." " What will the magistrates do ? " " Do ?—curl up like woodlice and uncurl only when all is forgotten." " He is a Christian." " His father was a philosopher. He swears by the gods." " He is an atheist." " See ! See ! He is sustaining her head." " She is not dead, she gasps." " Body of Bacchus ! how the water boils. The god is wroth." " Bah ! it boils no more now than it did yesterday." In the ice-green water could be seen the young man with nervous arms, striking out. He held up the girl with one arm. The swell of the rising volumes of water greatly facilitated his efforts. Indeed, the upsurging flood had such force, frhat to die by drowning in it was a death by inches, for as often as a body went beneath the surface it was again propelled upwards. In a minute he was at the breastwork, had one hand on it, then called : " Help, someone, to lift her out." Thereupon the man clothed in brown wool put down his arms, clasped the half-conscious girl, and raise...« less