Pompeii

point of light, but there was nothing.
    The effect on the beach at Stabiae was to shift the balance of terror, first one way and then the other. They could soon smell the fires on the wind, a pungent, acrid taste of sulphur and cinders. Someone screamed that they would all be burned alive. People sobbed, none louder than Lucius Popidius, who was calling for his mother, and then someone else – it was one of the sailors who had been prodding the roof with his oar – exclaimed that the heavy linen was no longer sagging. That quietened the panic.
    Attilius cautiously stretched out his arm beyond the shelter of the tent, his palm held upwards, as if checking for rain. The marine was right. The air was still full of small missiles but the storm was not as violent as before. It was as if the mountain had found a different outlet for its malevolent energy, in the rushing avalanche of fire rather than in the steady bombardment of rock. In that moment he made up his mind. Better to die doing something – better to fall beside the coastal highway and lie in some unmarked grave – than to cower beneath this flimsy shelter, filled with fearful imaginings, a spectator waiting for the end. He reached for his discarded pillow and planted it firmly on his head then felt around in the sand for the strip of sheet. Torquatus asked him quietly what he was doing.
    'Leaving.'
    'Leaving?' Pliny, reclining on the sand, his notes spread around him and weighed down with piles of pumice, looked up sharply. 'You'll do no such thing. I absolutely refuse you permission to go.'
    'With the greatest respect, admiral, I take my orders from Rome, not from you.' He was surprised some of the slaves had not also made a run for it. Why not? Habit, he supposed. Habit, and the lack of anywhere to run to.
    'But I need you here.' There was a wheedling note in Pliny's hoarse voice. 'What if something should happen to me? Someone must make sure my observations are not lost to posterity.'
    'There are others who can do that, admiral. I prefer to take my chance on the road.'
    'But you're a man of science, engineer. I can tell it. That's why you came. You're much more valuable to me here. Torquatus – stop him.'
    The captain hesitated, then unfastened his chin-strap and took off his helmet. 'Take this,' he said. 'Metal is better protection than feathers.' Attilius started to protest but Torquatus thrust it into his hands. 'Take it – and good luck.'
    'Thank you.' Attilius grasped his hand. 'May luck go with you, too.'
    It fitted him well enough. He had never worn a helmet before. He stood and picked up a torch. He felt like a gladiator about to enter the arena.
    'But where will you go?' protested Pliny.
    Attilius stepped into the storm. The light stones pinged off the helmet. It was utterly dark apart from the few torches planted into the sand around the perimeter of the shelter and the distant, glowing pyre of Vesuvius.
    'Pompeii.'

    Torquatus had estimated the distance between Stabiae and Pompeii at three miles – an hour's walk along a good road on a fine day. But the mountain had changed the laws of time and space and for a long while Attilius seemed to make no progress at all.
    He managed to get up off the beach and on to the road without too much difficulty and he was lucky that the view of Vesuvius was uninterrupted because the fires gave him an aiming-point. He knew that as long as he walked straight towards them he must come to Pompeii eventually. But he was pushing into the wind, so that even though he kept his head hunched, shrinking his world to his pale legs and the little patch of stone in which he waded, the rain of pumice stung his face and clogged his mouth and nostrils with dust. With each step he sank up to his knees in pumice and the effect was like trying to climb a hill of gravel, or a barn full of grain – an endless, featureless slope which rubbed his skin and tore at the muscles at the top of his thighs. Every few hundred paces he swayed to a stop and somehow, holding the torch, he had to drag first one foot and then the other out of the clinging pumice and pick the stones out of his shoes.
    The temptation to lie down and rest was overwhelming and yet it had to be resisted, he knew, because sometimes he stumbled into the bodies of those who had given up already. His torch showed soft forms, mere outlines of humanity, with occasionally a protruding foot, or a hand clawing at the air. And it was not only people who had died on the