The Scarlet Banner Part 27

I said yesterday that he ought to have considered this somewhat earlier. But he muttered something in his beard, and begged me to atone for his errors to the best of my ability. I must go to Syracuse and, on the pretext of buying provisions from your Ostrogoth Counts, inquire everything about these Vandals, of whom he is ignorant and yet ought to know. So I have been here in Syracuse since yesterday, asking everybody about the Vandals, and they all laugh at me, saying: "Why, if Belisarius does not know, how should we? We are not at war with them."

It seems to me that the insolent fellows are right.

CHAPTER II

Triumph, O Cethegus! Belisarius's former good fortune is fluttering over the pennons at our mast-heads: the G.o.ds themselves are blinding the Vandals; they are depriving them of their reason, consequently they must desire their destruction. Hermes is breaking the path for us, removing danger and obstacles from our way.

The Vandal fleet, the bugbear of our valiant warriors, is floating harmless away from Carthage toward the north; while we, with all sails set--the east wind is filling them merrily--are flying from Sicily over the blue flood westward to Carthage. We cut the rippling waves as if on a festal excursion. No foe, no spy, far or near, to oppose us or give warning of our approach to the threatened Vandals, on whom we shall fall like a meteor crashing from a clear sky.

That all this has come to the General's knowledge, and that he can make instant use of it, is due to Procopius, or--to speak more honestly--to blind chance, the capricious G.o.ddess Tyche. It seems to me, though I am no philosopher, that she rather than Nemesis guides the destinies of nations.

I wrote last that I was running about the streets of Syracuse, somewhat helplessly, not without being laughed at by the mockers, asking all the people whether no Vandals had been seen. One--this time it was a Gothic count named Totila, as handsome as he was insolent--had just answered, laughing and shrugging his shoulders: "Seek your enemies yourselves. I would far rather go with the Vandals to find and sink you." I was thinking how correctly this young Barbarian had perceived the advantage of his people and the folly of his Regent, when, vexed with the Goths, with myself, and most of all with Belisarius, I turned a street corner and almost ran against some one coming from the opposite direction. It was Hegelochus, my schoolmate from Caesarea, who, I knew, had settled as a merchant, a speculator in grain, somewhere in Sicily, but I was ignorant in which city.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, after the first exchange of greetings.

"I?--I am only looking for a trifle," I answered rather irritably, for I already heard in imagination his jeering laugh. "I am searching everywhere for a hundred and fifty to two hundred Vandal war-ships. Do you happen to know where they are?"

"Certainly I do," he replied, without laughing. "They are lying in the harbor of Caralis in Sardinia."

"Omniscient grain-dealer," I cried, rigid with amazement, "where did you learn that?"

"In Carthage, which I left only three days ago," he said quietly.

Then the questioning began. And often as I squeezed the shrewd, sensible man like a sponge, a stream of news most important for us flowed out.

So we have nothing to fear for our fleet from the Vandal war vessels.

The Barbarians as yet have no suspicion that we are advancing upon them. The flower of their army has gone on the dreaded galleys to Sardinia. Gelimer feels no anxiety for Carthage, or any other city on the coast. He is in Hermione, in the province of Byzacena, four days'

journey from the sea. What can he be doing there, on the edge of the desert? We are, therefore, safe from every peril, and can land in Africa wherever wind, waves, and our own will may guide us.

During this conversation, and while I was constantly questioning him, I had wound my arm around my friend's neck, and now asked him to come to the harbor with me and look at my ship, which lay at anchor there. It was a very swift sailer of a new model. The merchant agreed. As soon as I had him safely on board, I drew my sword, cut the rope which moored us to the metal ring of the harbor mole, and ordered my sailors to take us swiftly to Caucana.

Hegelochus was startled; he scolded and threatened. But I soothed him, saying: "Forgive this abduction, my friend; it is absolutely necessary that Belisarius himself, not merely his legal adviser, should talk with and question you. He alone knows everything that is at stake. And I will not undertake the responsibility of having failed to inquire about some important point or of having misunderstood some answer. Some G.o.d who is angered against the Vandals has sent you to me; woe betide me if I do not profit by it. You must tell the General everything you have learned; you must accompany our ships, nay, guide them to Africa. This one involuntary voyage to Carthage will bring you richer profits from the royal treasures of the Vandals than sailing to and fro with wheat many hundred times. And the reward awaiting you in Heaven for your partic.i.p.ation in the destruction of the heretics--I will not estimate."

He grinned, calmed down, then laughed. But the hero Belisarius smiled far more joyously when he saw before him the man "just from Carthage,"

and could question him to his heart's content. How he praised me for the accident of this meeting! The command to sail was given with the blast of the tuba. How the sails flew aloft! How proudly our galleys swept forward! Woe to thee, Vandalia! Woe to the lofty towers of Genseric's citadel!

The swift voyage continued past the islands of Gaulos and Melita, which divide the Adriatic from the Tyrrhenian Sea. At Melita the wind, as if ordered by Belisarius, grew still fresher,--a strong east-southeast gale which, on the following day, drove us upon the African coast at Caput Vada, five days' march from Carthage. That is, for a swift walker without baggage; we shall probably require a much longer time.

Belisarius ordered the sails to be lowered, the anchors dropped, and summoned all the leaders of the troops to a council of war on his own ship. It was now to be decided whether we should disembark the troops and march against Carthage by land, or keep them on the fleet and conquer the capital from the sea. Opinions were very conflicting.

The decision has been reached; we shall march against Carthage by land.

True, Archelaus, the Quaestor, protested, saying that we had no harbor for the ships without men, no fortress for the men without ships. Every storm might scatter them upon the open sea, or hurl them against the cliffs along the sh.o.r.e. He also called attention to the lack of water along the coast region, and the want of means to supply food. "Only let no one ask me, as quaestor, for anything to eat," he cried angrily. "A quaestor who has only the office, but no bread, cannot satisfy you with his position." He advised hastening by sea to Carthage, to occupy the harbor of Stagnum, which could hold the entire fleet, and was at that time entirely undefended; thence to rush from the ships upon the city, which could be taken at the first attack, if the King and his army were really four days' march from the coast.

But Belisarius said: "G.o.d has fulfilled our most ardent desire; He has permitted us to reach Africa without encountering the hostile fleet.

Shall we now remain at sea, and perhaps yet meet those ships before which our men threaten to fly? As for the danger of tempests, it would be better to have the galleys lost when they are empty, than while filled with our troops. We have still the advantage of surprising the unprepared foe; every delay will enable them to make ready to meet us.

Here we can land without fighting; elsewhere and later we must perhaps battle against the wind and the enemy. So I say, we will land here.

Walls and ditches around the camp will supply the place of a fortress.

And have no anxiety about stores: if we defeat the foe, we shall also capture his provisions." Thus spoke Belisarius. I thought that, as usual, his reasoning was weak, but his courage strong. The truth is, he always chooses the shortest way to the battle.

The council of war closed. Belisarius's will was carried out.

We brought the horses, weapons, baggage, and implements of war to land.

About fourteen thousand soldiers and nineteen thousand sailors began to shovel, to dig, to drive stakes into the hot, dry sand; the General not only threw out the first spadeful, but, working uninterruptedly, the last. His perspiration abundantly bedewed the soil of Africa, and the men were so spurred by his example that they vied with each other valiantly. Before night closed in, the ditch, the wall, and the palisade were completed around the entire camp. Only one-fifth of the archers spent the night on the ships.

So far all was well. Our galleys still contained an ample store of provisions, thanks to the hospitality of the Ostrogoths in Sicily.

These simpletons, by the learned Regent's command, almost gave us everything an army needs for man and horse (the troublesome Totila, who is no well-wisher of ours, was instantly recalled). In reply to our amazed questions, they answered, by the learned Ca.s.siodorus's instructions: "You will pay us by avenging us upon the Vandals." Well, Justinian will reward them. I wonder if the scholar knows the fable of how the horse, because he hated the stag, carried the man upon his back and hunted the stag to death? The free animal had taken the man on his back for this ride only, but never again was he rid of his captor. But the water is giving out. What we have with us is scanty, foul, and putrid; and to march for days under the African sun with no water for men and beasts--how will it end?

I shall really soon believe that we are G.o.d's chosen favorites--we, the chaste-hearted warriors of Justinian the truthful and Theodora! Or have the Vandals and their King called down upon themselves the wrath of Heaven so heavily that miracles continually happen against these Barbarians and in our favor?

Yesterday evening we all, from the General to the camel, were in sore anxiety about water. To-day the slave Agnellus--he is a countryman of yours, O Cethegus, and the son of a fisherman from Stabiae--brought to my tent whole amphorae of the most delicious spring water, not only for drinking, but amply sufficient for bathing. With the last strokes of the spade our Herulians opened a large bubbling spring on the eastern edge of the camp--an unprecedented thing in the Byzacena province, between the sea and the "desert,"--so the people here call all the country southwest of the great road along which we are marching, and surely quite unjustly, for some of it is very fertile; yet it is old desert ground and often merges imperceptibly into the real wilderness.

At any rate, this spring gushed forth for us from the surrounding dry sand. The stream of water is so abundant that men and animals can drink, boil, and bathe, pour out the foul water from the ships, and replace it with the best. I hastened to Belisarius and congratulated him, not only because of the actual usefulness of this discovery, but because it is an omen of victory. "Water gushes out of the wilderness for you. General," I exclaimed. "That means an effortless victory. You are the favorite of Heaven." He smiled. We always like to hear such things.

Belisarius commissioned me to compose an order to be read aloud at the departure of each body of troops.

A few dozen of our precious Huns dashed out into the country and seized some of the harvests just ripening in the fields, over which they became involved in a discussion with the Roman colonists. As the Huns, unfortunately, speak their Latin only with leather whips and lance-thrusts, there were several dead men after the conference,--of course only on the side of the wicked peasants, who would not let the horses of the Huns eat their fill of their best grain. Our beloved Huns cut off the heads of the men whom they had thus happily liberated from the Vandal yoke, hung them to their saddles, and brought them to the General for a dessert. Belisarius foamed with rage. He often foams; and when Belisarius lightens, Procopius must usually thunder.

So it was now. So I wrote a proclamation that we were the saviors, liberators, and benefactors of the provincials, and therefore would neither consider their best grain-fields as litter for our horses nor play ball with their heads. "In this case," I wrote convincingly, "such conduct is not only criminal, but extremely stupid. Our little body of troops could venture to land only because we expect that the inhabitants of the provinces will be hostile to the Vandals and helpful to us." But I appealed to our heroes still more impressively, addressing not their honor or their conscience, but their stomachs! "If ye die of hunger, O admirable men," I wrote, "the peasants will bring us nothing to eat. If ye kill them, the dead will sell you nothing more and the living almost less. You will drive the provincials to be the allies of the Vandals--to say nothing of G.o.d and His opinion of you, which is already somewhat clouded. So spare the people, at least for the present, or they will discover too early that Belisarius's Huns are worse than Gelimer's Vandals. When the Emperor's tax-officers once rule the land, then, dear descendants of Attila, you will no longer need to impose any constraint upon yourselves; then the 'liberated' will have already learned to estimate their freedom. You cannot go as far as Justinian's tax-collectors, beloved Huns and robbers." The proclamation was of that purport, only dressed in somewhat fairer words. We are marching forward. No sign of the Barbarians. Where are they hiding?

Where is this King of the Vandals dreaming? If he does not wake soon, he will find himself without a kingdom.

We were still marching on. One piece of good fortune follows another.

A day's march westward from our landing place at Caput Vada on the road to Carthage near the sea, is the city of Syllektum. The ancient walls, it is true, had been torn down since the reign of Genseric, but the inhabitants, to repel the attacks of the Moors, had again put nearly the whole city in a state of defence. Belisarius sent Borais, one of his bodyguard, with several shield-bearers, to venture a reconnoissance. It was entirely successful. After nightfall the men stole to the entrances (they could not be called gates, only openings of streets), but found them barricaded and guarded. They spent the night quietly in the ditch of the old fortifications, for there might still be Vandals in the city. In the morning peasants from the surrounding country came driving up in carts with racks: it was market day. Our men threatened the terrified rustics with death if they uttered a word, and forced the drivers to conceal them under the tilts.

The watchmen of Syllektum removed the barricades to admit the wagons.

Then our soldiers jumped down, took possession of the city without a sword-stroke. There was not a Vandal in it. We occupied the Curia and the Forum; we summoned the Catholic Bishop and the n.o.blest inhabitants of Syllektum,--they are remarkably stupid people,--and told them that they were now free; happy also, for they were the subjects of Justinian. At the same time, with swords drawn, our men asked for breakfast. The Senators of Syllektum gave Borais the keys of their city, but unfortunately the gates for them were missing; the Vandals or Moors had burned them long ago. The Bishop entertained them in the porch of the basilica. Borais said the wine was very good. At the end of the repast, the Bishop blessed Borais, and asked him to restore the true, pure faith quickly. The warrior, a Hun, is unfortunately a pagan; so he had little comprehension of what was expected of him. But he repeated to me several times that the wine was excellent. So we have already saved one city in Africa. In the evening we all marched through. Belisarius enjoined the most rigid discipline. Unfortunately, a large number of houses burst into flames.

Beyond Syllektum we again made a lucky capture. The chief official of the whole Vandal mail service, a Roman, had been sent out from Carthage by the King several days before with all his horses, numerous wagons, and many slaves, to carry the sovereign's commands in all directions through his empire. On his way to the east he had heard of our landing, and he sought us out with everything he still had in his possession.

All the letters, all the secret messages of the Vandals, are in the hands of Belisarius--a whole basket of them, which I must read.

It really seems as if an angel of the Lord had led us into the writing-room and the council hall of the Asdings. Verus, the Archdeacon of the Arians, dictated most of the letters. But we were thoroughly deceived in this priest. Theodora believed him to be her tool, yet he has become Gelimer's chancellor. Strange that these secrets were intrusted to a Roman for conveyance and protection, not to a Vandal.

Besides, must not Verus have known how near we were, when he sent the papers, unguarded, directly to us.

True, the most important thing for us to know,--namely, where the King and his army are at present,--does not appear in these letters, which were written a week ago. Yet we learn from them at last what induced him to remain so far from Carthage and the coast, on the edge of the desert and within it. He has made contracts with many Moorish tribes, and been promised thousands of foot-soldiers--almost equal in number to our whole army. These Moorish auxiliaries are gathering in Numidia, in the plain of Bulla. That is far, far west of Carthage, near the border of the wilderness. Could the Vandal intend to abandon his capital and all the tract of country for such a distance, without striking a single blow, and await us there, at Bulla?

Belisarius--what a trick of chance!--is now sending to Gelimer by the Vandal mail system Justinian's declaration of war, and despatching in every direction to the Vandal n.o.bles, army leaders, and officials an invitation to abandon Gelimer. The summons is well worded (I composed it myself): "I am not waging war with the Vandals, nor do I break the compact of perpetual peace concluded with Genseric. We desire only to overthrow your Tyrant, who has broken the law and imprisoned your rightful King. Therefore help us! Shake off the yoke of such shameless despotism, that you may enjoy liberty and the prosperity we are bringing you. We call upon G.o.d to witness our sincerity."

Postscript, added after the close of the war: "Strange, yet it is certainly n.o.ble. This appeal did not win a single Vandal to our side during the entire campaign. These Germans have become enfeebled. But there was not even _one_ traitor among them!"