The Scarlet Banner Part 32

Startled, she pressed her hand upon her beating heart--and grasped sand; a fine but thick layer had incrusted her garments, her hair, her face. Through her bewildered thoughts darted the remembrance of having heard how human beings, animals, whole caravans, had been covered by such sand-storms, how, heaped by the wind, the sand often rose like huge waves, burying all life beneath it. She fancied that on her right, on the south, a hill of sand was towering; it seemed moving swiftly onward, and threatened to bar her way. So she must run yet faster to escape it. Her path was still open. Just at that moment, from the south, a gust of wind suddenly blew with great force. s.n.a.t.c.hing the braided hat from her head, it whirled it swiftly northward. In an instant it was almost out of sight. To overtake it was impossible.

Besides, she must go toward the east. Forward!

The wind grew stronger and stronger. The sun, rising higher, darted scorching rays upon her unprotected head; her dark-brown hair fluttered wildly around. Incrusted with salt, it struck her eyes or lashed her cheeks and stung her keenly. She could scarcely keep her eyes open; the fine sand forced its way through their long lashes. On. The sand entered her shoes; the band across the instep of the left one broke.

She lifted her foot; the wind tore off the shoe and whirled it away. It was certainly no misfortune, yet she wept--wept over her helplessness.

She sank to her knees; the malicious sand rose slowly higher and higher. A shrill, harsh, disagreeable cry fell on her ear,--the first sound in the tremendous silence for many hours; a dark figure, flying from north to south, flitted for a moment along the horizon. It was an ostrich, fleeing in mortal terror before the simoom. With head and long white neck far outstretched, aiding the swift movement of its long legs by flapping its curved dark wings like sails, it glided on like an arrow. Already it was out of sight.

"That bird is hurrying with such might to save its life. Shall my strength fail when I am hastening to the man I love? 'For shame, little one!' he would say." Smiling through her tears, she ran forward. So an hour pa.s.sed--many hours.

Often she thought that she must have lost the right direction, or she would have reached the battlefield long ago. The wind had risen to a tempest. Her heart beat with suffocating strength. Giddiness seized her; she tottered; she must rest. Now, here, no Vandal could overtake her to keep her by force from her sacred goal.

Just at that moment something white appeared above the sand close beside her. It was the first break for hours in the monotonous yellow surface. The object was no stone. Seizing it, Eugenia dragged it from the sand. Oh, despair and horror! She shrieked aloud in desperation, in terror, in the sense of cheerless, hopeless helplessness. It was her own shoe, which she had lost hours before. She had been wandering in a circle. Or had the wind borne it far away from the place where she lost it? Yet, no! The shoe, which she now flung down, weeping, was swiftly covered with sand, instead of being carried away by the wind. After exhausting the last remnant of her strength, she was in the same spot.

To die--now--to give up all effort--to rest--to sleep--now sweet was the temptation to the wearied limbs.

But, no! To him! What were the words? "And it _constrained_ the faithful one and drew her to the grave of the dead hero." To him!

Eugenia raised herself with great difficulty, she was already so weak.

And when she had barely gained her feet, the storm blew her down once more. Again she rose, trying to see if some human being, some house, if not the path, was visible. Just then she perceived before her in the north a sand-hill, higher than any of the others. It was probably more than a hundred feet. If she could succeed in climbing it, she would be able from the top to get a wide view. With inexpressible difficulty, sinking knee-deep at nearly every step in the looser sand, until her foot reached the older, firmer soil, she pressed upward, often falling back several paces when she stumbled. While she did so the strangest, most alarming thing happened,--at every slip the whole sand-hill creaked, trembled, and began to slide down in every direction. At first Eugenia stopped in terror; she thought the whole mountain would sink with her. But she conquered her fear, and at last climbed upward on her knees, for she could no longer stand; she thrust her hands into the sand and dragged herself up. The wind--no, it was now a hurricane--a.s.sisted her; it blew from south to north. At last--the climb seemed to her longer than the whole previous way--at last she reached the top. Opening her eyes, which she had kept half closed, she saw--oh, bliss! she saw deliverance. Before her, at a long distance, it is true, yet plainly visible, glittered a steel-blue line. It was the sea! And at the side, eastward, she fancied she saw houses, trees.

Surely that was Decimum; and a little farther inland rose a dark hill-- the end of the desert. She imagined,--yet surely it was impossible to see so far,--she believed or dreamed that, on the summit of the hill, she beheld three slender black lines relieved against the clear horizon. Surely those were the three spears on the grave. "Beloved One!

My hero!" she cried, "I am coming."

With outstretched arms she tried to hurry down the sand-hill on the northeastern: side, but, at the first step, she sank in to the knee,--deeper still, to the waist. She could still see the blue sky above her. Once more, with her last strength, she flung both arms high above her head, thrusting her hands into the sand to the wrists to drag herself up; once more the large beautiful antelope eyes gazed beseechingly--ah, so despairingly--up to the silent sky; another wild, desperate pull--a hollow sound as of a heavy fall. The whole sand-mountain, shaken by her struggles and swept by the hurricane from the south, fell over her northward, burying her nearly a hundred feet deep, stifling her in a moment. Above her lofty grave the desert storm raved exultingly.

For decades the beautiful corpse lay undisturbed, unprofaned, until that ever-changing architect, the wind, gradually removed the sand-hill and, one stormy night, at last blew it away entirely.

Just at that time a pious hermit, one of the desert monks who begged his scanty fare in Decimum and carried it to his sand cave, pa.s.sed along. Often and often he had come that way; the hurricane had bared the skeleton only the day before. The old man stood before it, thoughtful. The little dazzlingly white bones were so dainty, so delicate, as if fashioned by an artist's hand; the garments, like the flesh, had long been completely consumed by the trickling moisture; but the lofty sand ridge had faithfully kept its beautiful secret, not a bone was missing. For a human generation the dry sand of the desert, though garments and flesh had gone to decay, had preserved uninjured the outlines of the figure as it had been pressed into the sand under the heavy weight. One could see that the buried girl had tried to protect eyes and mouth with her right hand; the left lay in a graceful att.i.tude across her breast; her face was turned toward the ground.

"Who were you, dainty child, that found a solitary death here?" said the holy man, deeply touched. "For there is no trace of a companion near. A child, or a girl just entering maidenhood? But, at any rate, a Christian--no Moor; here on her neck, fastened by a silver chain, is a gold cross. And beside it a strange ornament,--a bronze half-circle with characters inscribed on it, not Latin, Greek, nor Hebrew. No matter. The girl's bones shall not remain scattered in the desert. The Christian shall sleep in consecrated ground. The peasants must help me to bury her here or in the neighborhood."

He went to Decimum. The traces of the Vandal battle had long since vanished. The village children who had then fled were now grown men, the owners of the houses and fields. The peasant to whom the hermit related his touching discovery listened attentively. But when the latter spoke of the bronze half-circle with the singular characters, he interrupted him, exclaiming:

"Strange! In the hill-tomb, the great stone vault outside of our village,--I own the hill, and vines grow on the southern slope,--there lies, according to trustworthy tradition, a Vandal boy-prince who fell here, and beside him a mighty warrior, a terrible giant, who is said to have remained faithfully by his side. The priests say he was a monster, a G.o.d of thunder, one of the old pagan G.o.ds of the Barbarians, with whose fall fortune deserted them. Well, the giant has hanging on his arm a half-circle exactly like the one you describe. Perhaps the two belonged together? Who knows? We cannot dig a grave in the desert; even if we try, the wind will blow it away. Come, I'll harness the horses to my wagon; we will go out to the dead woman and lay her beside the giant; his grave has already been consecrated by the priests."

This was done. But when they had placed the delicate form beside the mighty one, and the monk had muttered a prayer, he asked: "Tell me, friend,--I saw with joyful surprise that you had left all the ornaments upon the dead; and that you should receive nothing for your trouble with the poor girl's skeleton is not exactly--"

"Peasant custom, do you mean? You are right, holy father. But you see.

King Gelimer, who once reigned here, enjoined upon my father after the battle to take faithful care of the graves; he was to keep them as if they were a sanctuary until Gelimer should return and carry the bodies to Carthage. King Gelimer never returned to Decimum. But my father, on his deathbed, committed the care of this tomb to me; and so shall I, before I die, to the curly-headed boy who helped us to carry the little skeleton. For King Gelimer was kind to every one,--to us Romans, too,--and had done my father many a favor in the days of the Vandals.

Already many say he was no man, but a demon,--a wicked one, according to some, a good one, most declare. But, man or demon, good he certainly was; for my father has often praised him."

So little Eugenia at last reached her hero's side.

CHAPTER IX

PROCOPIUS TO CETHEGUS:

I am writing this--really and truly, though it is not yet three months since we left Constantinople--in Carthage, at the capitol, in the royal palace of the Asdings, in the hall of Genseric the Terrible. I often doubt the fact myself--but it is so! On the day after the battle at Decimum the infantry, coming from the camp, joined us, and the whole army marched to Carthage, which we reached in the evening. We chose a place to encamp outside of the city, though no one opposed our entrance. Nay, the Carthaginians had opened all their gates and lighted torches and lanterns everywhere in the streets and squares. All night long the bonfires shone from the city into our camp, while the few Vandals who had not fled sought shelter in the Catholic churches.

But Belisarius most strictly prohibited entering the city during the night. He feared an ambush, a stratagem of war. He could not believe that Genseric's capital had actually fallen into his hands with so little trouble.

On the following day, borne by a favoring breeze, our ships rounded the promontory. As soon as the Carthaginians recognized our flag, they broke the iron chains of their outer harbor, Mandracium, and beckoned to our sailors to enter. But the commanders, mindful of Belisarius's warning, anch.o.r.ed in the harbor of Stagnum, five thousand paces from the city, waiting further orders. Yet that the worthy citizens of Carthage might make the acquaintance of their liberators on the very first day, a ship's captain, Kalonymos, with several sailors, entered Mandracium, against the orders of Belisarius and the Quaestor, and plundered all the merchants--Carthaginians as well as strangers--who had their homes and storehouses on the harbor. He took all their money, many of their goods, and even the beautiful candlesticks and lanterns which they had brought out in honor of our arrival.

We had hoped--Belisarius gave orders for a diligent search--to liberate the captive King Hilderic and his nephew. But this, it appears, was not accomplished. In the royal citadel, high up on the hill crowned by the capitol, is the gloomy dungeon where the usurper held the Asdings prisoners, as he barred all his foes here. The executioner supplied the place of a jailer to his predecessors. He also held captive many merchants of our empire, fearing (and my Hegelochus showed with what good reason; the General sent him to-day with rich gifts to Syracuse) that, if allowed to sail thither, they might bring us all sorts of valuable information. When the jailer, a Roman, heard of our victory at Decimum, and saw our galleys rounding the promontory, he released all these captives. He wanted to set the King and Euages free also, but their dungeon was empty. No one knows what has become of them.

At noon Belisarius ordered the ships' crews to land, all the troops to clean their weapons and armor, to present the best appearance, and now the whole army marched in full battle-array--for we still feared an ambush of the Vandals--through the "Grove of the Empress Theodora" (so I hear the grateful Carthaginians have rebaptized it); then through the southern Byzacenian gate, and finally through the lower city.

Belisarius and the princ.i.p.al leaders, with some picked troops, went up to the capitol, and our General formally took his seat upon Genseric's gold and purple throne. Belisarius ordered the noonday meal to be served in the dining-hall where Gelimer entertained the Vandal n.o.bles.

It is called "Delphica," because its princ.i.p.al ornament is a beautiful tripod. Here the General feasted the leaders of his army. A banquet had been prepared in it the day before for Gelimer, but we now ate the dishes made to celebrate his victory; spiced by this thought, their flavor was excellent. And Gelimer's servants brought in the platters, filled the drinking vessels with fragrant wine, waited upon us in every way. This is another instance of the G.o.ddess Tyche's pleasure in playing with the changing destinies of mortals. You, O Cethegus, I am well aware, have a different opinion of the final causes of events; you see the fixed action of a law in the deeds of human beings, as well as in storms and sunshine. This may be magnificent, heroic, but it is terrible. I have a narrow mind, and am precisely the opposite of a hero; I cannot endure it. I waver skeptically to and fro. Sometimes I see only the whimsical ruling of a blind chance, which delights in alternately lifting up and casting down; sometimes I think an inscrutable G.o.d directs everything to mysterious ends. I have renounced all philosophizing, and enjoy the motley current of events, not without scorn and derision for the follies of other people, but no less for those of Procopius.

And yet I do not wish to break off entirely all relations with the Christian's G.o.d. We do not know whether, after all, the Son of Man may not yet return in the clouds of heaven. In that case, I would far rather be with the sheep than with the goats.

The people, the liberated Romans, the Catholics, in their delight over their rescue, see signs and wonders everywhere. They regard our Huns as angels of the Lord. They will yet learn to know these angels, especially if they have pretty wives or daughters, or even only full money-chests. The comical part of it is that (except Belisarius's body-guard), our soldiers, with all due respect to the Emperor, are princ.i.p.ally a miserable lot of rascals from all the provinces of the empire, and all the Barbarian peoples in the neighborhood; they are always as ready to steal, pillage, and murder as they are to fight. Yet we ourselves, in consequence of the amazing good fortune which has accompanied us throughout this whole enterprise, are beginning to consider ourselves the chosen favorites of the Lord, His sacred instrument--thieves and cut-throats though we are! So the entire army, pagans as well as Christians, believe that that spring gushed out for us in the desert only by a miracle of G.o.d. So both the army and the Carthaginians believe in a lantern miracle in the following singular incident.

The Carthaginians' princ.i.p.al saint is Saint Cyprian, who has more than a dozen basilicas and chapels, in which all his festivals, "the great Cypriani," are magnificently celebrated. But the Vandals took nearly all the churches from the Catholics, and dedicated them to the Arian worship. This was the case with the great basilica of Saint Cyprian down by the harbor, from which they drove the Catholic priests. The loss of this cathedral caused them special sorrow, and they said that Saint Cyprian had repeatedly appeared to devout souls in a dream, comforted them, and announced that he would some day avenge the wrong committed by the Vandals. This seems to me rather _un_saintly in the great saint; we poor sinners on earth are daily exhorted to forgive our enemies, and the wrathful saint ought to let his vengeful feelings cool, and thus remain the holy Cyprian. The pious Catholics, thus pleasantly strengthened and justified in their thirst for revenge by their patron saint, had long waited, in mingled curiosity and anxiety, for the blow Saint Cyprian was to deal the heretics. On this day it became evident. The festival of the great Cyprian was just at hand; it fell on the day following the battle of Decimum. On the evening before, the Arian priests themselves had decorated the entire church magnificently, and especially arranged thousands of little lamps, in order to have a brilliant illumination at night to celebrate the victory; for they did not doubt the success of their own army. By the written order of the Archdeacon Verus,--he had accompanied the King to the field,--all the church vessels and church treasures of every description were brought out of the hidden thesauri and placed upon the seven altars of the basilica. Never would these unsuspected riches have been found in the secret vaults of the church, had not Verus given these directions and sent the keys.

But we, not the Vandals, won the battle of Decimum. At this news the Arian priests fled headlong from the city. The Catholics poured into the basilica, discovered the secret treasures of the heretics, and lighted their lamps to celebrate the victory of the champions of the true faith. "This is the vengeance of Saint Cyprian!" "This is the miracle of the lamps!" Through the city they went, roaring these words and cuffing and pounding every doubter until he believed and shouted with them: "Yes, this is Saint Cyprian's vengeance and the miracle of the lamps!"

Now I have not the least objection to an occasional miracle. On the contrary, I am glad when something often happens that the all-explaining philosophers who have so long tormented me cannot understand. But then it must be a genuine, thorough-going miracle. If a miracle cannot present itself as something entirely beyond the limits of reason, it would better not attempt to be a miracle at all; it isn't worth while. And this miracle appears to me far too natural. Belisarius reproved my incredulous derision. But I replied that Saint Cyprian seems to me the patron saint of the lamplighters; I don't belong to that society.

Fara, the Herulian, captured the fairest booty at Decimum. True, he received from the n.o.ble a sharp lance-thrust in the arm through his brazen shield. But the shield had done its duty; the point did not penetrate too deeply into the flesh. And when he entered the nearest villa,--he was just breaking in,--the door opened, and a wonderfully beautiful woman, with superb jewels and scarlet flowers in her black hair, came to meet him. Except the flowers and gems, she was not burdened with too much clothing.

The vision held out a wreath of laurel and pomegranate blossoms.

"Whom did you expect?" asked the Herulian, in amazement.

"The victor," replied the beautiful woman.

A somewhat oracular reply! This Sphinx--she looks, I have already told you, exactly like one--would undoubtedly have given her wreath and herself just as willingly to the victorious Vandals. After all, what does the Carthaginian care for either Vandals or Byzantines? She is the prize of the stronger, the conqueror--perhaps to his destruction. But I think the Sphinx has now found her [OE]dipus. If one of this strange pair of lovers must perish, it will hardly be my friend Fara. He took me to her; he has some regard for me, because I can read and write. He had evidently praised me. In vain. She scanned me from head to foot, and from foot to head, it did not consume much time; I am not very tall,--then, with a contemptuous curl of her full red lips, she moved far away from me. I will not a.s.sert that I am handsome, while Fara, next to Belisarius, is certainly the stateliest of all our six and thirty thousand men. But I was indignant that my mortal part at once so repelled her that she did not even desire to know the immortal side. I am angered against her, I wish her no evil; but it would neither greatly surprise, nor deeply grieve me, if she should come to a bad end.

CHAPTER X

Belisarius is pushing the work on the walls day and night. Besides the whole army and the crews of the ships, he has employed the citizens.

They grumble, saying that we came to liberate them, and now compel them to harder labor than Gelimer ever imposed. The vast extent of the city wall shows many gaps and holes; we think that may be the reason the King did not retreat into his capital after the lost battle. Verus, who, even in secular matters, holds a high place in the esteem of the "Tyrant" (this, according to Justinian's command, is the name we must give the champion of his people's liberty), is said, according to the statements of the prisoners, to have advised the King from the first to shut himself up in Carthage and let us besiege him there. If that is true, the priest knows more about lamps than he does of war, but that is natural. The very first night, our General says, we could have slipped in through some gap, especially as many thousand Carthaginians were ready to show us such holes. And we should have captured the whole Vandal grandeur at one blow, as if in a mouse-trap; while now we must seek the enemy in the desert. The King instantly rejected the counsel.

The G.o.ddess Tyche is the one woman in whom I often really feel tempted to believe. And also in Ate,--Discord. To you, Ate and Tyche, mighty sisters, not to Saint Cyprian, we must light lanterns to show our grat.i.tude. The G.o.ddess of Fortune is not weary of playing ball with the destinies of the Vandals, but she could not do it, if Ate had not placed this ball in her hands.

Yesterday a little sail-boat ran into the harbor from the north. It bore the scarlet Vandal flag. Captured by our guard-ships, which were lurking unseen behind the high wall of the harbor, the Barbarians on board were frightened nearly to death; they had had no idea of the capture of their capital. They had come directly from Sardinia! To send the flower of their fleet and army there, while we were already lying off Sicily, was surely prompted by Ate. On the captain was found a letter with the following contents:

"Hail, and victory to you, O King of the Vandals! Where now are your gloomy forebodings? I announce victory. We landed at Caralis, the capital of Sardinia. We took harbor, city, and capitol. G.o.da, the traitor, fell by my spear; his men are dispersed or prisoners; the whole island is again yours. Celebrate a feast of victory. It is the omen of a greater day, when you will crush the insolent foes who, as we have just heard here, are really sailing against our coasts. Not one must return from our Africa! This writes Zazo, your faithful General and brother."