Volume Iii Part 55 (2/2)
At the sound of the horn a troop of guards had hurried up. They bent their bows. Cethegus silently turned his back on them and returned to his tent by the way that he had come.
Perhaps it was only his suddenly-aroused mistrust which made him imagine that all the Byzantines and Longobardians whom he pa.s.sed regarded him with half-jeering, half-compa.s.sionate looks. When he reached his tent he asked the Isaurian sentry:
”Is Syphax back?”
”Yes, sir, long since. He is impatiently waiting for you in the tent.
He is wounded.”
Cethegus quickly pushed aside the curtains and entered. Syphax, deadly pale beneath his bronzed skin, rushed to meet him, embraced his knees, and whispered in pa.s.sionate and desperate excitement:
”O my master! my lion! You are ensnared--lost--nothing can save you!”
”Compose yourself, slave!” said Cethegus. ”You bleed?”
”It is nothing! They would not permit me to return to your camp--they began to struggle with me as if in joke, but their dagger-stabs were bitter earnest.”
”Who? Whose dagger-stabs?”
”The Longobardians, master, who have placed double guards at all the entrances of your camp.”
”Na.r.s.es shall give me a reason for this,” said Cethegus angrily.
”The reason--that is, the pretext--he sent Kabades to inform you of it--is a menaced sally by the Goths. But oh! my lion, my eagle, my palm-tree, my wellspring--you are lost!”
And again the Numidian threw himself at his master's feet, covering them with tears and kisses.
”Tell me coherently,” said Cethegus, ”what you have heard.”
And he leaned against the central support of his tent, crossing his arms behind his back, and raising his head. He did not seem to regard the troubled face of Syphax, but to gaze at vacancy.
”O sir--I shall not be able to tell it very clearly--but I succeeded in reaching my hiding-place among the sea-weed. It was scarcely necessary to dive--the weeds hid me sufficiently. The bathing-house is made of thin wood and has been newly covered with linen since the last storm.
Na.r.s.es came in his little boat with Alboin, Basiliskos, and three other men, disguised as Longobardians--but I recognised Scaevola, Albinus----”
”They are not dangerous,” interrupted Cethegus.
”And--Anicius!”
”Are you not mistaken?” asked Cethegus sharply.
”Sir, I knew his eyes and his voice! From their conversation--I did not understand every word--but the sense was clear----”
”Would that you could repeat their very words!”
”They spoke Greek, sir, and I do not understand it as well as your language--and the waves made a noise, and the wind was unfavourable.”
”Well, what did they say?”
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