Part 6 (1/2)

It was a long time, however, before they came in sight of any place that could be thought of as a home. Most of the country they saw was not inhabited except by a stray hut dweller here and there, getting a miserable living as he could,-simply because the land was not fit to live in. They crossed a rolling plain, where the marshes were full of unpleasant looking water, and the air at night was full of singing, stinging insects that drove the cattle frantic. It was not quite so bad near the fires. The insects seemed to dislike the smoke, or perhaps their wings could not carry them through the strong currents of air that the flames made around them. As soon as possible they moved up toward the higher land, and here at last they came in sight of the river of the yellow waters, the great river that ran down to the sea. Beyond that they could not go without meeting strange people and the wors.h.i.+p of strange and cruel G.o.ds.

Every night the beehive covers were taken off the baskets, and the fires were kindled, and in a round hut that was like a big basket lid, a bed of coals was made ready for the next day's journey. It was the duty of the ten little girls, the guardians of the fire, to take care of this, and they spent a great deal of time around the miniature temple of the fire G.o.d. One or another was always there.

One night when they were carefully covering the coals with fine ashes, Marcia and Tullia and Flavia looked up and saw two strange men standing near and looking down at them. They were startled but not at all frightened. The strangers would not be there if they were not friends; the men would not allow it. The two youths did not say anything; they watched for a few minutes, smiling as if they liked what they saw; then they turned away. They looked very much alike, and walked alike, and their voices were alike; but one was a little taller and darker than the other and always seemed to take the lead. They were not like the rude, ignorant, pagan people who sometimes came to stare and beg and perhaps to pilfer when they found some one's back turned. They looked like the people of Mars. But what could they be doing away out here?

The next day there was great news to tell. In the first place, the fathers of the colony had decided to stay here a few days, and let the cattle feed, and the women wash their clothing and rest for a little before going on. The water was good, and they had learned that it was a safe part of the country, though it was too rocky and barren to be a good place to live. But that was the smallest part of the news. The two youths were their own kinsmen, born of their own people, sons of a son of the old chief who had died in a far land many years ago.

This was wonder enough, to be sure, but there was more to come. The wicked uncle of the two brothers had killed their mother and father, and told one of his servants to take the twin boys down to the river and drown them.

They were babies then. The servant did not like to do this. He may have been afraid he would get into trouble if he did it and any of their people found it out later. He may have hated to do the cruel work, for they were strong and handsome little fellows. At any rate he put them in a basket and gave the basket to a slave, telling him to throw it into the river.

The river was in flood just then, and its banks were overflowed for miles on each side. There was water everywhere, and the ground was soft so that it was hardly possible to get down to the real river, where the water was deep and the current strong. If the children had been thrown into that, they would have drowned at once. But the slave did not take time to go all the way around the plain to the bank itself. He put the basket down in the first deep pool he found and left it to be carried down to the river, for the flood was beginning to ebb. Instead of that the basket lodged on a knoll and stayed there, not very far from the banks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The little creatures inside the basket were not cubs or lambs]

In flood time, as Ursula had often heard her father the hunter say, animals are sometimes so frightened that the fierce and the timid take refuge together on some island or rocky ridge, without harming each other at all. This flood had come up suddenly and drowned some of them in their dens. A wolf that had lost her cubs in that way was picking her steps across the drenched plain, when she heard a noise-two noises-from a willow basket under a wild fig tree. She went quietly over there and looked in.

The little creatures inside the basket were not cubs or lambs, but they were hungry; any one would know that from the way they squalled. Wolf talk and man talk are quite different, but baby talk and cub talk are understood by all mothers. The wolf tipped the basket over with her paw, and the little things tumbled out in the cold and wet and cried louder than ever. Perhaps they thought she was a big dog. At any rate they crawled toward her, and plunged their strong little chubby hands into her fur, and crowed. When she lay down they snuggled close to her warm furry side, and she licked them all over.

A shepherd named Faustulus came that way when the flood had gone down, looking after a lost sheep. He found wolf tracks, and grasping his spear firmly, traced them to this knoll. He found the gray wolf curled up there with the two babies, asleep and warm and rosy, in the circle of her big, strong body.

The shepherd did not know just what to do. He thought that if he tried to take the children away from her she would fight, and they might be hurt, and he probably would be hurt himself. He decided to go and get help.

Later in the day he came back with some of his friends, and set a rude box-trap for the wolf, baited with fresh meat from a drowned calf. When they had trapped her they took her home and the children also, in their basket. They kept the wolf for some time, and she seemed quite tame; but at last she ran away and never came back. They fed the babies on warm milk, and the shepherd and his wife both fell in love with them from the very first. They heard a rumor after awhile, whispered about secretly as such things are, that the chief Amulius had had his two little nephews drowned. The shepherd guessed then who the foundlings might be, but he kept quiet about it. The city was not too far away, and some one might be sent even yet to kill the twins. In the language of the country the word for river was Rumon, and the word for an oar was Rhem. He named the boys Romulus and Remus, and those were all the names they had. They grew up to be fine active fellows, afraid of nothing and good at all manly sports. As they grew up, they gathered other young men outside the villages into a sort of clan, to protect the countryside against robbers, and to fight and hunt and earn a living in one way and another. They had a rocky stronghold on the mountain, where they lived, and whenever strangers came that way, some one was sent to see who and what they were. That was how the two brothers came to the camp of the colonists.

When this remarkable story was told, there was intense interest in the strange kinsmen. The girls were a little afraid of them. Their eyes were so bright and keen, their teeth so white, and their faces so bronzed and stern that they looked rather savage, especially in their wolf-skin mantles and tunics. But the boys all wished that they could join the patrol in the mountains.

For two days the colonists remained where they were, talking with the two brothers about the country. At last it was settled that the very hills where the two foundlings had grown up would be the best place for the colony to live!

Near the yellow river, there was a group of seven irregular hills which had never been inhabited, because the place was far from any town, and the neighboring chiefs had no especial use for it. There was good water on these hills and pasture enough for all the herds, if the woods were cleared off. The hills were so shaped that they could be defended, and from those heights they could see for miles and miles across the plain.

The wild face of Romulus changed and kindled as he talked, and Marcus Colonus saw that here in this youth, his kinsman, in spite of his adventurous and untrained life and his ignorance of the old and time-honored ways, he had found a true son of the Vitali, who loved his land and his people.

The colonists crossed the plain to the seven hills, with the brothers guiding them, and on the largest, which stood perhaps a hundred and fifty feet above the river, they made their camp and set up the beehive temple for the last time. Here, they hoped, the sacred fire would burn year after year, and their people find a home.

IX

THE SQUARE HILL

The colony had chosen for their home one of the largest of the seven hills, squarish in form and more or less covered with woodland. They began at once to fence it around, to keep their beasts from wandering out and thieves and wild beasts from getting in, for all this country was very lonely. They had done this sort of thing so often since they left their old home that they did it quickly and rather easily. It was the habit of their people to save time and strength wherever they could, without being any less thorough. To do a thing right, in the beginning, saved a great deal of loss and trouble in the end.

While some cut down trees that grew on the land where they intended to make their permanent settlement, others trimmed off the branches as fast as the trees were down, and cut the logs to about the same length, and pointed the ends. The boys gathered up the branches and cut firewood from them. The brush that was not needed for the fires was made into loose f.a.gots and piled up on the logs, as they were laid along the line where the wall was to be. This made a kind of brush fence, not of much use against a determined enemy but better than none at all. Even this would keep an animal from bouncing into the camp without being heard, and in fact most wild beasts are rather suspicious of anything that looks like a trap.

When they had logs enough to begin fencing, all placed ready for use, they dug holes along the line they had marked out with a furrow, and planted the logs side by side as closely as they could, like large stakes. In any newly settled place, where trees are plenty, this is the most easily built fortification settlers can have, and the strongest. A stone or earth wall takes much longer to build. It is still called a palisade, a wall of stakes,-just as it was by men who built so, thousands of years ago and called a sharpened stake a ”_palum_.” A fence built of boards set up in this way is called a paling fence, and the boards are called palings. The word fence itself is only a short word for ”defence,”-a defence made of pointed stakes planted in the ground.

The earth that was dug up was always thrown inside and formed the basis of a low earthwork that made the palisade firmer. It was made as high as possible from the outer side by being built on the edge of the hilltop so that the ground sloped away sharply from it. The pointed tops of the logs were a foot or two too high for a man to grasp at them and climb up, but from the inside the defenders could mount the earthwork and look through high loopholes.

There was a gateway at the top of a slope that was not so deep as the others, placed there so that if the colonists were outside and had to run for shelter, they could get in quickly. Almost anywhere else, a person who tried to get in and was not wanted would have to climb the hill under fire from the slingers and bowmen above. He must then get over the perfectly straight log wall, which afforded no foothold, because all the nubs of the branches had been neatly pared off, and force his way over the sawlike top in the face of men with long spears. No matter what sort of neighbors the colonists might have, they would think twice before they tried that.