Part 38 (1/2)
Our men dashed after the fugitives. All the rest of the day and the whole moonlight night they slaughtered the Vandals without resistance; they seized women and children by thousands to use them as slaves.
Never yet have I beheld so much beauty. Nor have I ever seen such heaps of gold and silver money as in the tents of the King and the Vandal n.o.bles. It is incredible.
Belisarius was tortured after his victory by the most terrible anxiety.
For in this camp, filled to overflowing with the most beautiful women, treasures of every description, wine and provisions, the whole army forgot every trace of discipline. Fairly intoxicated with their undreamed of good fortune, they lived solely for the pleasure of the moment; every barrier gave way, every curb broke; they could not satisfy themselves. The demon of Africa, pleasure, seized upon them.
They roved, singly and in couples, through the camp and its vicinity, following the track of the fugitives wherever the search for booty or revelry lured them. There was no thought of the enemy, no fear of the General. Those who were still sober, laden with treasure and driving their captives before them, tried to escape to Carthage. Belisarius says that if the Vandals had attacked us again an hour after we took possession of their camp, not a man of us all would have escaped. The victorious army, even his bodyguard, had entirely thrown off his control.
At the gray dawn of morning with the blast of the trumpets he summoned all the warriors; that is, all who were sober. His bodyguard now came hastily in deep shame. Instead of thanks and praise, he gave leaders and men a lecture such as I never before heard from his lips. We have become mere hired soldiers, adventurers, ruffians, fierce and brave, like greedy beasts of prey; well suited for b.l.o.o.d.y pursuit, like hunting leopards, but not fit to leave the captured game to the hunter or bring it in and fasten it in a cage; we must first have our share of the blood and the food. It is by no means beautiful; yet it is far more enjoyable than philosophy and theology, rhetoric, grammar, and dialectics. But the Vandal War is over, I think. To-morrow we shall doubtless capture the fugitive King.
I always say so. The most weighty decisions hinge upon the most trivial incidents. Or, as I express it when I am in a very poetical mood, the G.o.ddess Tyche likes to sport with the destinies of men and nations, as boys toss coins in the air and determine gain and loss by ”heads”
or ”tails.”
You, O Cethegus, have condemned my philosophy of the world's history as old wives' croaking. But judge for yourself. A bird's cry, a blind delight in hunting, a shot sent to the wrong mark, and the result is this: the Vandal King escapes when already within the grasp of our fingers; the campaign, which seemed ended, continues, and your friend must spend weeks in an extremely tiresome besieging camp before an extremely unnecessary Moorish mountain village.
Belisarius had committed the pursuit of the fugitive King to his countryman, the Thracian Althias. ”I choose you,” he said, ”because I trust you above all others where swift, tireless action is needed. If you overtake the Vandal before he finds refuge, the war will be over tomorrow; if you permit him to escape, you will give us long-continued severe toil. Choose your own men, but do not take time to breathe by night or day until you seize the tyrant, dead or alive.”
Althias blushed like a flattered girl. He took besides his Thracians several of the bodyguard and about a hundred Herulians under Fara. He asked me also to accompany him, less, probably, for the sake of my sword than my counsel. I willingly consented.
And now a flying chase, such as I had never imagined possible, began in the rear of the Vandals. Five days and five nights, almost without a pause, we pursued the fugitives; their hoofmarks and footprints in the sand of the desert were unmistakable. We gained on them more and more, so that on the fifth night we were sure of overtaking and stopping them the next day before they reached the protection of the mountain--Pappua, it is called.
But the capricious G.o.ddess did not wish to have Gelimer fall into the hands of Althias. Uliari, one of the Alemanni bodyguards of Belisarius, is a brave, strong man, but reckless, fond of drink like all Germans, and, like nearly all his countrymen, a pa.s.sionate lover of the chase.
He had been repeatedly punished because, while on the march, he pursued every animal that appeared. On the morning of the sixth day, just at sunrise, as we were remounting our horses after a short rest, Uliari saw a big vulture perched on a p.r.i.c.kly bush about the height of a man, which rose alone from the desert plain. To seize his bow, s.n.a.t.c.h an arrow from the quiver, aim, and shoot was the work of a single instant.
The cord tw.a.n.ged, the bird flew away, a cry rose. Althias, who had again dashed forward in advance of us all, fell from his horse, wounded in the back of the head under his helmet. Uliari, usually an unerring marksman, had not yet slept off his potations of the night before.
Horrified by his deed, he set spurs to his horse and fled to the nearest village to seek sanctuary in its chapel.
But we were all trying to help the dying Althias, though he commanded us by signs to leave him to his fate and continue the pursuit. We could not bring ourselves to do it. Nay, when Fara and I, after our friend had died in our arms, wished to go on; his Thracians demanded with threats that the body should first be buried, otherwise the soul would be condemned to wail around the place until the Day of Judgment. So we dug a grave and interred the dead hero with every honor. These few hours decided Gelimer's escape; we could not make up the lost time. The fugitives reached their goal, the Pappua Mountains on the frontier of Numidia, whose steep, inaccessible peaks everywhere bristle with jagged rocks. The Moors who dwell here are bound to Gelimer by ties of loyalty and grat.i.tude. An ancient city, Medenus, now a mere hamlet of a few huts on the northern crest of the mountain, received him and his train.
To storm this narrow antelope path is impossible; a single man can bar the ascent with his s.h.i.+eld. The Moors have scornfully rejected an offer of a large reward to deliver up the fugitives. So the watchword is ”patience.” We must pitch our tents at the foot of the mountain, bar all the outlets, and starve the people into a surrender.
That may occupy a great deal of time. And it is winter; the mountain peaks are often covered in the morning with a light snow, which, it is true, the sun soon melts when he breaks through the clouds. But he does not always break through. On the other hand, mist and rain continually penetrate the camel-skin coverings of our tents.
CHAPTER XVII
We are still encamped before the entrance of the mountain ravine of Pappua. We cannot get in; they cannot get out. I have seen a cat watch a mouse-hole a long time in the same way,--very tiresome for the cat.
But if the hole has no other outlet, the little mouse finally either starves or runs into the cat's claws.
To-day news and reinforcements came from Carthage. Belisarius, who had been informed of the state of affairs, gave the chief command to Fara in the place of Althias. Fara and his Herulians won Belisarius's most glorious victory, in the Persian battle at Dara, when the Roman ranks were beginning to waver and only the German boldness which is nearly allied to madness could save the day. Fara left more than half his Herulians dead on the field. The General himself is marching on Hippo.
Fresh news--from Hippo.
Belisarius took the city without resistance. The Vandals, among them numerous n.o.bles, fled to the Catholic churches, and left these asylums only on the a.s.surance that their lives would be spared. And again the wind blew, literally, rich gains into our hands. The Tyrant, distrusting the fidelity of the citizens and the broken walls, had prudently removed the royal treasure of the Vandals from the citadel of Carthage, and placed it on a s.h.i.+p. He ordered Bonifacius, his private secretary, in case the victory of the Vandals seemed uncertain, to sail to Hispania to Theudis, the King of the Visigoths, with whom, if the kingdom fell, Gelimer intended to seek refuge, perhaps with the expectation of recovering the treasure by the aid of the Visigoths.
A violent storm drove the s.h.i.+p back into the harbor of Hippo, just after Belisarius had occupied it. The treasure of the Vandals, gathered by Genseric from the coasts and islands of three seas, will go into the hands of the imperial pair at Constantinople. Theodora, your piety is profitable!
Yet no; the royal treasure of the Vandals will not reach Constantinople absolutely intact. And this is due to a singular circ.u.mstance, which is probably worth relating. Perhaps, too, I may mention the thoughts which the incident aroused in my mind. Of all the nations of whom I have any knowledge, the Germans are the most foolish: these fair-haired giants blindly follow their impulses and run to open ruin. True, these impulses and delusions are in a measure honorable--for Barbarians. But the excess, the fury with which they obey their impulses, must ruin them, aided by their so-called virtues. ”Heroism,” as they term it, they carry to the sheerest absurdity, even to contempt of death, keeping their promises from mere obstinacy; for instance, when, in the blind excitement of gambling, they stake their own liberty on the last throw. They call this fidelity. Sometimes they manifest the most diabolical craftiness, yet they often carry truthfulness to actual self-destruction, when a neat little lie, a slight, clever manipulation of the bald truth, or even a calm silence would surely save them. All this is by no means rooted in a sense of duty, but in their tameless pride, in arrogance, in defiance; and they call it honor. The key of all their actions, their final unspoken motive is this: ”Let none think, far less be able to say, that a German does or fails to do anything because he fears any man, or any number of men; he would rather rush to certain death.” Therefore, no matter what any one of these stubborn fools may have set his heart upon, to go to destruction for it is ”heroic,” ”honorable.” True, they often set their hearts on their people, liberty, fame; but just as frequently on swilling,--it cannot be called drinking,--on brawling, on dice-throwing. And they pursue the heroism of swilling and gambling just as blindly as that of battle. Anything rather than to yield! If ”honor” (that is, obstinacy) is once fixed upon anything,--wise or foolish,--then pursue it even to destruction. Though pleasure in the game has long been exhausted, out-drink or out-wrestle the other man; do anything but own that strength and spirit are consumed; rather die thrice over. I can speak thus, because I know these Germans. Many thousands of them--from nearly every one of their numerous tribes--have I seen in war and peace, as soldiers, prisoners, envoys, hostages, mercenaries, colonists, in the service of the Emperor, as leaders of the army, and as magistrates. I have long wondered how any Germans are left; for, in truth, their virtues vie with their vices in hastening their destruction.