CHAPTER XXVI

_In the Lions’ Lair_

[Sidenote: A Beggar’s Signals]

The violence of the beggar’s anguish, and the strong probabilities of his story, engrossed me so much that I at first regretted the extraordinary flight which put it out of my power to offer him any assistance. I returned with a feeling of disappointment to the spot where I had left my horse, and was riding toward the higher country, to avoid the enemy’s straggling parties, when I heard a loud outcry. On a crag so distant that I thought human speed could scarcely have reached it in the time, I saw this strange being making all kinds of signals, sometimes pointing to me, then to some object below him, and uttering a cry which might easily be mistaken for the howl of a wild beast.

[Sidenote: A Secluded Spot]

I reined up; it was impossible for me to ascertain whether he were warning me of danger or apprising others of my approach. Great stakes make man suspicious, and the prince of Naphtali, speeding to the capture of the principal armory of the legions, might be an object well worth a little treachery. I rapidly forgot the beggar’s sorrows in the consideration of his habits; decided that his harangue was a piece of professional dexterity, probably played off every week of his life, and that if I would not be in Roman hands before night, I must ride in the precisely opposite direction to that which his signals so laboriously recommended. Nothing grows with more vigor than the doubt of human honesty. I satisfied myself in a few moments that I was a dupe, and dashed through thicket, over rock, forded torrent, and from the top of an acclivity, at which even my high-mettled steed had looked with repugnance, saw with the triumph of him who deceives the deceiver, the increased violence of the impostor’s attitudes. He leaped from crag to crag with the activity of a goat, and when he could do nothing else, gave the last evidence of Oriental vexation by tearing his robes. I waved my hand to him in contemptuous farewell, and dismounting, for the side of the hill was almost precipitous, led my panting Arab through beds of wild myrtle, and every lovely and sweet-smelling bloom, to the edge of a valley that seemed made to shut out every disturbance of man.

A circle of low hills, covered to the crown with foliage, surrounded a deep space of velvet turf, kept green as the emerald by the moisture of a pellucid lake in its center, tinged with every color of heaven. The beauty of this sylvan spot was enhanced by the luxuriant profusion of almond, orange, and other trees that in every stage of production, from the bud to the fruit, covered the little knolls below and formed a broad belt round the lake.

Parched as I was by the intolerable heat, this secluded haunt of the very spirit of freshness looked doubly lovely. My eyes, half-blinded by the glare of the sands, and even my mind, exhausted by the perplexities of the day, found delicious relaxation in the verdure and dewy breath of the silent valley. My barb, with the quick sense of animals accustomed to the travel of the wilderness, showed her delight by playful boundings, the prouder arching of her neck, and the brighter glancing of her eye.

“Here,” thought I, as I led her slowly toward the steep descent, “would be the very spot for the innocence that had not tried the world, or the philosophy that had tried it and found all vanity. Who could dream that within the borders of this distracted land, in the very hearing, almost within the very sight, of the last miseries that man can inflict on man, there was a retreat which the foot of man perhaps never yet defiled, and in which the calamities that afflict society might be as little felt as if it were among the stars!”

A violent plunge of the barb put an end to my speculation. She exhibited the wildest signs of terror, snorted and strove to break from me; then fixing her glance keenly on the thickets below, shook in every limb. Yet the scene was tranquillity itself; the chameleon lay basking in the sun, and the only sound was that of the wild doves, murmuring under the broad leaves of the palm-trees. But my mare still resisted every effort to lead her downward; her ears were fluttering convulsively; her eyes were starting from their sockets. I grew peevish at the animal’s unusual obstinacy, and was about to let her suffer thirst for the day, when I was startled by a tremendous roar.

A lion stood on the summit which I had but just quitted. He was not a dozen yards above my head, and his first spring must have carried me to the bottom of the precipice. The barb burst away at once. I drew the only weapon I had—a dagger—and hopeless as escape was, grasping the tangled weeds to sustain my footing, awaited the plunge. But the lordly savage probably disdained so ignoble a prey, and remained on the summit, lashing his sides with his tail and tearing up the ground. He at length stopped suddenly, listened, as to some approaching foot, and then with a hideous yell, sprang over me, and was in the thicket below at a single bound.

[Sidenote: The Forest Kings]

The whole jungle was instantly alive; the shade which I had fixed on for the seat of unearthly tranquillity had been an old haunt of lions, and the mighty herd were now roused from their noonday slumbers. Nothing could be grander or more terrible than this disturbed majesty of the forest kings. In every variety of savage passion, from terror to fury, they plunged, tore, and yelled; dashed through the lake, burst through the thicket, rushed up the hills, or stood baying and roaring in defiance, as if against a coming invader; their numbers were immense, for the rareness of shade and water had gathered them from every quarter of the desert.

[Sidenote: A Savage Conflict]

While I stood clinging to my perilous hold, and fearful of attracting their gaze by the slightest movement, the source of the commotion appeared, in the shape of a Roman soldier issuing, spear in hand, through a ravine at the farther side of the valley. He was palpably unconscious of the formidable place into which he was entering, and the gallant clamor of voices through the hills showed that he was followed by others as bold and as unconscious of their danger as himself. But his career was soon closed; his horse’s feet had scarcely touched the turf, when a lion was fixed with fang and claw on the creature’s loins. The rider uttered a cry of horror, and for an instant sat helplessly gazing at the open jaws behind him. I saw the lion gathering up his flanks for a second bound, but the soldier, a figure of gigantic strength, grasping the nostrils of the monster with one hand, and with the other shortening his spear, drove the steel at one resistless thrust into the lion’s forehead. Horse, lion, and rider fell, and continued struggling together.

In the next moment a mass of cavalry came thundering down the ravine. They had broken off from their march, through the accident of rousing a straggling lion, and followed him in the giddy ardor of the chase. But the sight now before them was enough to appal the boldest intrepidity. The valley was filled with the vast herd; retreat was impossible, for the troopers came still pouring in by the only pass, and from the sudden descent of the glen, horse and man were rolled head foremost among the lions; neither man nor monster could retreat.

The conflict was horrible; the heavy spears of the legionaries plunged through bone and brain; the lions, made more furious by wounds, sprang upon the powerful horses and tore them to the ground, or flew at the troopers’ throats, and crushed and dragged away cuirass and buckler. The valley was a struggling heap of human and savage battle; man, lion, and charger writhing and rolling in agonies until their forms were undistinguishable. The groans and cries of the legionaries, the screams of the mangled horses, and the roars and howlings of the lions, bleeding with sword and spear, tearing the dead, darting up the sides of the hills in terror, and rushing down again with the fresh thirst of gore, baffled all conception of fury and horror. But man was the conqueror at last; the savages, scared by the spear, and thinned in their numbers, made a rush in one body toward the ravine, overthrew everything in their way, and burst from the valley, awaking the desert for many a league with their roar.

The troopers, bitterly repenting their rash exploit, gathered up the remnants of their dead on litters of boughs, and leaving many a gallant steed to feast the vultures, slowly retired from the place of carnage.

The spot to which I clung made ascent or descent equally difficult, and during their extraordinary contest I continued embedded in the foliage, and glad to escape the eye of man and brute alike. But the troop were now gone; beneath me lay nothing but a scene of blood, and I began to wind my way to the summit. A menace from below stopped me. A solitary horseman had galloped back to give a last look to this valley of death; he saw me climbing the hill, saw that I was not a Roman, and in the irritation of the hour, made no scruple of sacrificing a native to the manes of his comrades. The spear followed his words and plowed the ground at my side. His outcry brought back a dozen of his squadron; I found myself about to be assailed by a general discharge. Escape on foot was impossible, and I had no resource but to be speared, or to descend and give myself up to the soldiery.

[Sidenote: Salathiel Captured]

It was to warn me of this hazard that the signals of my strange companion were made. He saw the advance of the Roman column along the plain. My suspicions of his honesty drove me directly into their road, and the chance of turning down the valley scarcely retarded the capture. On my first emerging from the hills, I must have been taken. However, my captors were in unusual ill-temper. As an Arab, too poor to be worth plundering or being made prisoner, I should have met only a sneer or an execration and been turned loose; but the late disaster made the turban and haik odious, and I was treated with the wrath due to a fellow conspirator of the lions. To my request that I should be suffered to depart in peace on my business, the most prompt denial was given; the story that I told to account for my travel in the track of the column was treated with the simplest scorn; I was pronounced a spy, and fairly told that my head was my own only till I gave the procurator whatever information it contained.

Yet I found one friend, in this evil state of my expedition. My barb, which I had given up for lost in the desert, or torn by the wild beasts, appeared on the heights overhanging our march, and by snuffing the wind, and bounding backward and forward through the thickets, attracted general attention. I claimed her, and the idea that the way-sore and rough-clothed prisoner could be the master of so noble an animal, raised scorn to its most peremptory pitch. In turn I demanded permission to prove my right, and called the barb. The creature heard the voice with the most obvious delight, bounded toward me, rubbed her head against me, and by every movement of dumb joy showed that she had found her master.

[Sidenote: A Jovial Captain]

Still my requests for dismissal were idle; I talked to the winds; the rear squadrons of the column were in sight; there was no time to be lost. I was suffered to mount the barb, but her bridle was thrown across the neck of one of the troopers’ horses, and I was marched along to death, or a tedious captivity. My blood boiled when I thought of what was to be done before the dawn. How miserable a proof had I given of the vigilance and vigor that were to claim the command of armies! I writhed in every nerve. My agitation at length caught the eye of a corpulent old captain, whose good-humored visage was colored by the deepest infusion of the grape. His strong Thracian charger was a movable magazine of the choicest Falernian; out of every crevice of his pack-saddle and accouterments peeped the head of a flask; and to judge by his frequent recourse to his stores, no man was less inclined to carry his baggage for nothing. Popularity, too, attended upon the captain, and a group of young patricians attached to the procurator’s court were content to abate of their rank, and ride along with the old soldier, in consideration of his better knowledge of the grand military science, providing for the road.

In the midst of some camp story, which the majority received with peals of applause, the captain glanced upon me, and asking “whether I was not ill,” held out his flask. I took it, and never did I taste draught so delicious. Thirst and hunger are the true secrets of luxury. I absolutely felt new life rushing into me with the wine.

[Sidenote: The Haughtiness of a Tribune]

“There,” said the old man, “see how the fellow’s eye sparkles. Falernian is the doctor, after all. I have had no other those forty years. For hard knocks, hard watches, and hard weather, there is nothing like the true juice of the vine. Try it again, Arab.”

I declined the offer in civil terms.

“There,” said he, “it has made the man eloquent. By Hercules, it would make his mare speak. And now that I look at her, she is as prettily made a creature as I have seen in Syria; her nose would fit in a drinking-cup. What is her price, at a word?”

I answered that “she was not to be sold.”

“Well, well, say no more about it,” replied the jovial old man; “I know you Arabs make as much of a mare as of a child, and I never meddle in family affairs.”

A haughty-looking tribune, covered with embroidery and the other coxcombry of the court soldier, spurred his charger between us and uttered with a sneer:

“What, captain, by Venus and all the Graces! giving this beggar a lecture in philosophy or a lesson in politeness? If you will not have the mare, I will. Dismount, slave!”

The officers gathered to the front, to see the progress of the affair. I sat silent.

“Slave! do you hear? Dismount! You will lose nothing, for you will steal another in the first field you come to.”

“I know but one race of robbers in Judea,” replied I.

The old captain reined up beside me, and said in a whisper: “Friend, let him have the mare. He will pay you handsomely, and besides, he is the nephew of the procurator. It will not be wise in you to put him in a passion.”

“That fellow never shall have her, tho he were to coin these sands into gold,” replied I.

“Do you mean to call us robbers?” said the tribune, with a lowering eye.

“Do you mean to stop me on the high-road and take my property from me, yet expect that I shall call you anything else?” was the answer.

“Sententious rogues, those Arabs! Every soul of them has a point, or a proverb, on his tongue,” murmured the captain to the group of young men, who were evidently amused at seeing their unpopular companion entangled with me.

[Sidenote: The Tribune’s Rage]

“Slave!” said the tribune fiercely, “we must have no more of this. You have been found lurking about the camp. Will you be hanged for a spy?”

“A spy!” said I—and the insult probably colored my cheek; “a spy has no business among the Romans.”

“So,” observed the captain, “the Arab seems to think that our proceedings are in general pretty palpable: slay, strip, and burn.” He turned to the patrician tribune. “The fellow is not worth our trouble. Shall I let him go about his business?”

“Sir,” said the tribune angrily, “it is your business to command your troop and be silent.”

The old man bit his lip, and fell back to the line of his men. My taunter reined up beside me again.

“Do you know, robber, that I can order you to be speared on the spot for your lies?”

“No, for I have told you nothing but the truth of both of us. Such an order, too, would only prove that men will often bid others do what they dare not touch with a finger of their own.”

The officers, offended at the treatment of their old favorite, burst into a laugh. The coxcomb grew doubly indignant.

“Strip the hound!” exclaimed he to the soldiers; “it is money that makes him insolent.”

“Nature has done it, at least for one of us, without the expense of a mite,” replied I calmly.

“Off with his turban! Those fellows carry coin in every fold of it.”

The officers looked at each other in surprise; the captain hardly suppressed a contemptuous execration between his lips. The very troopers hesitated.

“Soldiers!” said I, in the same unaltered tone, “I have no gold in my turban. An Arab is seldom one of those—the outside of whose head is better worth than the inside.”

The perfumed and curled locks of the tribune, surmounted by a helmet, sculptured and plumed in the most extravagant style, caught every eye; and the shaft, slight as it was, went home.

[Sidenote: The Tribune’s Defeat]

“I’ll pluck the robber off his horse by the beard!” exclaimed the tribune, spurring his horse upon me and advancing his hand.

I threw open my robe, grasped my dagger, and sternly pronounced: “There is an oath in our line that the man who touches the beard of an Arab dies.”

He was not prepared for the action, hesitated, and finally wheeled from me. The old captain burst out into an involuntary huzza.

“Take the beggar to the camp,” said the tribune, as he rode away, “I hate all scoundrels”; and he glanced round the spectators.

“Then,” exclaimed I, after him, as a parting blow, “you have at least one virtue, for you can never be charged with self-love.”

This woman-war made me popular on the spot. The tribune had no sooner turned his horse’s head than the officers clustered together in laughter. Even the iron visages of the troopers relaxed into grim smiles. The old jocular captain was the only one still grave.

[Sidenote: An Unpleasant Interview]

“There rides not this day under the canopy of heaven,” murmured he, “a greater puppy than Caius Sempronius Catulus, tribune of the thirteenth legion by his mother’s morals and the Emperor’s taste. Why did not the coxcomb stay at home, and show off his trappings among the supper-eaters of the Palatine? He might have powdered his ringlets with gold-dust, washed his hands in rose-water, and perfumed his handkerchief with myrrh as well there as here, for he does nothing else—except,” and he clenched the heavy hilt of his falchion, “insult men who have seen more battles than he has seen years, who knew better service than bowing in courts, and the least drop of whose blood is worth all that will ever run in his veins. But I have not done with him yet. As for you, friend,” said he, “I am sorry to stop you on your way; but as this affair will be magnified by that fool’s tongue, you must be brought to the procurator. However, the camp is only a few miles off; you will be asked a few questions, and then left to follow your will.”

He little dreamed how I recoiled from that interview.

To shorten the time of my delay, the good-natured old man ordered the squadron to mend their pace, and in half an hour we saw the noon encampment of my sworn enemy, lifting its white tops and scarlet flags among the umbrage of a forest, deep in the valley at our feet.