CHAPTER XXVII

_The Escape of Salathiel, the Magician_

[Sidenote: Salathiel Again Faces Florus]

The squadron drew up at the entrance of the procurator’s tent, and with a crowd of alarmed peasants captured in the course of the day, I was delivered over to be questioned by this man of terror. The few minutes which passed before I was called to take my turn were singularly painful. This was not fear, for the instant sentence of the ax would have been almost a relief from the hopeless and fretful thwartings sown so thickly in my path. But to have embarked in a noble enterprise, and to perish without use; to have arrived almost within sight of the point of my desires, and then, without striking a blow, to be given up to shame, stung me like a serpent.

My heart sprang to my lips when I heard myself called into the presence of Florus. He was lying upon a couch, with his never-failing cup before him, and turning over some papers with a shaking hand. Care or conscience had made ravages even in him since I saw him last. He was still the same figure of excess, but his cheek was hollow; the few locks on his head had grown a more snowy white, and the little pampered hand was as thin and yellow as the claw of the vulture that he so much resembled in his soul.

With his head scarcely lifted from the table, and with eyes that seemed half shut, he asked whence I had come and whither I was going. My voice, notwithstanding my attempt to disguise it, struck his acute ear. His native keenness was awake at once. He darted a fiery glance at me, and, striking his hand on the table, exclaimed: “By Hercules, it is the Jew!” My altered costume again perplexed him.

“Yet,” said he in soliloquy, “that fellow went to Nero, and must have been executed. Ho! send in the tribune who took him.”

[Sidenote: Salathiel the Plunderer]

Catulus entered, and his account of me was, luckily, contemptuous in the extreme. I was “a notorious robber, who had stolen a handsome horse, perfectly worthy of the stud of the procurator.”

I panted with the hope of escape, and was gradually moving to the door.

“Stand, slave!” cried Florus, “I have my doubts of you still, and as the public safety admits of no mistake I have no alternative. Tribune, order in the lictors. He must be scourged into confession.”

The lictors were summoned, and I was to be torn by Roman torturers.

A tumult now arose outside, and a man rushed in with the lictors, exclaiming: “Justice, most mighty Florus! By the majesty of Rome, and the magnanimity of the most illustrious of governors, I call for justice against my plunderer, my undoer, the robber of the son of El Hakim, of his most precious treasure.”

Florus recognized the clamorer as an old acquaintance, and desired him to state his complaint, and with as much brevity as possible.

“Last night,” said the man, “I was the happy possessor of a mare, fleet as the ostrich and shapely as the face of beauty. I had intended her as a present for the most illustrious of procurators, the great Florus, whom the gods long preserve! In the hour of my rest, the spoiler came, noiseless as the fall of the turtle’s feather, cruel as the viper’s tooth. When I arose the mare was gone. I was in distraction. I tore my beard; I beat my head upon the ground; I cursed the robber wherever he went, to the sun-rising or the sun-setting, to the mountains or the valleys. But fortune sits on the banner of my lord the procurator, and I came for hope of his conquering feet. In passing through the camp, what did I see but my treasure, the delight of my eyes, the drier up of my tears! I have come to claim justice and the restoration of my mare, that I may have the happiness to present her to the most renowned of mankind.”

[Sidenote: A Mare’s Wildness]

I had been occupied with the thought whether I should burst through the lictors or rush on the procurator. But the length and loudness of this outcry engrossed every one. The orator was my friend the beggar! He pointed fiercely to me. If looks could kill, he would not have survived the look that I gave the traitor in return.

“There,” said Florus, “is your plunderer. Sabat, have you ever seen him before?”

The beggar strode insolently toward me.

“Seen him before! aye, a hundred times. What! Ben Ammon, the most notorious thief from the Nile to the Jordan! My lord, every child knows him. Ha, by the gods of my fathers, by my mother’s bosom, by shaft and by shield, he has stolen more horses within the last twenty years than would remount all the cavalry from Beersheba to Damascus! It was but last night that, as I was leading my mare, the gem of my eyes, my pearl——”

I now began to perceive the value of my eloquent friend’s interposition.

“An Arab horse-thief! That alters the case,” said the procurator. “Ho! did you not say that the mare was intended for me? Lictor, go and bring this wonder to the door.”

The voluble son of El Hakim followed the lictor, and returned, crying out more furiously than before against me. His “pearl, the delight of his eyes, was spoiled—was utterly unmanagable. I had put some of my villainous enchantments upon her, for which I was notorious.”

The procurator’s curiosity was excited; he rose and went to take a view of the enchanted animal. I followed, and certainly nothing could be more singular than the restiveness which the son of El Hakim contrived to make her exhibit. She plunged, she bounded, bit, reared, and flung out her heels in all directions. Every attempt to lead or mount her was foiled in the most complete yet most ludicrous manner. The young cavalry officers came from all sides, and could not be restrained from boisterous laughter, even by the presence of the procurator. Florus himself at last became among the loudest. Even I, accustomed as I was to daring horsemanship, was surprised at the eccentric agility of this unlucky rider. He was alternately on the animal’s back and under her feet; he sprang upon her from behind, he sprang over her head, he stood upon the saddle, but all in vain; he had scarcely touched her when she threw him up in the air again, amid the perpetual roar of the soldiery.

At length, with a look of dire disappointment, he gave up the task, and, as scarcely able to drag his limbs along, prostrated himself before Florus, praying that he would order the Arab thief to unsay the spells that had turned “the gentlest mare in the world into a wild beast.” The consent was given with a haughty nod, and I advanced to play my part in a performance, the object of which I had no conception. The orator delivered the barb to me with a look so expressive of cunning, sport, and triumph, that perplexed as I was, I could not avoid a smile.

My experiment was rapidly made. The mare knew me, and was tractable at once. This only confirmed the charge of my necromancy. But the son of El Hakim professed himself altogether dissatisfied with so expeditious a process, and demanded that I should go through the regular steps of the art. In the midst of the fiercest reprobation of my unhallowed dealings, a whisper from him put me in possession of his mind.

[Sidenote: The Accuser’s Warning]

I now went through the process used by the traveling jugglers, and if the deepest attention of an audience could reward my talents, mine received unexampled reward. My gazings on the sky, whisperings in the barb’s ear, grotesque figures traced on the sand, wild gestures and mysterious jargon, thoroughly absorbed the intellects of the honest legionaries. If I had been content with fame, I might have spread my reputation through the Roman camps as a conjurer of the first magnitude. I was, however, beginning to be weary of my exhibition, and longed for the signal, when Sabat approached, and loudly testifying that I had clearly performed my task, threw the bridle over the animal’s head and whispered, “Now!”

My heart panted; my hand was on the mane; I glanced round to see that all was safe, before I gave the spring, when Florus screamed out:

[Sidenote: A Lesson in Horse-Stealing]

“The Jew! by Tartarus, it is the Jew himself. Drag down the circumcised dog.”

With cavalry on every side of me, forcible escape was out of the question.

“Undone, undone!” were the words of my wild friend, as he passed me. And when I saw him once more in the most earnest conversation with Florus, I concluded that the discovery was complete. I was in utter despair. I stood sullenly waiting the worst, and gave an internal curse to the more than malevolence of fortune.

The conversation continued so long that the impatience of those around me began to break out.

“On what possible subject can the procurator suffer that mad fellow to have so long an audience?” said a young patrician.

“On every possible subject, I should conceive, from the length of the conference,” was the reply.

“Florus knows his man,” said a third; “that mad fellow is a regular spy, and receives more of the Emperor’s coin in a month than we do in a year.”

The tribune now broke into the circle, and with a look of supreme scorn, affectedly exclaimed: “Come, knight of the desert, sovereign of the sands, let us have a specimen of your calling. Stand back, officers; this egg of Ishmael is to quit plunder so soon that he would probably like to die as he lived—in the exercise of his trade. Here, slave, show us the most approved method of getting possession of another man’s horse.”

I stood in indignant silence. The tribune threatened. A thought struck me; I bowed to the command, let the barb loose, and proceeded according to the theory of horse-stealing. I approached noiselessly, gesticulated, made mystic movements, and gibbered witchcraft as before. The animal, with natural docility, suffered my experiments. I continued urging her toward the thinner side of the circle.

“Now, noble Romans,” said I, “look carefully to the next spell, for it is the triumph of the art.”

[Sidenote: The Tribune Outdone]

Curiosity was in every countenance. I made a genuflexion to the four points of the compass, devoted a gesture of peculiar solemnity to the procurator’s tent, and while all eyes were drawn in that direction, sprang on the barb’s back and was gone like an arrow.

I heard a clamor of surprise, mingled with outrageous laughter, and looking round, saw the whole crowd of the loose riders of the encampment in full pursuit up the hill. Florus was at his tent door, pointing toward me with furious gestures. The trumpets were calling, the cavalry mounting; I had roused the whole activity of the little army.

The slope of the valley was long and steep, and the heavy horsemanship of the legionaries, who were perhaps not very anxious for my capture, soon threw them out. A little knot of the more zealous alone kept up a pursuit, from which I had no fears. An abrupt rock in the middle of the ascent at length hid them from me. To gain a last view of the camp, I doubled round the rock and saw, a few yards below me, the tribune, with his horse completely blown. I owed him a debt, which I had determined to discharge at the earliest possible time, partly on my own account, and partly on that of the old captain. I darted upon him. He was all astonishment; a single buffet from my naked hand knocked the helpless taunter off his charger.

“Tribune,” cried I, as he lay upon the ground, “you have had one specimen of my art to-day, now you shall have another. Learn in future to respect an Arab.”

I caught his horse’s bridle, gave the animal a lash, and we bounded away together. The scene was visible to the whole camp; the troopers, who had reined up on the declivity, gave a roar of merriment, and I heard the old corpulent captain’s laugh above it all.