CHAPTER III: THE GOTHS
For two days the young monk held on, paddling and floating rapidly downthe Nile-stream, leaving city after city to right and left with longingeyes, and looking back to one villa after another, till the reaches ofthe banks hid them from his sight, with many a yearning to know whatsort of places those gay buildings and gardens would look like on anearer view, and what sort of life the thousands led who crowded thebusy quays, and walked and drove, in an endless stream, along the greathighroads which ran along either bank. He carefully avoided everyboat that passed him, from the gilded barge of the wealthy landlord ormerchant, to the tiny raft buoyed up with empty jars, which was floatingdown to be sold at some market in the Delta. Here and there he met andhailed a crew of monks, drawing their nets in a quiet bay, or passingalong the great watery highway from monastery to monastery: but all thenews he received from them was, that the canal of Alexandria was stillseveral days' journey below him. It seemed endless, that monotonousvista of the two high clay banks, with their sluices and water-wheels,their knots of palms and date-trees; endless seemed that wearisomesuccession of bars of sand and banks of mud, every one like the onebefore it, every one dotted with the same line of logs and stones strewnalong the water's edge, which turned out as he approached them to bebasking crocodiles and sleeping pelicans. His eye, wearied with thecontinual confinement and want of distance, longed for the boundlessexpanse of the desert, for the jagged outlines of those far-off hills,which he had watched from boyhood rising mysteriously at morn out ofthe eastern sky, and melting mysteriously into it again at even, beyondwhich dwelt a whole world of wonders, elephants and dragons, satyrs andanthropophagi,--ay, and the phoenix itself. Tired and melancholy, hismind returned inward to prey on itself, and the last words of Arseniusrose again and again to his thoughts. 'Was his call of the spirit or ofthe flesh?' How should he test that problem? He wished to seethe worldthat might be carnal. True; but, he wished to convert the world.... wasnot that spiritual? Was he not going on a noble errand?.... thirstingfor toil, for saintship, for martyrdom itself, if it would but come andcut the Gordian knot of all temptations, and save him-for he dimlyfelt that it would save him--a whole sea of trouble in getting safe andtriumphant out of that world into which he had not yet entered .... andhis heart shrank back from the untried homeless wilderness beforehim. But no! the die was cast, and he must down and onward, whether inobedience to the spirit or the flesh. Oh, for one hour of the quiet ofthat dear Laura and the old familiar faces!
At last, a sudden turn of the bank brought him in sight of agaudily-painted barge, oil board of which armed men, in uncouth andforeign dresses, were chasing with barbaric shouts some large object inthe water. In the bows stood a man of gigantic stature, brandishing aharpoon in his right hand, and in his left holding the line of a second,the head of which was fixed in the huge purple sides of a hippopotamus,who foamed and wallowed a few yards down the stream. An old grizzledwarrior at the stern, with a rudder in either hand, kept the boat'shead continually towards the monster, in spite of its sudden and franticwheelings; and when it dashed madly across the stream, some twenty oarsflashed through the water in pursuit. All was activity and excitement;and it was no wonder if Philammon's curiosity had tempted him to driftdown almost abreast of the barge ere he descried, peeping from under adecorated awning in the afterpart, some dozen pairs of languishingblack eyes, turned alternately to the game and to himself. Theserpents!--chattering and smiling, with pretty little shrieks andshaking of glossy curls and gold necklaces, and fluttering of muslindresses, within a dozen yards of him! Blushing scarlet, he knew notwhy, he seized his paddle, and tried to back out of the snare.... butsomehow, his very efforts to escape those sparkling eyes diverted hisattention from everything else: the hippopotamus had caught sight ofhim, and furious with pain, rushed straight at the unoffending canoe;the harpoon line became entangled round his body, and in a moment heand his frail bark were overturned, and the monster, with his huge whitetusks gaping wide, close on him as he struggled in the stream.
Luckily Philammon, contrary to the wont of monks, was a bather, and swamlike a water-fowl: fear he had never known: death from childhood hadbeen to him, as to the other inmates of the Laura, a contemplation tooperpetual to have any paralysing terror in it, even then, when lifeseemed just about to open on him anew. But the monk was a man, and ayoung one, and had no intention of dying tamely or unavenged. In aninstant he had freed himself from the line; drawn the short knife whichwas his only weapon; and diving suddenly, avoided the monster's rush,and attacked him from behind with stabs, which, though not deep, stilldyed the waters with gore at every stroke. The barbarians shouted withdelight. The hippopotamus turned furiously against his new assailant,crushing, alas! the empty canoe to fragments with a single snap of hisenormous jaws; but the turn was fatal to him; the barge was close uponhim, and as he presented his broad side to the blow, the sinewy arm ofthe giant drove a harpoon through his heart, and with one convulsiveshudder the huge blue mass turned over on its side and floated dead.
Poor Philammon! He alone was silent, amid the yells of triumph;sorrowfully he swam round and round his little paper wreck.... it wouldnot have floated a mouse. Wistfully be eyed the distant banks, halfminded to strike out for them and escape,.... and thought of thecrocodiles,.... and paddled round again,.... and thought of thebasilisk eyes;.... he might escape the crocodiles, but who could escapewomen?.... and he struck out valiantly for shore.... when he was broughtto a sudden stop by finding the stem of the barge close on him, a noosethrown over him by some friendly barbarian, and himself hauled onboard, amid the laughter, praise, astonishment, and grumbling of thegood-natured crew, who had expected him, as a matter of course, to availhimself at once of their help, and could not conceive the cause of hisreluctance.
Philammon gazed with wonder on his strange hosts, their palecomplexions, globular heads and faces, high cheek-bones, tall and sturdyfigures; their red beards, and yellow hair knotted fantastically abovethe head; their awkward dresses, half Roman or Egyptian, and halfof foreign fur, soiled and stained in many a storm and fight, buttastelessly bedizened with classic jewels, brooches, and Roman coins,strung like necklaces. Only the steersman, who had come forward towonder at the hippopotamus, and to help in dragging the unwieldy bruteon board, seemed to keep genuine and unornamented the costume of hisrace, the white linen leggings, strapped with thongs of deerskin, thequilted leather cuirass, the bears'-fur cloak, the only ornaments ofwhich were the fangs and claws of the beast itself, and a fringe ofgrizzled tufts, which looked but too like human hair. The language whichthey spoke was utterly unintelligible to Philammon, though it need notbe so to us.
'A well-grown lad and a brave one, Wulf the son of Ovida,' said thegiant to the old hero of the bearskin cloak; 'and understands wearingskins, in this furnace-mouth of a climate, rather better than you do.'
'I keep to the dress of my forefathers, Amalric the Amal. What did tosack Rome in, may do to find Asgard in.'
The giant, who was decked out with helmet, cuirass, and senatorialboots, in a sort of mongrel mixture of the Roman military and civildress, his neck wreathed with a dozen gold chains, and every fingersparkling with jewels, turned away with an impatient sneer.
'Asgard--Asgard! If you are in such a hurry to get to Asgard up thisditch in the sand, you had better ask the fellow how far it is thither.'
Wulf took him quietly at his word, and addressed a question to the youngmonk, which he could only answer by a shake of the head.
'Ask him in Greek, man.'
'Greek is a slave's tongue. Make a slave talk to him in it, not me.'
'Here--some of you girls! Pelagia! you understand this fellow's talk.Ask him how far it is to Asgard.'
'You must ask me more civilly, my rough hero,' replied a soft voice fromunderneath the awning. 'Beauty must be sued, and not commanded.'
'Come, then, my olive-tree, my gazelle, my lotus-flower, my--what wasthe last nonsense you taught me?--and ask this wild man of the sands ho
wfar it is from these accursed endless rabbit-burrows to Asgard.'
The awning was raised, and lying luxuriously on a soft mattress,fanned with peacock's feathers, and glittering with rubies and topazes,appeared such a vision as Philammon had never seen before.
A woman of some two-and-twenty summers, formed in the most voluptuousmould of Grecian beauty, whose complexion showed every violet veinthrough its veil of luscious brown. Her little bare feet, as theydimpled the cushions, were more perfect than Aphrodite's, softer than aswan's bosom. Every swell of her bust and arms showed through the thingauze robe, while her lower limbs were wrapped in a shawl of orangesilk, embroidered with wreaths of shells and roses. Her dark hair laycarefully spread out upon the pillow, in a thousand ringlets entwinedwith gold and jewels; her languishing eyes blazed like diamonds froma cavern, under eyelids darkened and deepened with black antimony; herlips pouted of themselves, by habit or by nature, into a perpetual kiss;slowly she raised one little lazy hand; slowly the ripe lips opened; andin most pure and melodious Attic, she lisped her huge lover's questionto the monk, and repeated it before the boy could shake off the spell,and answer....
'Asgard? What is Asgard?'
The beauty looked at the giant for further instructions.
'The City of the immortal Gods,' interposed the old warrior, hastily andsternly, to the lady.
'The city of God is in heaven,' said Philammon to the interpreter,turning his head away from those gleaming, luscious, searching glances.
His answer was received with a general laugh by all except the leader,who shrugged his shoulders.
'It may as well be up in the skies as up the Nile. We shall be justas likely, I believe, to reach it by flying, as by rowing up this bigditch. Ask him where the river comes from, Pelagia.'
Pelagia obeyed.... and thereon followed a confusion worse confounded,composed of all the impossible wonders of that mythic fairyland withwhich Philammon had gorged himself from boyhood in his walks with theold monks, and of the equally trustworthy traditions which the Goths hadpicked up at Alexandria. There was nothing which that river did not do.It rose in the Caucasus. Where was the Caucasus? He did not know. InParadise--in Indian Aethiopia--in Aethiopian India. Where were they? Hedid not know. Nobody knew. It ran for a hundred and fifty days' journeythrough deserts where nothing but flying serpents and satyrs lived, andthe very lions' manes were burnt off by the heat....
'Good sporting there, at all events, among these dragons,' quoth Smidthe son of Troll, armourer to the party.
'As good as Thor's when he caught Snake Midgard with the bullock'shead,' said Wulf.
It turned to the east for a hundred days' journey more, all round Arabiaand India, among forests full of elephants and dog-headed women.
'Better and better, Smid!' growled Wulf, approvingly.
'Fresh beef cheap there, Prince Wulf, eh?' quoth Smid; 'I must look overthe arrow-heads.'
--To the mountains of the Hyperboreans, where there was eternal night,and the air was full of feathers.... That is, one-third of it came fromthence, and another third came from the Southern ocean, over the Moonmountains, where no one had ever been, and the remaining third from thecountry where the phoenix lived, and nobody knew where that was. Andthen there were the cataracts, and the inundations-and-and-and above thecataracts, nothing but sand-hills and ruins, as full of devils as theycould hold.... and as for Asgard, no one had ever heard of it.... tillevery face grew longer and longer, as Pelagia went on interpreting andmisinterpreting; and at last the giant smote his hand upon his knee, andswore a great oath that Asgard might rot till the twilight of the godsbefore he went a step farther up the Nile.
'Curse the monk!' growled Wulf. 'How should such a poor beast knowanything about the matter?'
'Why should not he know as well as that ape of a Roman governor?' askedSmid.
'Oh, the monks know everything,' said Pelagia. 'They go hundreds andthousands of miles up the river, and cross the deserts among fiends andmonsters, where any one else would be eaten up, or go mad at once.'
'Ah, the dear holy men! It's all by the sign of the blessed cross!'exclaimed all the girls together, devoutly crossing themselves, whiletwo or three of the most enthusiastic were half-minded to go forward andkneel to Philammon for his blessing; but hesitated, their Gothic loversbeing heathenishly stupid and prudish on such points.
'Why should he not know as well as the prefect? Well said, Smid! Ibelieve that prefect's quill-driver was humbugging us when he saidAsgard was only ten days' sail up.'
'Why?' asked Wulf.
'I never give any reasons. What's the use of being an Amal, and a sonof Odin, if one has always to be giving reasons like a rascally Romanlawyer? I say the governor looked like a liar; and I say this monk lookslike an honest fellow; and I choose to believe him, and there is an endof it.'
'Don't look so cross at me, Prince Wulf; I'm sure it's not my fault; Icould only say what the monk told me,' whispered poor Pelagia.
'Who looks cross at you, my queen?' roared the Amal. 'Let me have himout here, and by Thor's hammer, I'll--'
'Who spoke to you, you stupid darling?' answered Pelagia, who lived inhourly fear of thunderstorms. 'Who is going to be cross with any one,except I with you, for mishearing and misunderstanding, and meddling,as you are always doing? I shall do as I threatened, and run away withPrince Wulf, if you are not good. Don't you see that the whole crew areexpecting you to make them an oration?'
Whereupon the Amal rose.
'See you here, Wulf the son of Ovida, and warriors all! If we wantwealth, we shan't find it among the sand-hills. If we want women, weshall find nothing prettier than these among dragons and devils. Don'tlook angry, Wulf. You have no mind to marry one of those dog-headedgirls the monk talked of, have you? Well, then, we have money and women;and if we want sport, it's better sport killing men than killing beasts;so we had better go where we shall find most of that game, which wecertainly shall not up this road. As for fame and all that, though I'vehad enough, there's plenty to be got anywhere along the shores of thatMediterranean. Let's burn and plunder Alexandria: forty of us Gothsmight kill down all these donkey-riders in two days, and hang up thatlying prefect who sent us hereon this fool's errand. Don't answer, Wulf.I knew he was humbugging us all along, but you were so open-mouthed toall he said, that I was bound to let my elders choose for me. Let'sgo back; send over for any of the tribes; send to Spain for thoseVandals--they have had enough of Adolf by now, curse him!--I'll warrantthem; get together an army, and take Constantinople. I'll be Augustus,and Pelagia, Augusta; you and Smid here, the two Caesars; and we'll makethe monk the chief of the eunuchs, eh?--anything you like for a quietlife; but up this accursed kennel of hot water I go no farther. Ask yourgirls, my heroes, and I'll ask mine. Women are all prophetesses, everyone of them.'
'When they are not harlots,' growled Wulf to himself.
'I will go to the world's end with you, my king!' sighed Pelagia; 'butAlexandria is certainly pleasanter than this.'
Old Wulf sprang up fiercely enough.
'Hear me, Amalric the Amal, son of Odin, and heroes all! When my fathersswore to be Odin's men, and gave up the kingdom to the holy Annals, thesons of the Aesir, what was the bond between your fathers and mine? Wasit not that we should move and move, southward and southward ever, tillwe came back to Asgard, the city where Odin dwells for ever, and gaveinto his hands the kingdom of all the earth? And did we not keep ouroath? Have we not held to the Amals? Did we not leave Adolf, because wewould not follow a Balth, while there was an Amal to lead us? Have wenot been true men to you, son of the Aesir?'
'No man ever saw Wulf, the son of Ovida, fail friend or foe.'
'Then why does his friend fail him? Why does his friend fail himself? Ifthe bison-bull lie down and wallow, what will the herd do for a leader?If the king-wolf lose the scent, how will the pack hold it? If theYngling forgets the song of Asgard, who will sing it to the heroes?'
'Sing it yourself, if you choose. Pelagia sings quite well enough f
orme.'
In an instant the cunning beauty caught at the hint, and poured forth asoft, low, sleepy song:--
'Loose the sail, rest the oar, float away down, Fleeting and gliding bytower and town; Life is so short at best! snatch, while thou canst, thyrest, Sleeping by me!'
'Can you answer that, Wulf?' shouted a dozen voices.
'Hear the song of Asgard, warriors of the Goths! Did not Alaric the kinglove it well? Did I not sing it before him in the palace of the Caesars,till he swore, for all the Christian that he was, to go southward insearch of the holy city? And when he went to Valhalla, and the shipswere wrecked off Sicily, and Adolf the Balth turned back like a lazyhound, and married the daughter of the Romans, whom Odin hates, and wentnorthward again to Gaul, did not I sing you all the song of Asgard inMessina there, till you swore to follow the Amal through fire and wateruntil we found the hall of Odin, and received the mead-cup from his ownhand? Hear it again, warriors of the Goths!'
'Not that song!' roared the Amal, stopping his ears with both his hands.'Will you drive us blood-mad again, just as we are settling down intoour sober senses, and finding out what our lives were given us for?'
'Hear the song of Asgard! On to Asgard, wolves of the Goths!' shoutedanother; and a babel of voices arose.
'Haven't we been fighting and marching these seven years?'
'Haven't we drunk blood enough to satisfy Odin ten times over? If hewants us lot him come himself and lead us!'
'Let us get our winds again before we start afresh!'
'Wulf the Prince is like his name, and never tires; he has awinter-wolf's legs under him; that is no reason why we should have.'
'Haven't you heard what the monk says?-we can never get ever thosecataracts.'
'We'll stop his old wives' tales for him, and then settle forourselves,' said Smid; and springing from the thwart where he had beensitting, he caught up a bill with one hand, and seized Philammon'sthroat with the other.... in a moment more, it would have been all overwith him....
For the first time in his life Philammon felt a hostile gripe upon him,and a new sensation rushed through every nerve, as he grappled with thewarrior, clutched with his left hand the up-lifted wrist, and with hisright the girdle, and commenced, without any definite aim, a fiercestruggle, which, strange to say, as it went on, grew absolutelypleasant.
The women shrieked to their lovers to part the combatants, but in vain.
'Not for worlds! A very fair match and a very fair fight! Take your longlegs back, Itho, or they will be over you! That's right, my Smid, don'tuse the knife! They will be overboard in a moment! By all the Valkyrs,they are down, and Smid undermost!'
There was no doubt of it; and in another moment Philammon would havewrenched the bill out of his opponent's hand, when, to the utterastonishment of the onlookers, he suddenly loosed his hold, shookhimself free by one powerful wrench, and quietly retreated to his seat,conscience-stricken at the fearful thirst for blood which had suddenlyboiled up within him as he felt his enemy under him.
The onlookers were struck dumb with astonishment; they had taken forgranted that he would, as a matter of course, have used his right ofsplitting his vanquished opponent's skull--an event which they wouldof course have deeply deplored, but with which, as men of honour, theycould not on any account interfere, but merely console themselves forthe loss of their comrade by flaying his conqueror alive, 'carving himinto the blood-eagle,' or any other delicate ceremony which might serveas a vent for their sorrow and a comfort to the soul of the deceased.
Smid rose, with a bill in his hand, and looked round him-perhaps tosee what was expected of him. He half lifted his weapon to strike ....Philammon, seated, looked him calmly in the face.... The old warrior'seye caught the bank, which was now receding rapidly past them; and whenhe saw that they were really floating downwards again, without aneffort to stem the stream, he put away his bill, and sat himself downdeliberately in his place, astonishing the onlookers quite as much asPhilammon had done.
'Five minutes' good fighting, and no one killed! This is a shame!' quothanother. 'Blood we must see, and it had better be yours, master monk,than your betters','--and therewith he rushed on poor Philammon.
He spoke the heart of the crew; the sleeping wolf in them hadbeen awakened by the struggle, and blood they would have; and notfrantically, like Celts or Egyptians, but with the cool humorous crueltyof the Teuton, they rose altogether, and turning Philammon over on hisback, deliberated by what death he should die.
Philammon quietly submitted--if submission have anything to do with thatstate of mind in which sheer astonishment and novelty have broken up allthe custom of man's nature, till the strangest deeds and sufferings aretaken as matters of course. His sudden escape from the Laura, the newworld of thought and action into which he had been plunged, the newcompanions with whom he had fallen in, had driven him utterly from hismoorings, and now anything and everything might happen to him. He whohad promised never to look upon woman found himself, by circumstancesover which he had no control, amid a boatful of the most objectionablespecies of that most objectionable genus--and the utterly worst havinghappened, everything else which happened must be better than the worst.For the rest, he had gone forth to see the world--and this was one ofthe ways of it. So he made up his mind to see it, and be filled with thefruit of his own devices.
And he would have been certainly filled with the same in five minutesmore, in some shape too ugly to be mentioned: but, as even sinful womenhave hearts in them, Pelagia shrieked out--
'Amalric! Amalric! do not let them! I cannot bear it!'
'The warriors are free men, my darling, and know what is proper. Andwhat can the life of such a brute be to you?'
Before he could stop her, Pelagia had sprung from her cushions, andthrown herself into the midst of the laughing ring of wild beasts.
'Spare him! spare him for my sake!' shrieked she.
'Oh, my pretty lady! you mustn't interrupt warriors' sport!'
In an instant she had torn off her shawl, and thrown it over Philammon;and as she stood, with all the outlines of her beautiful limbs revealedthrough the thin robe of spangled gauze--
'Let the man who dares, touch him beneath that shawl!--though it be asaffron one!'
The Goths drew back. For Pelagia herself they had as little respect asthe rest of the world had. But for a moment she was not the Messalina ofAlexandria, but a woman; and true to the old woman-worshipping instinct,they looked one and all at her flashing eyes, full of noble pity andindignation, as well as of mere woman's terror--and drew back, andwhispered together.
Whether the good spirit or the evil one would conquer, seemed for amoment doubtful, when Pelagia felt a heavy hand on her shoulder, andturning, saw Wulf the son of Ovida.
'Go back, pretty woman! Men, I claim the boy. Smid, give him to me. Heis your man. You could have killed him if you had chosen, and did not;and no one else shall.'
'Give him us, Prince Wulf! We have not seen blood for many a day!'
'You might have seen rivers of it, if you had had the hearts to goonward. The boy is mine, and a brave boy. He has upset a warrior fairlythis day, and spared him; and we will make a warrior of him in return.'
And he lifted up the prostrate monk.
'You are my man now. Do you like fighting?'
Philammon, not understanding the language in which he was addressed,could only shake his head--though if he had known what its import was,he could hardly in honesty have said, No.
'He shakes his head! He does not like it! He is craven! Let us havehim!'
'I had killed kings when you were shooting frogs,' cried Smid. 'Listento me, my sons! A coward grips sharply at first, and loosens his handafter a while, because his blood is soon hot and soon cold. A braveman's grip grows the firmer the longer he holds, because the spirit ofOdin comes upon him. I watched the boy's hands on my threat; and he willmake a man; and I will make him one. However, we may as well make himuseful at once; so give him an oar.'
'Wel
l,' answered his new protector, 'he can as well row us as he rowedby us; and if we are to go back to a cow's death and the pool of Hela,the quicker we go the better.'
And as the men settled themselves again to their oars, one was put intoPhilammon's hand, which he managed with such strength and skill that hislate tormentors, who, in spite of an occasional inclination to robberyand murder, were thoroughly good-natured, honest fellows, clapped himon the back, and praised him as heartily as they had just now heartilyintended to torture him to death, and then went forward, as many of themas were not rowing, to examine the strange beast which they had justslaughtered, pawing him over from tusks to tail, putting their headsinto his mouth, trying their knives on his hide, comparing him to allbeasts, like and unlike, which they had ever seen, and laughing andshoving each other about with the fun and childish wonder of a partyof schoolboys; till Smid, who was the wit of the party, settled thecomparative anatomy of the subject for them--'Valhalla! I've found outwhat he's most like!--One of those big blue plums, which gave us all thestomach-ache when we were encamped in the orchards above Ravenna!'