The Scarlet Banner

by Felix Dahn

CHAPTER VIII

The intense darkness of the night was already yielding in the eastern sky to a faint gray glimmer of twilight, but the stars were still shining in the heavens, when a slender little figure glided noiselessly, but very swiftly, through the streets of the camp.

The shaggy dogs watching their masters' tents growled, but did not bark; they were afraid of the creature slipping by so softly. A Vandal, mounting guard at a street-corner, superstitiously made the sign of the cross and avoided the wraith floating past. But the white form approached him.

"Where is Decimum? I mean, in which direction?" it asked in low, hurried tones.

"In the east, yonder." He pointed with his spear.

"How far is it?"

"How far? Very distant. We rode as fast as the horses could run; for fear pursued us,--I really do not know of what,--and we did not draw rein till we reached here. We dashed along six or eight hours before we arrived."

"No matter."

The hurrying figure soon reached the exit of the camp. The guards stationed there let her pass unmolested. One called after her:

"Where are you going? Not that way! The enemy is there."

"Don't stay long!" a Moor shouted after her; "the evil wind is rising."

But she was already gone. Directly behind the camp she turned from the path marked by many footprints, also by weapons lost or thrown away,--if that name could be given to this track through the desert. Running several hundred paces south of the line extending from west to east, she plunged into the wilderness, crossing, meanwhile, several high, dome-like sand-hills. These mounds are piled up by the changing winds blowing through the desert in every direction, but most frequently from the south to north; and the narrow sand ravines beside them often, for the distance of a quarter of a league, obstruct the view of the person passing through them over the nearest sand-wave.

Not until she believed herself too far from the road to be seen, did she again turn in her original direction, eastward, or what she thought was east. Meantime, it is true, the fiery, glowing rising sun had extinguished the light of the stars and marked the east; but soon thereafter the crimson disk vanished behind vaporous clouds, the exhalations of the desert. She ran on and on and on. She was now entirely within the domain of the desert. There was no longer any distinguishing object,--no tree, no bush, nothing but sky above and sand below. True, there were sometimes sand valleys, sometimes sand heights, but these, too, were perfectly uniform. On, on she ran. "Only to reach his grave!" she thought. "Only his grave. Always straight on!" It was so still, so strangely still.

Once only she fancied that she saw, far, far away on her left, corresponding with the "path," hurrying cloud-shadows; perhaps they were ostriches or antelopes. No, she thought she heard human voices calling, but very, very distant. Yet it sounded like "Eugenia!"

Startled, she stooped down close to the sand-hill at her left; it would prevent her being seen from that direction. Even if the valley in which she was now cowering could be overlooked from a hillock, the back of the mound would protect her. "Eugenia!" Now the name seemed to come again more distinctly; the tones were like Hilda's voice. The low, distant sound died tremulously away, sorrowful, hopeless. All was still again. She started up, and ran on breathlessly.

But the fugitive now grew uneasy, because she had lost her direction. What if she was not keeping a perfectly straight course? Then she thought of looking back. The print of every one of her light footsteps was firmly impressed upon the sand. The line was perfectly straight; she rejoiced over her wisdom. Then she often glanced behind--at almost every hundred steps--to test. Only forward, forward! She was growing anxious. Drops of perspiration had long been falling from her forehead and her bare arms. It was growing hot, very hot, and so strangely sultry--the sky so leaden gray. A light, whistling wind sprang up, blowing from south to north.

Eugenia glanced back again. Oh, horror! She saw no sign of her footsteps. The whole expanse lay behind her as smooth as though she were just starting on her way. As if dazed by astonishment, she stamped on the sand; directly after, before her eyes, the impression was filled up, completely effaced by the finest sand, which was driven by the light breeze.

Startled, she pressed her hand upon her beating heart--and grasped sand; a fine but thick layer had incrusted her garments, her hair, her face. Through her bewildered thoughts darted the remembrance of having heard how human beings, animals, whole caravans, had been covered by such sand-storms, how, heaped by the wind, the sand often rose like huge waves, burying all life beneath it. She fancied that on her right, on the south, a hill of sand was towering; it seemed moving swiftly onward, and threatened to bar her way. So she must run yet faster to escape it. Her path was still open. Just at that moment, from the south, a gust of wind suddenly blew with great force. Snatching the braided hat from her head, it whirled it swiftly northward. In an instant it was almost out of sight. To overtake it was impossible. Besides, she must go toward the east. Forward!

The wind grew stronger and stronger. The sun, rising higher, darted scorching rays upon her unprotected head; her dark-brown hair fluttered wildly around. Incrusted with salt, it struck her eyes or lashed her cheeks and stung her keenly. She could scarcely keep her eyes open; the fine sand forced its way through their long lashes. On. The sand entered her shoes; the band across the instep of the left one broke. She lifted her foot; the wind tore off the shoe and whirled it away. It was certainly no misfortune, yet she wept--wept over her helplessness. She sank to her knees; the malicious sand rose slowly higher and higher. A shrill, harsh, disagreeable cry fell on her ear,--the first sound in the tremendous silence for many hours; a dark figure, flying from north to south, flitted for a moment along the horizon. It was an ostrich, fleeing in mortal terror before the simoom. With head and long white neck far outstretched, aiding the swift movement of its long legs by flapping its curved dark wings like sails, it glided on like an arrow. Already it was out of sight.

"That bird is hurrying with such might to save its life. Shall my strength fail when I am hastening to the man I love? 'For shame, little one!' he would say." Smiling through her tears, she ran forward. So an hour passed--many hours.

Often she thought that she must have lost the right direction, or she would have reached the battlefield long ago. The wind had risen to a tempest. Her heart beat with suffocating strength. Giddiness seized her; she tottered; she must rest. Now, here, no Vandal could overtake her to keep her by force from her sacred goal.

Just at that moment something white appeared above the sand close beside her. It was the first break for hours in the monotonous yellow surface. The object was no stone. Seizing it, Eugenia dragged it from the sand. Oh, despair and horror! She shrieked aloud in desperation, in terror, in the sense of cheerless, hopeless helplessness. It was her own shoe, which she had lost hours before. She had been wandering in a circle. Or had the wind borne it far away from the place where she lost it? Yet, no! The shoe, which she now flung down, weeping, was swiftly covered with sand, instead of being carried away by the wind. After exhausting the last remnant of her strength, she was in the same spot.

To die--now--to give up all effort--to rest--to sleep--now sweet was the temptation to the wearied limbs.

But, no! To him! What were the words? "And it constrained the faithful one and drew her to the grave of the dead hero." To him!

Eugenia raised herself with great difficulty, she was already so weak. And when she had barely gained her feet, the storm blew her down once more. Again she rose, trying to see if some human being, some house, if not the path, was visible. Just then she perceived before her in the north a sand-hill, higher than any of the others. It was probably more than a hundred feet. If she could succeed in climbing it, she would be able from the top to get a wide view. With inexpressible difficulty, sinking knee-deep at nearly every step in the looser sand, until her foot reached the older, firmer soil, she pressed upward, often falling back several paces when she stumbled. While she did so the strangest, most alarming thing happened,--at every slip the whole sand-hill creaked, trembled, and began to slide down in every direction. At first Eugenia stopped in terror; she thought the whole mountain would sink with her. But she conquered her fear, and at last climbed upward on her knees, for she could no longer stand; she thrust her hands into the sand and dragged herself up. The wind--no, it was now a hurricane--assisted her; it blew from south to north. At last--the climb seemed to her longer than the whole previous way--at last she reached the top. Opening her eyes, which she had kept half closed, she saw--oh, bliss! she saw deliverance. Before her, at a long distance, it is true, yet plainly visible, glittered a steel-blue line. It was the sea! And at the side, eastward, she fancied she saw houses, trees. Surely that was Decimum; and a little farther inland rose a dark hill-- the end of the desert. She imagined,--yet surely it was impossible to see so far,--she believed or dreamed that, on the summit of the hill, she beheld three slender black lines relieved against the clear horizon. Surely those were the three spears on the grave. "Beloved One! My hero!" she cried, "I am coming."

With outstretched arms she tried to hurry down the sand-hill on the northeastern: side, but, at the first step, she sank in to the knee,--deeper still, to the waist. She could still see the blue sky above her. Once more, with her last strength, she flung both arms high above her head, thrusting her hands into the sand to the wrists to drag herself up; once more the large beautiful antelope eyes gazed beseechingly--ah, so despairingly--up to the silent sky; another wild, desperate pull--a hollow sound as of a heavy fall. The whole sand-mountain, shaken by her struggles and swept by the hurricane from the south, fell over her northward, burying her nearly a hundred feet deep, stifling her in a moment. Above her lofty grave the desert storm raved exultingly.

* * * * *

For decades the beautiful corpse lay undisturbed, unprofaned, until that ever-changing architect, the wind, gradually removed the sand-hill and, one stormy night, at last blew it away entirely.

Just at that time a pious hermit, one of the desert monks who begged his scanty fare in Decimum and carried it to his sand cave, passed along. Often and often he had come that way; the hurricane had bared the skeleton only the day before. The old man stood before it, thoughtful. The little dazzlingly white bones were so dainty, so delicate, as if fashioned by an artist's hand; the garments, like the flesh, had long been completely consumed by the trickling moisture; but the lofty sand ridge had faithfully kept its beautiful secret, not a bone was missing. For a human generation the dry sand of the desert, though garments and flesh had gone to decay, had preserved uninjured the outlines of the figure as it had been pressed into the sand under the heavy weight. One could see that the buried girl had tried to protect eyes and mouth with her right hand; the left lay in a graceful attitude across her breast; her face was turned toward the ground.

"Who were you, dainty child, that found a solitary death here?" said the holy man, deeply touched. "For there is no trace of a companion near. A child, or a girl just entering maidenhood? But, at any rate, a Christian--no Moor; here on her neck, fastened by a silver chain, is a gold cross. And beside it a strange ornament,--a bronze half-circle with characters inscribed on it, not Latin, Greek, nor Hebrew. No matter. The girl's bones shall not remain scattered in the desert. The Christian shall sleep in consecrated ground. The peasants must help me to bury her here or in the neighborhood."

He went to Decimum. The traces of the Vandal battle had long since vanished. The village children who had then fled were now grown men, the owners of the houses and fields. The peasant to whom the hermit related his touching discovery listened attentively. But when the latter spoke of the bronze half-circle with the singular characters, he interrupted him, exclaiming:

"Strange! In the hill-tomb, the great stone vault outside of our village,--I own the hill, and vines grow on the southern slope,--there lies, according to trustworthy tradition, a Vandal boy-prince who fell here, and beside him a mighty warrior, a terrible giant, who is said to have remained faithfully by his side. The priests say he was a monster, a god of thunder, one of the old pagan gods of the Barbarians, with whose fall fortune deserted them. Well, the giant has hanging on his arm a half-circle exactly like the one you describe. Perhaps the two belonged together? Who knows? We cannot dig a grave in the desert; even if we try, the wind will blow it away. Come, I'll harness the horses to my wagon; we will go out to the dead woman and lay her beside the giant; his grave has already been consecrated by the priests."

This was done. But when they had placed the delicate form beside the mighty one, and the monk had muttered a prayer, he asked: "Tell me, friend,--I saw with joyful surprise that you had left all the ornaments upon the dead; and that you should receive nothing for your trouble with the poor girl's skeleton is not exactly--"

"Peasant custom, do you mean? You are right, holy father. But you see. King Gelimer, who once reigned here, enjoined upon my father after the battle to take faithful care of the graves; he was to keep them as if they were a sanctuary until Gelimer should return and carry the bodies to Carthage. King Gelimer never returned to Decimum. But my father, on his deathbed, committed the care of this tomb to me; and so shall I, before I die, to the curly-headed boy who helped us to carry the little skeleton. For King Gelimer was kind to every one,--to us Romans, too,--and had done my father many a favor in the days of the Vandals. Already many say he was no man, but a demon,--a wicked one, according to some, a good one, most declare. But, man or demon, good he certainly was; for my father has often praised him."

So little Eugenia at last reached her hero's side.