"Well," he said, "you must have your own way. If you should come back—very few do come back, I am told—and I am still alive, you will find me as ready to be your friend as ever. Meanwhile let us do what we can for you. The queen tells me that you have brought your wives that are to be with you. Let us have the honour of providing your marriage feast, and remain with us afterwards for as long as you like and may find convenient. If you are bent on this wild voyage of yours you must go prepared."
The friends gladly accepted this hospitable invitation. Preparations were at once commenced for performing the marriage ceremonies with due solemnity. While these were going on, Cleanor made his way to the coast to find a captain and crew who would be willing to take part in his adventure.
His first care was to discover Syphax, the old sailor with whom, as you may remember, he had made his voyage to Sicily. The old man listened with eager interest to his exposition of his plans, but shook his head when the question whether he would go was put to him.
"Ah!" he said, "if you had only come to me with this scheme twenty years ago! But what am I saying? old fool that I am! Twenty years ago you were little more than a baby in arms. I mean that I am too old. I am not fit for anything more now than pottering about with my fishing-lines. And there is my old wife. She couldn't go, poor thing; she hasn't set her foot outside the hut for the last ten years, and I certainly could not go without her. But there's my son Mago. He can't settle down in the new state of things, for Rome is likely to be a much harder master than Carthage ever was. Mago is your man; let me send for him."
Mago came, and Cleanor talked his plans over with him, and found him all that he wanted. The general scheme, and such particulars as the capacity of the vessel required, the stores, the cargo of articles for trade with native tribes, were settled between them, and Mago was left to carry out the details, while Cleanor returned to the court of King Gulussa.
Two months later,—for I shall not weary my readers with describing the marriage festivities,—the good ship Pallas lay ready for sea in the harbour of Utica. The piers and quays were filled with a dense crowd of spectators, for the fame of this adventurous voyage had spread through the city, and brought together a multitude of curious sight-seers. Loud and hearty were the cheers that went up as a soft breeze from the east slowly filled the sails, and the Pallas—her prow appropriately adorned with the figure of the goddess friend of Ulysses, prince of adventurous heroes—forged her way round the end of the western pier and shaped a course towards the setting sun.
Sail on, swift ship, to the region that lies beyond the darkness of the west. You leave behind you a world over which the shadows of civil strife and desolating war are gathering. Who knows what lies before you—Islands of the Blest, where nature smiles for ever, her fair face untouched by frost or storm, and where man still keeps primeval faith and innocence; or, perhaps, to a world that is but a meaner copy of that from which you are fleeing? Yet sail on, happy at least for the hour that is, in the unfaltering confidence of youth and hope.
[NOTE.]
I have departed, for convenience sake in the construction of my story, from historical truth in the date of Masinissa's death. This took place before the beginning of the Third Punic War. For the same reason, the Macedonian pretender is postdated. He had certainly disappeared from the scene before the autumn immediately preceding the fall of Carthage (when my hero is supposed to visit him).