The handsome young ambassador was a most courtly knight. He threw himself upon one knee to receive the tendered gift. While he received the shield with one hand he raised the other to heaven in an invocation.
“May the great god Jupiter destroy me with his thunderbolts, if ever I should part from this most sacred shield, or should I ever harm a hair of the head of the most gracious and lovely lady who hath bestowed it upon me.”
He kissed Elissa’s hand, then rising and holding the shield with all honour, as though it were an offering consecrated to the gods, Marcus Æmilius bore it with him to his cabin.
Meanwhile, the little sharks were still tearing the big shark to pieces, and, as the monster writhed about in its agony, the rays of the sun were frequently brilliantly reflected from Elissa’s sword blade fixed upright in the midst of its horrible fangs. But even as Æmilius disappeared from view, bearing her shield, so with a last convulsive struggle did the monster sink, followed by its tormentors.
Elissa accepted this as a good omen, a sign that her own troubles were buried for ever with her sword at the bottom of the sea. And she felt happier and altogether more womanly now that she had thus divested herself of her arms and armour.
The voyage was a long one, owing to the adverse breezes, which made the crossing of the southern part of the Adriatic impossible for a time; but at length, the wind changing, the ships were able to issue from the Grecian land-locked harbour, where they were lying, and pass swiftly across to the entrance of the Tarentine Gulf, situated between the Iapygian and Bruttian promontories, which form, as it were, respectively the heel and the toe of the south of Italy.
As the ships sailed in, the day being remarkably clear, Æmilius pointed out to Elissa and Cleandra something white glistening on the hill-tops to the far west across the gulf. This, he informed them, was the celebrated temple of Juno Lacinia, which was held most sacred by all, and especially by seamen, as it formed a landmark for them to steer by. What neither Æmilius nor Elissa knew, however, was that Hannibal her father was at that very time encamped with his forces in the sacred groves and parks surrounding the temple. For he had made of that spot, known as the Lacinian Promontory, his head-quarters.
Although some Carthaginian vessels were sighted in the distance, and Æmilius had some anxiety in consequence, he managed to elude them, and to arrive with his three ships safely within the harbour of Tarentum. Before entering the harbour, a great part of the town had been passed, and Elissa noticed that it had a miserable and deserted look. This was not surprising, for, upon its recent delivery by treachery to the Romans, thirty thousand of its Greek inhabitants had been sold into slavery, while all its Bruttian inhabitants had been massacred. Moreover, all the famous statues and works of art in the city had been taken away to Rome.
CHAPTER II.
ELISSA WRITES TO SCIPIO.
When the three Roman warships were safe within the shelter of the harbour, the entrance to which was completely dominated by the citadel, now full of Roman soldiers, the first thing that was pointed out to Elissa was the place where her father Hannibal had, by night, some years previously, withdrawn the Tarentine fleet from the waters and conveyed the whole of the ships on wheels and rollers across the isthmus into the open seas without. At the same time Æmilius dwelt with pride upon the fact that, although Hannibal had entered the town by the treachery of two of its inhabitants to Rome, and eventually lost it again by the treachery of its commander to Carthage, yet had her father never been able to capture the citadel, notwithstanding his several years’ occupation of the city.