‘Oh, hear us, my father! Why not go to Euodius? He is your old comrade—a well-wisher, too, to this.... this expedition.... And recollect, Augustine must be there now. He was about to sail for Berenice, in order to consult Synesius and the Pentapolitan bishops, when we left Carthage.’
And at the name of Augustine the old man paused.
‘Augustine will be there; true. And this our friend must meet him. And thus at least I should have his advice. If he thinks it my duty to return to Carthage, I can but do so, after all. But the soldiers!’
‘Excellent sir,’ said Raphael, ‘Synesius and the Pentapolitan landlords—who can hardly call their lives their own, thanks to the Moors—will be glad enough to feed and pay them, or any other brave fellows with arms in their hands, at this moment. And my friend Victorius, here, will enjoy, I do not doubt, a little wild campaigning against marauding blackamoors.’
The old man bowed silently. The battle was won.
The young tribune, who had been watching his father’s face with the most intense anxiety caught at the gesture, and hurrying forward, announced the change of plan to the soldiery. It was greeted with a shout of joy, and in another five minutes the sails were about, the rudder shifted, and the ship on her way towards the western point of Sicily, before a steady north-west breeze.
‘Ah!’ cried Victoria, delighted. ‘And now you will see Augustine! You must promise me to talk to him!’
‘This, at least, I will promise, that whatsoever the great sophist shall be pleased to say, shall meet with a patient hearing from a brother sophist. Do not be angry at the term. Recollect that I am somewhat tired, like my ancestor Solomon, of wisdom and wise men, having found it only too like madness and folly. And you cannot surely expect me to believe in man, while I do not yet believe in God?’
Victoria sighed. ‘I will not believe you. Why always pretend to be worse than you are?’
‘That kind souls like you may be spared the pain of finding me worse than I seem.... There, let us say no more; except that I heartily wish that you would hate me!’