"Beware," replied the Tribune earnestly, "lest you should yourself be very ungrateful." But this did not suit the Roman's deeply offended vanity.
"Since you have now suddenly become--what shall I call it?--her guardian or defender against me--"
"I did not seek the position."
"Nor did you decline it. Then tell your ward my firm, resolute will: She must go with me to-morrow in one of Nannienus's galleys to the Emperor at Vindonissa, then to Burdigala. I will follow your advice: I will not go into the forests with you; grief, anger, too much excitement of many kinds, are making me ill--I feel it. First of all, I must obtain the dispensation from the Emperor to permit me, a Senator, to marry my freedwoman. That is now the thing nearest to my heart. And please see that it is clear to her, perfectly clear, that she has obtained no legal right whatever from my words spoken yesterday about liberation. You remarked at the time, very justly, that my words did not make her free: the form required by law was lacking. The words were merely a promise. If I choose, she is still my slave, but no longer yours, tell her that. In Burdigala, after she has tasted Roman life, let her choose which she would prefer: to become the Consul's wife, or be his slave and a she-bear's playmate. I cannot force her to wed me, but tell her that I will never permit her to return to her Barbarian land."
Saturninus would have tried to soothe the excited man, but a loud signal from the tubas summoned both leaders to the wall.
The Roman trumpets were joyously greeting the galleys under the command of Nannienus which, with all their canvas spread to catch the southeast wind, came swiftly nearer and nearer. It was a proud and imposing spectacle.
After the gallant Comes of Britannia, himself a Breton skilled in sailing, had discovered the culpable neglect of the ships and the fraud of the guilty magistrates in Arbor, he had toiled night and day, ceaselessly and untiringly, that he might take to his friend and comrade, Saturninus, the ships and reënforcements on which his whole plan for the encircling and destruction or unconditional surrender of the Alemanni was based. So, in the course of these few days and nights, he had actually succeeded in putting the dilapidated ships into seaworthy condition; and, besides old trading vessels and fisher boats of the largest size, he had a number of new galleys built which, though by no means to be compared with the proud fleet of the Venetian or Brigantinian lake which, a century and a half before, had ruled these shores and waters, could yet render sufficient service in seeking out the hiding-places of the Barbarians along all three sides of the land, and intercepting any flight they might attempt across the lake from the Tribune.
Nannienus's twenty high-decked ships of war, when not lying at anchor but fighting at full speed, would sink, by the mere weight of their shock, when driven by oars and sails, whole swarms of the little Barbarian boats, if they had the temerity to attack them. And to each of these large ships he had assigned two or three smaller flat-decked, shallow boats, to land provisions and troops and facilitate intercourse between the biremes (which required considerable depth of water when they lay at anchor) and the shore, often bordered for a considerable distance by marshes.
Probably more than sixty sail now appeared, in the full radiance of the most brilliant September sunshine, opposite to the Idisenhang, some at anchor, some in an unbroken chain forming a sort of bridge of boats from the place of anchorage to the shore.
The various forms of the sails (for in the pressure of haste all sorts of Barbarian ones had been added to the triangular Latin form of the Romans--ancient Celtic used on the lake from primeval days, and Alemannic) and their motley colors, principally dazzlingly white, but many deep yellow, gleaming in the sunlight, swelled by the fresh breeze; the surging, swarming life of the soldiers thronging from the ships to the shore, and from the shore to the ships; the greetings of old comrades; the joyful recognition of what had been accomplished in Arbor; the threatening outcries against the Barbarians, who must now be thoroughly extirpated--the whole presented a scene full of splendor, life, movement, and warlike uproar.