"If you only remain right, Ausonius!" said the Illyrian hesitatingly. "Yet at the moment it really does appear so. Up, give the signal with the tubas: Forward! We will pitch our camp for the night on that height, and the land of the Alemanni will be defenceless before us."
CHAPTER III.
As we have seen, the Romans were still ignorant whether the Barbarians were aware of the bands approaching simultaneously from several directions to menace the inhabitants of the forest with destruction. Preparations had been made so secretly that the commanders believed it possible to take the foe completely by surprise. For weeks not a German had been allowed to pass the guards on the very outermost line of Roman territory, which, it is true, had been greatly diminished in the course of the last three or four generations. The right of traffic at the stations on the southern shore had been withdrawn a still longer time, on the pretext of alleged violations of the conditions of such intercourse. Roman traders had not ventured recently within the precincts occupied by neighbors who were justly irritated by such severity.
The sentinels on the frontier reported that nothing unusual could be seen from the watch towers. The people went about their work in field and forest as usual, tended their numerous flocks, hunted or fished; apparently they thought neither of defence nor flight.
Once, it is true, one of the speculæ reported that, late one night, a fire had suddenly blazed upon a mountain peak probably several miles from the lake and, after a short interval, as suddenly vanished. The Alemanni called the towering height, whose summit was visible for many a mile, the Sacred Mountain, the Holy Mountain, and Odin's Mountain, and the name has clung to it tenaciously. True, in later times the "sacred" related to Christian consecration; but at the present day the stately castle on that majestic height bears the title of Heiligenberg. On the spot where Odin's ash-trees then rustled, the breeze now sweeps across the flower-beds of a beautiful garden.
The report was unheeded. Forest fires, even at night, were not unusual among the Germans, who in their labor of clearing the ground often required, in the place of the axe, the aid of the swifter flame. During the next few days also everything remained quiet.
On the morning after that night--it was a few days prior to the Romans' march across the height of Meersburg, already described--a youth emerged from the dense woods stretching for miles in a northwesterly direction toward the Holy Mountain, a youth whose figure was as straight, tall, and slender as a young pine. The hood of lynx-skin fluttering from his shoulders like a short cloak did not confine his long fair locks, which fell in waves upon his shoulders, waves with which the morning breeze played caressingly, as the youth stopped on the crest of a low grassy hill that afforded a view of the lake.
Resting his right arm upon the oak handle of his spear, he leaned forward, shading his eyes with his left hand from the glare of the sunbeams on the smooth surface of the water, as he gazed intently toward the southern shore. It was an eagle glance, proud, bold, and keen, and the color of the eye was a light golden brown.
The red-tiled roofs of the Roman watchtowers and citadels opposite in Arbon and the other stations (Constantia, etc.) shone brightly in the morning sunlight. The utmost repose pervaded the whole scene. Neither sail nor row-boat was visible: a huge kite, with an occasional stroke of its broad pinions, was soaring in wide circles above the shallows near the shore.
The young German turned his eyes in the direction of the gently rising ground before him northwest of Friedrichshafen, now occupied by the village of Jettenhausen. At that time the land had been cleared and brought under cultivation. The hill was crowned by a stately wooden structure, surrounded by a fence built breast-high for purposes of defence; a pair of superb antlers adorned the ridge-pole. From the main building itself and a small one adjoining it smoke circled upward through holes in the roof: the inmates were doubtless preparing the morning meal.