CHAPTER XI.
The usual good luck of the Prefect did not desert him. The weather changed again. On the morning of the day after his last conversation with Narses, the sun rose splendidly over the blue and sparkling bay, and hundreds of small fishing-boats set out to take advantage of the favourable weather.
Syphax, yielding his place at the threshold of his master's tent to the four Isaurians, who alone had remained behind their comrades, had disappeared at the first approach of dawn.
When Cethegus had taken his morning bath in an adjoining tent, and was returning to his breakfast, he heard Syphax making a great noise as he approached through the lines of tents.
"No!" he was shouting; "this fish is for the Prefect. I have paid for it in hard cash. The great Narses will not wish to eat other people's fish!"
And with these words he tore himself loose from Alboin, and from several Longobardians, as well as from a slave belonging to Narses, who were trying to detain him.
Cethegus stopped. He recognised the slave. It was the cook of the generally sick and always temperate general, whose art was scarcely practised except for his master's guests.
"Sir," the well-educated Greek said to the Prefect, in his native language, "do not blame me for this unseemly turmoil. What does a sea-mullet matter to me! But these long-bearded barbarians forced me to take possession, at any cost, of this fish-basket, which your slave was bringing from the boats."
A glance which Cethegus exchanged with Syphax sufficed. The Longobardian had not understood what had been said. Cethegus gave Syphax a blow on the cheek, and cried in Latin:
"Good-for-nothing, insolent slave! will you never learn manners? Shall not the sick general have the best there is?"