The Scarlet Banner

by Felix Dahn

The council of war closed. Belisarius's will was carried out.

We brought the horses, weapons, baggage, and implements of war to land. About fourteen thousand soldiers and nineteen thousand sailors began to shovel, to dig, to drive stakes into the hot, dry sand; the General not only threw out the first spadeful, but, working uninterruptedly, the last. His perspiration abundantly bedewed the soil of Africa, and the men were so spurred by his example that they vied with each other valiantly. Before night closed in, the ditch, the wall, and the palisade were completed around the entire camp. Only one-fifth of the archers spent the night on the ships.

So far all was well. Our galleys still contained an ample store of provisions, thanks to the hospitality of the Ostrogoths in Sicily. These simpletons, by the learned Regent's command, almost gave us everything an army needs for man and horse (the troublesome Totila, who is no well-wisher of ours, was instantly recalled). In reply to our amazed questions, they answered, by the learned Cassiodorus's instructions: "You will pay us by avenging us upon the Vandals." Well, Justinian will reward them. I wonder if the scholar knows the fable of how the horse, because he hated the stag, carried the man upon his back and hunted the stag to death? The free animal had taken the man on his back for this ride only, but never again was he rid of his captor. But the water is giving out. What we have with us is scanty, foul, and putrid; and to march for days under the African sun with no water for men and beasts--how will it end?

* * * * *

I shall really soon believe that we are God's chosen favorites--we, the chaste-hearted warriors of Justinian the truthful and Theodora! Or have the Vandals and their King called down upon themselves the wrath of Heaven so heavily that miracles continually happen against these Barbarians and in our favor?

Yesterday evening we all, from the General to the camel, were in sore anxiety about water. To-day the slave Agnellus--he is a countryman of yours, O Cethegus, and the son of a fisherman from Stabiæ--brought to my tent whole amphoræ of the most delicious spring water, not only for drinking, but amply sufficient for bathing. With the last strokes of the spade our Herulians opened a large bubbling spring on the eastern edge of the camp--an unprecedented thing in the Byzacena province, between the sea and the "desert,"--so the people here call all the country southwest of the great road along which we are marching, and surely quite unjustly, for some of it is very fertile; yet it is old desert ground and often merges imperceptibly into the real wilderness. At any rate, this spring gushed forth for us from the surrounding dry sand. The stream of water is so abundant that men and animals can drink, boil, and bathe, pour out the foul water from the ships, and replace it with the best. I hastened to Belisarius and congratulated him, not only because of the actual usefulness of this discovery, but because it is an omen of victory. "Water gushes out of the wilderness for you. General," I exclaimed. "That means an effortless victory. You are the favorite of Heaven." He smiled. We always like to hear such things.

* * * * *

Belisarius commissioned me to compose an order to be read aloud at the departure of each body of troops.

A few dozen of our precious Huns dashed out into the country and seized some of the harvests just ripening in the fields, over which they became involved in a discussion with the Roman colonists. As the Huns, unfortunately, speak their Latin only with leather whips and lance-thrusts, there were several dead men after the conference,--of course only on the side of the wicked peasants, who would not let the horses of the Huns eat their fill of their best grain. Our beloved Huns cut off the heads of the men whom they had thus happily liberated from the Vandal yoke, hung them to their saddles, and brought them to the General for a dessert. Belisarius foamed with rage. He often foams; and when Belisarius lightens, Procopius must usually thunder.

So it was now. So I wrote a proclamation that we were the saviors, liberators, and benefactors of the provincials, and therefore would neither consider their best grain-fields as litter for our horses nor play ball with their heads. "In this case," I wrote convincingly, "such conduct is not only criminal, but extremely stupid. Our little body of troops could venture to land only because we expect that the inhabitants of the provinces will be hostile to the Vandals and helpful to us." But I appealed to our heroes still more impressively, addressing not their honor or their conscience, but their stomachs! "If ye die of hunger, O admirable men," I wrote, "the peasants will bring us nothing to eat. If ye kill them, the dead will sell you nothing more and the living almost less. You will drive the provincials to be the allies of the Vandals--to say nothing of God and His opinion of you, which is already somewhat clouded. So spare the people, at least for the present, or they will discover too early that Belisarius's Huns are worse than Gelimer's Vandals. When the Emperor's tax-officers once rule the land, then, dear descendants of Attila, you will no longer need to impose any constraint upon yourselves; then the 'liberated' will have already learned to estimate their freedom. You cannot go as far as Justinian's tax-collectors, beloved Huns and robbers." The proclamation was of that purport, only dressed in somewhat fairer words. We are marching forward. No sign of the Barbarians. Where are they hiding? Where is this King of the Vandals dreaming? If he does not wake soon, he will find himself without a kingdom.