Belisarius was complaining he knew too little of the enemy. So he sent one of the best men of his body-guard, Diogenes, towards the southwest to obtain news. He and his men spent the night in a village. The peasants swore that there was not a Vandal within two days' march. Our heroes slept in the best house,--it belonged to the villicus,--in the second story; of course they had first been a long time under the lower story, that is, in the cellar. They posted no sentinels, certainly not; they are the liberators of the peasants. The fact that they had just drunk all the wine contained in all the amphoræ in the village, killed the people's cattle, embraced their wives, had nothing to do with the matter. Peasants must expect such things.
Soon they were all snoring, Diogenes in the lead. Night fell. The peasants quickly brought the Vandals,--from the immediate neighborhood,--who surrounded the house. But Saint Cyprian is stronger than the heaviest drunken sleep. He caused a sword to drop on a metal shield below; it waked--this is a miracle in which I believe, for no mortal could accomplish it--it waked one of the sleepers. Under cover of the darkness most of the men succeeded in escaping; Diogenes came back, too--with three wounds in his face and neck, minus the little finger of his sword-hand, and without a single piece of useful information.
* * * * *
The Goddess Tyche is blowing badly. The Vandal fleet has not yet run into Carthage to its destruction.
* * * * *
The Tyrant seems to have roused his army from its stupor. Our outposts, horsemen whom we send forth around the city, report: "Vast clouds of dust are rising in the southwest, which can be caused only by an approaching army."
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No Zazo. Has he, in spite of the capture of that letter, received warning and chosen another landing-place? The Vandals were undoubtedly hidden in that cloud of dust. Our Herulians have captured a few peasants; we have already perceived in this almost liberated Africa that the peasants must be captured by their deliverers, if we wish to get sight of them. They seek refuge with the Barbarians from liberty. The prisoners say that the King himself is marching against us. He ordered a Vandal noble who had stolen a colonist's wife to be hanged on the high door of the colonist's house. And this nobleman's shieldbearer, who had taken two of the colonist's geese, to be hanged on the low stable door, beside his master. Strange, is it not? But it pleases the peasants. "Equalizing justice," Aristoteles calls it. This wonderful Vandal hero must surely have studied philosophy, as well as the art of throwing spears.
Belisarius has sent an urgent warning to Constantinople concerning the long-delayed pay of the Huns. They are growing troublesome. It is now six months since we left the city; December has come. Desert storms sweep over Carthage to the leaden-hued sea, which long since lost its beautiful blue. The Huns are threatening to leave the service. They excuse their pillaging on the ground that the citizens of Carthage and the peasants will trust neither them nor the Emperor (in which they are not wrong). We cannot pay with money lying in Constantinople, they say. To-day a ship arrived from there, but did not bring a single solidus in money. There were, however, thirty tax-collectors, and a command to send the first taxes from the conquered province.
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