I always say so. The most weighty decisions hinge upon the most trivial incidents. Or, as I express it when I am in a very poetical mood, the goddess Tyche likes to sport with the destinies of men and nations, as boys toss coins in the air and determine gain and loss by "heads" or "tails."
You, O Cethegus, have condemned my philosophy of the world's history as old wives' croaking. But judge for yourself. A bird's cry, a blind delight in hunting, a shot sent to the wrong mark, and the result is this: the Vandal King escapes when already within the grasp of our fingers; the campaign, which seemed ended, continues, and your friend must spend weeks in an extremely tiresome besieging camp before an extremely unnecessary Moorish mountain village.
Belisarius had committed the pursuit of the fugitive King to his countryman, the Thracian Althias. "I choose you," he said, "because I trust you above all others where swift, tireless action is needed. If you overtake the Vandal before he finds refuge, the war will be over tomorrow; if you permit him to escape, you will give us long-continued severe toil. Choose your own men, but do not take time to breathe by night or day until you seize the tyrant, dead or alive."
Althias blushed like a flattered girl. He took besides his Thracians several of the bodyguard and about a hundred Herulians under Fara. He asked me also to accompany him, less, probably, for the sake of my sword than my counsel. I willingly consented.
And now a flying chase, such as I had never imagined possible, began in the rear of the Vandals. Five days and five nights, almost without a pause, we pursued the fugitives; their hoofmarks and footprints in the sand of the desert were unmistakable. We gained on them more and more, so that on the fifth night we were sure of overtaking and stopping them the next day before they reached the protection of the mountain--Pappua, it is called.
But the capricious goddess did not wish to have Gelimer fall into the hands of Althias. Uliari, one of the Alemanni bodyguards of Belisarius, is a brave, strong man, but reckless, fond of drink like all Germans, and, like nearly all his countrymen, a passionate lover of the chase. He had been repeatedly punished because, while on the march, he pursued every animal that appeared. On the morning of the sixth day, just at sunrise, as we were remounting our horses after a short rest, Uliari saw a big vulture perched on a prickly bush about the height of a man, which rose alone from the desert plain. To seize his bow, snatch an arrow from the quiver, aim, and shoot was the work of a single instant. The cord twanged, the bird flew away, a cry rose. Althias, who had again dashed forward in advance of us all, fell from his horse, wounded in the back of the head under his helmet. Uliari, usually an unerring marksman, had not yet slept off his potations of the night before. Horrified by his deed, he set spurs to his horse and fled to the nearest village to seek sanctuary in its chapel.
But we were all trying to help the dying Althias, though he commanded us by signs to leave him to his fate and continue the pursuit. We could not bring ourselves to do it. Nay, when Fara and I, after our friend had died in our arms, wished to go on; his Thracians demanded with threats that the body should first be buried, otherwise the soul would be condemned to wail around the place until the Day of Judgment. So we dug a grave and interred the dead hero with every honor. These few hours decided Gelimer's escape; we could not make up the lost time. The fugitives reached their goal, the Pappua Mountains on the frontier of Numidia, whose steep, inaccessible peaks everywhere bristle with jagged rocks. The Moors who dwell here are bound to Gelimer by ties of loyalty and gratitude. An ancient city, Medenus, now a mere hamlet of a few huts on the northern crest of the mountain, received him and his train. To storm this narrow antelope path is impossible; a single man can bar the ascent with his shield. The Moors have scornfully rejected an offer of a large reward to deliver up the fugitives. So the watchword is "patience." We must pitch our tents at the foot of the mountain, bar all the outlets, and starve the people into a surrender.
That may occupy a great deal of time. And it is winter; the mountain peaks are often covered in the morning with a light snow, which, it is true, the sun soon melts when he breaks through the clouds. But he does not always break through. On the other hand, mist and rain continually penetrate the camel-skin coverings of our tents.
CHAPTER XVII
We are still encamped before the entrance of the mountain ravine of Pappua. We cannot get in; they cannot get out. I have seen a cat watch a mouse-hole a long time in the same way,--very tiresome for the cat. But if the hole has no other outlet, the little mouse finally either starves or runs into the cat's claws.