At the head rode Fara, Procopius, and the other leaders on horses and camels; in the centre were led the captive Vandals, bound, for the sake of precaution, hand and foot with chains which permitted walking and even riding, but not running, and surrounded by foot-soldiers; the Hun cavalry formed the rear. So, resting at night in tents, they slowly traversed in fourteen days the road over which, in their swift pursuit, they had gone in eight.
Verus usually rode alone; he avoided the Vandals, and the Byzantines shunned him.
On the second day after the departure from Mount Pappua,--Fara and Procopius were far in advance,--at a turn in the road, the priest checked his horse and waited. The prisoners approached. Many a fettered hand was raised against him, many a curse was called down on his head; he neither saw nor heard. At last, holding in his manacled right hand a staff that extended into a cross, Gelimer tottered forward on foot. Verus urged his horse through the ranks of the guards, and now rode close beside him; the prisoner looked up.
"You, Verus!"
He shuddered.
"Yes, I, Verus. I waited for you here--you and this hour,--this hour which at last has come, slowly, lingeringly; this hour for which I have wished, longed, labored by prayer, by counsel and action, for which alone I have lived, suffered, struggled during years and tens of years."
"And why, O Verus, why? What injury have I done you?"
Verus uttered a shrill laugh, and reined in his horse, stopping suddenly.
Gelimer started. He had rarely seen this man smile, never had he heard him laugh aloud.
"Why? Ha! ha! You can still ask? Why? Because--But to answer this question I should have to repeat the whole story of our--the Romans', the Catholics'--sufferings from the first step which Genseric took upon this soil. Why? Because I am the avenger, the requiter of the hundred years of crime called 'the Vandal kingdom in Africa.' Hear it, ye saints in Heaven! This man--he was present when all my kindred were horribly murdered, and he asks why I have hated and, so far as I had power, destroyed him and his people?"