Hippias was not lacking in a certain rough courtesy of the camp. He advanced to the new-comer, bade him welcome as a stranger, and inquired the cause of his visit; “for,” said he, “judging by your looks, O my father! it can scarcely be a mission connected either with me or my disciples here, whose trade, you may observe, is war.”
“I too am a soldier,” answered Calchas quietly, looking the astonished fencing-master full in the face. The gladiators had by this time gathered round; like schoolboys at play they were ripe for mischief, and, like schoolboys, it needed but the merest trifle to urge them into any extreme, either of good or evil.
“A soldier!” exclaimed Euchenor, “then you fear not steel!”—at the same moment he snatched a short two-edged sword from the wall, and delivered a thrust with it full at the old man’s breast. Calchas moved not a muscle; his colour neither rose nor fell; his eyelash never quivered as he looked steadily at the Greek, who probably only intended a brutal jest, and cared but little how dangerous might be its result. The point had reached the folds of the visitor’s gown, when Rufus dashed it aside with his hand, while Hippias dealt the offender a buffet, which sent him reeling to the opposite wall.
“What now?” exclaimed the professor, in a tone with [pg 137]which a man rates a disobedient hound. “What now? Am I not master here?”
The others looked on approvingly. The jest was well suited to their habits. They were amused at the discomfiture of the Greek, and pleased with the coolness shown by an old man of such unwarlike exterior. Esca, however, strode up to his friend’s side, and glared about him in a manner that boded no good to the originator of any more such aggressions, either in sport or earnest.
“Thou hast hurt the youth,” remarked Calchas, in as unmoved a tone as would have become the fiercest gladiator of the school. “Thou hast hurt him, and he was but in jest after all. In truth, Hippias, I have not seen so goodly a buffet dealt since I came to Rome. That arm of thine can strike to some purpose, and thy pupils are, like their master, brave, and strong, and skilful. I have heard of the legion called Invincible, surely I have found it here. My sons, are you not the Invincibles?”
He spoke so quietly they knew not whether he was jesting with them; but the flattering title tickled their ears pleasantly enough, and the gladiators crowded round him, with shouts of encouragement and mirth.
“Invincibles!” they laughed. “Invincibles! Well said, old man! yes, we are the Invincibles. Who can stand against the Family? Hast come to join us? We shall have plenty of space in the ranks ere another moon be old.”
“Give him a sword, one of you!” exclaimed Rufus; “let us see what he can do with Lutorius. The Gaul has had a bellyful already; press him, old man, and he must go down!”
“Nay, let him have a bout with the wooden foils,” laughed Hirpinus. “He is but young and tender. He would sicken at the sight of blood.”