“Why not leave it? For a hundred reasons. In the first place, I should be more wearied of every other. I should be the bird in the cage, fed, sheltered, and possibly a favorite. But what bird would not rather take the chance of the open air, even to be scorched by the summer and frozen by the winter? No; let me clap my pinions and sing my song under the free canopy of the skies, or be voiceless, and wingless, and—dead.”
“Boy, this is the natural language of your years. But the time must come when the spirit sinks and man requires other charms in life than the power of roaming.”
He hung his head over the harp and let his fingers stray among the strings. The moon was now touching the mountains.
“We must begone,” said I. “I owe you something for your night’s service, which shall be repaid by taking you into my household should the siege be raised; if not, you are but as you were.”
He was all nervous excitement at the offer—wept, laughed, danced, played a prelude upon the strings, kissed my hand, and finally bounded away before me. I called to him, repeating my wish that he should go no farther.
The Minstrel Guide
“Impossible,” said he; “you would be lost in a moment. If I had not crossed the ground hundreds of times, I should never be able to find my road. Half a mile forward it is all rampart, trench, and ravine. You would be stopped by a myriad of sentinels. Nothing on earth could get to the foot of yonder hills, but an army—or a minstrel.”
He ran on before me, and ran with a rapidity that tasked even my foot to follow. We soon came into the fortified ground, and I then felt his value. He led me over fosse and rampart, up the scarp and through the palisade, with the sagacity of instinct. But this was not all. I repeatedly saw the sentinels within a few feet of us, and expected to be challenged every moment, but not a syllable was heard. I passed with patrols of the legionary horse on either side of me; still not a word. I walked through the rows of tents, in which the troops were preparing for the duties of the morning. Not an eye fell upon me, and I almost began to believe myself, like a hero of the heathen fables, covered with a cloud.
Salathiel’s New Captors
The boy still continued racing along, until, on reaching the summit of a mound at some distance in front of me, he uttered a cry and fell. I had heard no challenge, and hurried toward him. A flight of arrows whizzed over my head, and the black visages of a mob of Ethiopian riders[51] came bounding up a hollow between us. It was not my purpose to fight, even if I had any hope of success against marksmen who could hit an elephant’s eye. I surrendered in every language of which I was capable. But the Ethiopians only shook their woolly heads, laid hands on me, and began an investigation of my riches creditable to polished society. Barbarians, with a tongue and physiognomy worthy only of their kindred baboons, probed every plait of my garments, with an accuracy that could have been surpassed only in the most civilized custom-houses of the empire. A succession of shrieks, which I mistook for rage, but which were the mirth of those sons of darkness, were the prelude to measures which augured more formidable consequences. A rope was thrown over my arms, and I was led toward the outposts.