Most profitable had been my voyage, the winds were with me on the return, and I was full of the joy of the thought of the welcome which awaited me, when, one afternoon, a sail showed far in our front and swiftly nearing us, which I soon recognized as that of Marinus, captain and trader like myself and one of my closest and most sturdy friends. Soon he made signals that we should check our course, and then was rowed aboard us. His aspect was black and ominous.
“Strain every sail!” was all he said when first he spoke.
Then came the hideous story! How or when he knew not, but my wife had passed under the grim spell of the priesthood, especially under that of Phalos, the high priest, a man overbearing and ruthless and ambitious. Counting on my absence, and of the force which might be raised to face me and my allies on my return, my only one, the man-child of my heart, was to be made a sacrifice to Moloch on the morrow, and so the too truculent and irreligious captains be taught, through me, a needed lesson! Swiftly as he might, Marinus, trusty friend, had put to sea to warn me, and now he would sail back with me to aid me in what might come.
I answered not. I could but grasp his hand. At last my voice came and then but broke forth in a bellow to spread every sail and man every oar and drive forward the ship as never ship was driven before! How they sprang to do my will! What look of deadly import came upon the faces of Malchus and Aradnus! Marinus departed for his own ship, to follow in our course.
What sudden freedom and happiness must not madness sometimes bring! How good to change, relieved from agony of mind, into unknowing, babbling forgetfulness! But no kindly madness came to me in those long hours when the ship, though so forced upon her way that Marinus was left behind, yet seemed to me to only creep along the hindering waves. So passed the long night; sullenly through it all I could hold converse with none, though my companions would comfort me in my affliction and so sought, in vain. With morning the wind still held us, and with mid-afternoon we entered the harbour of fair Paphos. Even as we swung inward a boat darted forth from the land bringing a messenger from another of the captains—for my vessel had been awaited by my friends as Marinus had arranged. Then fell the blow! Now, even now, the rites in the great temple were in progress and my child about to be offered as the sacrifice!
Then, with need so ghastly, the better gods gave back my reasoning strength. We would invade the temple and would make a rescue, if it were within the power of man. I took swift and stern command anew. I would lead with Malchus and Aradnus next and a portion of my crew as well, the others remaining to hold the ship in instant readiness for sailing. It was the counsel of the wise Aradnus that, should the child be saved, we should sail at once for Egypt, where were a host of friends, and where priests of Baal had sometimes been flayed alive. I looked upon my brown-faced crew and knew that I could trust them, even the sun-burnt galley slaves. How many times had all these ranged dangerously beside me in times of struggle with the savages! I took from my weapon chest a certain Assyrian axe I cherished, short-hafted but broad and keen of edge and heavy. I kissed the axe and laid it against my cheek and then thrust it in the bosom of my tunic. We landed swiftly and rushed toward the temple. Vast was the throng about the structure, and inside I knew must be as dense, save for the great open space before the place of sacrifice. Wedge-shaped we struck the heaving mass and drove through it as wild boars through reeds, straight past the entrance, even to the inner circle of the mad worshippers, and, as I leaped clear of them, my eyes were smitten with the whole dread picture! There, before the altar and the beastly red-heated image of the leering god, side by side stood Elissa and Phalos, the grim high priest, he stern in his power so manifested, she proud and erect as she passed my child into his waiting hands. How a blasting picture can transform a man!
In all the world of living men there was not another then so strong as I; in all the wastes and desert places of the vast forests there was not a wild beast more ferocious; in all the earth or in the heavens above there was no being with more swift and certain mission! I bounded across the space between us, leaping to Phalos even as he took the child and was about to face the grinning idol, and then, as he turned at my hoarse shout and our eyes met glaringly, I drove that Assyrian axe down through that head, down through that crafty brain, down sheer between the hating eyes, and, as I caught the child, he fell crumplingly as any poled bull of one of his own sacrifices! I saw but as an instant’s vision Elissa sink to earth in a white swoon, and bounded with my child toward the entrance where the fray was raging, while about and behind me rose first the groan and then the yell of vengeance of the frenzied worshippers. Naught for the moment checked me with my circling axe seeking more blood. I reached nearly to my followers, so near to Aradnus that I tossed the child to him over the intervening heads and had the joy of seeing him, upon my shout, bound away with it toward our vessel and so preserve its safety. Nearer and nearer to my own men I struggled, but I could not reach them. The fierce guards of the priest were all about me now and a thousand of the mob were crowding savagely behind them. I felt a spear thrust in my side, and then another, and so went down most happily. My man-child would become a man in Egypt!
CHAPTER XIII
THE HERCYNIAN FOREST
What it was which had changed the nature of my dream so suddenly I could not understand at first. Most curious fancies had come to me, visions of what I had certainly never seen in all my hunting and battling, but which were familiar enough to me and comprehensible, until I awoke. There were boats with broad sails, though little of the sea had we of the great forest ever looked upon, and there were cities beside which our villages were but as the swamp villages of the ever-toiling beaver. There was conflict, as well, yet that, I thought, did not surpass in quality the manner of our own fierce battling, for we were fighters of some zest.
I had been aroused by sounds quite apart from those which had come to my fancy with sleep on the heaped leaves beneath the beech tree. Most unlike either the sounds of the sea or of rude conflict were those which reached my ears as I came slowly to a sense of wakening being; they were of a kind all their own and having a quality much too significant and close and threatening. It was a snuffling, blowing sound which first aroused me as I lay with my eyes still closed, and at last a grunting and snort and rumble which was half a bellow, and a harsh pawing of the leaves and earth. My eyes opened most suddenly, and what they saw brought a feeling in the middle of me which was most uncomfortable. Within a yard of me, his head lowered, his nostrils quivering and his eyes gleaming, pawing the ground in what was fast becoming a rage at the thing before him, stood braced a monster aurochs! The aurochs was most enormous of all the beasts we knew and, when enraged, by far most to be dreaded, unless, it might be, the huge brown bear, though the bear himself never dared face the aurochs. Here was a situation for a man to awaken to, but after the first moment I was not alarmed. I knew the nature of the aurochs well. Had he been in pursuit of me, wounded, perhaps, by spear or arrow, nothing could have turned the monster from his wrath, but here the case was different. The beast had come upon me but by merest chance and, advancing only in curiosity upon this thing lying prone, had encountered the dreaded man-smell and had been so roused. I knew my need. I sprang to my feet with arms outflung, emitting a most unnatural and blood-curdling roar, and, even as I leaped, the startled brute, leviathan though he was, whirled as on a pivot with a hoarse bellow which was rather a bleat of fear, and went crashing into the forest whence I could hear the crackling of the bushes hundreds of yards away.