The Adventures of Captain Mago

CHAPTER XIX

BODMILCAR AGAIN

Some easy sailing carried us past both the eastern and western limits of Prydhayn and the Tin Islands, and brought us off the rocky shores of the archipelago of Ar-Mor, with its islands all perforated and undermined by the action of the waves. Hanno recognised nearly every locality.

"There," he said, pointing out one spot after another, "there is the island where I learnt to croak my little bit of Celtic; and that is the rock from which Jonah and I used to fish with bone-hooks; and over there is the island where the priestesses paint their faces blue and black for their religious mysteries. Whilst we were with them they wanted us to shave all our hair off our faces, with razors made of shells."

"They gave the same advice," said Himilco, "on the Tin Islands to Hannibal and Chamai, who came back to us one day with their beards gone and their chins as smooth as pebbles."

"I only wish," remarked Hannibal, "that they would do for Bodmilcar what we did for ourselves; only instead of a shell I should like to have a good sharp sword put across his throat."

The mention of Bodmilcar's name led Hanno to inquire whether we knew anything of him; and this led Hannibal to tell him how on the day of the ambush he had given him a thrust in his side, which had been, no doubt, severely wounded, but his people had succeeded in carrying him off.

"Never mind," exclaimed Chamai; "we are sure to have another chance."

"And then I trust," said Hanno, "it will fall to my lot to deal with him after his deserts."

"Unless I am beforehand with an arrow from my good bow," said a voice from the yard-arm high up in the air. Bichri and Dionysos were up there, playing with the monkey. Hanno laughed, and said that Bichri had been associated so long with the monkey that he was becoming a monkey himself, and was making Dionysos just as volatile. Without leaving his perch Bichri asked:

"Why should I not teach the boy the use of his limbs? and why should I not drill him to use a bow?"

"And why," added Hanno, "should you not teach him to read?"

"How can I," he said, "when I have never learnt myself? besides, reading will not help him to climb mountains, hunt wild goats, or put an arrow in a mark."

"You may learn some day," rejoined the scribe, "that a pen may be a surer and a sharper weapon than an arrow. Would you and Dionysos like to learn to read?"

Startled by the suggestion, the archer caught hold of a rope, and in an instant had slid down to Hanno's feet. Dionysos followed. The monkey flew up to the mast-head.

"To learn to read, did you say?"

"Yes," replied Hanno. "Let us make a compact; you shall teach me to shoot, and I will teach you both to read."

"Agreed!" cried Bichri, enthusiastically; "and I'll warrant that in a month you shall hit a mark no bigger than my hand at the ship's length."

And so the days passed on. Hanno taught Bichri and the young Phocian the alphabet. Himilco, as he piloted the vessel, kept up a perpetual howling over his compulsory abstinence; Chamai and Hannibal, when they were not yawning in idle listlessness, were generally playing at knuckle-bones; the two women gossipped contentedly in their cabin; and Jonah confided to Judge Gebal his dreams of future greatness.

In something more than six weeks we sighted the pillars of Melkarth, and shortly afterwards entered the harbour of Gades. The suffect, Ziba, and all our acquaintances had imagined that we had long since been drowned, and were loud in their congratulations on seeing us back again safe and well, and were full of surprise when I exhibited my magnificent cargo of tin and amber.

I inquired eagerly about Bodmilcar, but could only gather from the suffect's account that fragments of what were supposed to be his vessels had been picked up at the mouth of the Illiturgis, but that nothing whatever had been seen of his gaoul, so that the most probable conjecture I could form was that the scoundrel had been massacred in the interior of the country.

It cannot be denied that we had all been looking forward with much impatience for the opportunity of obtaining some decent food and drink. Himilco was really getting exhausted with his subsistence for so many months on a water diet; so that on reaching land I took the very earliest chance of allowing my men to go ashore, where, doubtless, they directed their steps only too quickly to the wine-shops. Before Jonah left the ship I observed that he had some shekels in his hand, and asked him if he would not put them in his purse.

"No," he said; "they will never be quite safe until I have changed them for wine, and put them into my inside."

Hanno, Chamai, and their sweethearts went with me to dinner at Ziba's house; Bichri and Dionysos wandered about the streets and gardens of the city; while Hannibal, who said that now that we had come to a civilised country he should wish his trumpeter to be a credit to his troop, carried off Jonah to buy him a proper tunic.

We had given up two days to recreation when, returning to the Ashtoreth, I met Himilco and Gisgo, both extremely excited, in company with a Phœnician sailor who was a stranger to me.

"Good news, captain!" shouted Himilco, as soon as he was within hearing; "good news! tidings of Bodmilcar!"

"Tell me, quick!" I answered impatiently.

"Well, you must know," said Himilco, who was anything but steady upon his legs, "we met this good man; he was thirsty and we were thirsty, and I treated him to a cup at a tavern, where he told us that he had escaped from Bodmilcar's ship."

"Leave your plagued thirst," I said; "go on, tell me what you know."

"Leave my thirst? no, no; it's my thirst will not leave me."

"Curse you!" I said, half-frantic with irritation; "tell me at once!"

"Give me time and I will tell you all that he told us in the tavern."

"Where's Bodmilcar? you drunken fool!" I roared, stamping with rage; and turning in despair to the sailor, said: "Tell me, my good man, where have you come from?"

"Come from?" echoed the irrepressible pilot; "why he has come with us; he has come from where we have been drinking."

My patience was exhausted, and I struck him a sharpish blow across the mouth, a hint that he took that he had better keep quiet.

According to what I could make out from the sailor's version of things, he had come from an unfrequented bay some 150 stadia to the south-east; that Bodmilcar had been there, at first with one gaoul, the Melkarth, but afterwards he had three galleys besides; that he had forced a number of the natives of Tarshish into his service; and that by some means he had collected a great body of criminals and deserters. He had himself, he said, been kidnapped by Bodmilcar, but had contrived to escape, and having made his way on foot along the coast, was now going to make his deposition before the naval suffect at Gades.

I inquired how long it was since he had run away from Bodmilcar, and whether he knew anything of Bodmilcar's movements. He replied that it was a week since he effected his escape, and that he knew that it was the Tyrian's intention to make for the country of the Rasennæ, and thence to proceed to Ionia.

Telling the man that I was returning to Tyre, I offered him a passage with me, if he liked, as one of my crew, to which he agreed with apparent pleasure; he not only assured me of his fidelity, but declared that nothing would gratify him more than to be able to avenge himself upon Bodmilcar.

On the third day after this, having thoroughly revictualled the ships, we set sail with our hearts all elated at the prospect of seeing our native shores. We sighted Calpe and Abyla, but the wind having freshened, we were obliged to beat to windward to enter the strait. Next evening I noticed a large galley sailing in the direction opposite to ourselves, and tried to hail her; but as the weather did not permit us to get near, I made Himilco take half-a-dozen sailors in one of the boats and row towards her; a circumstance that struck me was the extreme readiness with which the new sailor volunteered to take an oar.

The boat had not long pushed off before one of the crew rushed up to me with consternation written in his face, and exclaimed:

"Captain, we have sprung a leak!"

I lit a lamp, and in a minute was making my way down into the hold. Two sailors and one of the helmsmen followed. My heart sunk within me at what I saw. The water had not only got into the hold, but it was already knee-deep; worst of all, it was still rising rapidly. The sea was rough, and the ship was labouring hard against the wind. Unless the evil could be remedied, another quarter of an hour would see us at the bottom. Almost beside myself with agitation, I caught hold of a handspike and plunged it wildly about in every direction; the ill-tidings soon ran through the ship, and there was a general rush towards the hold, but I drove every one back, and suffered nobody to remain except the three men who had first come down with me, and young Dionysos, who had slipped in unobserved, and was paddling about in the water, which was up to his shoulders.

In the midst of my frantic endeavours to ascertain the position of the leak, my attention was arrested by voices above speaking hurriedly in a tone that indicated alarm, and I distinctly caught the names of Bodmilcar and the Melkarth. Almost at the same moment the man standing on the ladder to hold the lamp moved on one side to allow by-way for some one who flew, rather than ran, into the hold. The light was not so dim but that I recognised Himilco, his head bare, his hair dishevelled, and his cutlass in his hand. Before I had time to speak to him a trumpet was sounding overhead, and Hannibal's stentorian voice was shouting:

"Make ready the scorpions! Archers, to your ranks!"

"Good gods!" I exclaimed at last, "what does this mean?"

"Soon told," said Himilco; "the man we took on board was Bodmilcar's agent, bent on mischief. I have managed to get my boat back, but the Melkarth and her galleys will be upon us in a moment."

He had hardly time to finish speaking, when the commotion above made it manifest that the struggle was already beginning.

"Then we are lost," I cried, in absolute despair at our twofold peril: "that infernal rascal has scuttled the ship."

Himilco groaned aloud in dismay.

A shrill cry of distress at this very moment rose from Dionysos, calling for help:

"Save me! save me! I am in a hole; I am sinking!"

The lad's head had already disappeared, when Himilco, sticking his cutlass into the ladder, and shouting that the child had found the leak, made a dive and brought him back half-fainting from the water, and delivered him to the sailors, who carried him on deck. Not a moment was lost. Carpenters and sailors were summoned to the task, and a heavy wave making the ship lurch so that the leak was actually seen, we put forth all our energies, and notwithstanding the combat that was being waged above our heads, succeeded – all praise to our gracious Ashtoreth! – in temporarily stopping the hole.

Meanwhile the clamour of the fighting had given place to silence. On remounting the deck I found several dead bodies, and pools of blood in various places; I saw that the Adonibal and the Cabiros were lying alongside right and left, but Bodmilcar's vessels had vanished in the twilight.

Hannibal and Chamai were furious at their escape, and could hardly find words strong enough to express their contempt of a cowardice that had shirked a fair fight. Hanno, with his bow still in his hand, avowed that nothing else than the gathering gloom of night had saved Bodmilcar; if he could have recognised him, he would have been a dead man.

"When I was attacked in the boat," said Himilco, "I recognised the villain who took my eye out of my head; and if there had not been some thousand of them peppering away at us all at once – "

"How many, do you say?" asked Hannibal, with a smile.

"Well, then, I am sure there were six or eight; but never mind, many or few, there was one man I knew only too well, and while I was down there looking after that leak, no one knows how my heart was burning for a chance of getting him by the throat."

All this time the wind was rising, and after a while it blew a hurricane. There was every cause for apprehension; the leak was stopped so insufficiently that it might break open again at any moment, and the waves were playing with our ship like a ball.

There was no sleep that night. The men, in relays, had to toil with all their might at scooping out the water; and after that had been reduced below the level of the leakage, it took more than five hours to strengthen and caulk the fresh planking that had repaired the gap. All danger, however, from that source was averted.

Daylight came, but the tempest was more violent than ever. I hardly recollect so furious a wind; the pigeons that I let loose were unable to withstand the hurricane, and fluttered back helplessly on to the deck. All control over the ship was lost, and there was no alternative but to allow her to drift we knew not whither.

CHAPTER XX

THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN

For eight days did the tempest rage, when, at the end of that time, the wind dropped and the sky cleared, I found that we were quite close to the shore, and off a headland beyond which the coast stretched away indefinitely to the south. Continuing our course in that direction, we came in sight of a mountainous island, richly wooded and extremely picturesque. The glowing sun and the genial temperature reminded us of our beloved Phœnicia; and so tempting was the aspect of the place, that I resolved to disembark, not merely as a matter of pleasure, but to look to the ships, which, after their strain, required some examination.

We anchored in a charming bay, and were soon surrounded by canoes full of savages, of whom the first characteristic that I noticed was their low foreheads and yet elongated skulls. To my surprise, they addressed us in the Libyan tongue, and proved to be the true Garamantine or red Libyans. We were the first Orientals they had ever seen on their shores; but one of their old men stated that he had been to Rusadir, and had seen Phœnicians there. They received us very kindly, and told us that their island was one of a group that was situated to the west of Libya. Ignorant of navigation, they could give me no information about distance; and all that I could make out was that the coast of Libya extended far to the south, and was inhabited by people of the same race as themselves; and that still farther south there was a region where the men were like animals, and perfectly black.

"That's a country worth seeing; I should like to catch a black man," said Bichri.

The residents, I observed, wore bracelets, necklaces, and earrings, which were, I found, made of gold; and in reply to my inquiry whether the gold was found in the island, they told me that they obtained it both in nuggets and in dust from the Garamantines of the mainland, who collected it by means of fleeces at the mouths of their rivers.

The people did not attach any great value to their gold, and were quite ready to barter it away very freely for many things we had to offer them; for instance, for some glass trinkets they gave me as much gold dust as I could hold in the hollow of my hand, while for such things as knives, lance-heads, or swords, they would give an equal weight in gold. The delight of my people was unbounded, and I had the utmost difficulty in preventing them from bartering away all their weapons. Hannibal sold his helmet, crest and all; and Jonah even parted with his trumpet, boasting that he could now have one of pure gold, with which to play before the King; but so enchanted was he with the country, that if the inhabitants would have accepted him for their god he would have been quite ready to reside permanently amongst them.

I spent a fortnight in purchasing gold and repairing the ships, and an interesting period we all found it. The fertile soil was productive of some of the finest fruits I had ever seen; one fruit in particular with a scaly covering was very delicious. The valleys were full of orange-trees of the growth of centuries, and the mountains were clothed with magnificent woods, in which beautiful little birds with yellow plumage were fluttering about, and singing exquisitely. Bichri, who did not care about purchasing more than just enough gold to ornament his belt and quiver, spent several whole days in these woods with Dionysos, and succeeded in catching some of the bright little songsters, which he secured in a cage; but his trouble was of little avail, as they all died upon their passage.

As for Judge Gebal, he manifested such a keen appreciation of the charms of the scenery that we had to keep him tied up to prevent his running away; but the time for our departure necessarily arrived, and, after the repairs were all completed, we reluctantly bade farewell to the lovely archipelago, upon which I bestowed the name of the Fortunate Islands.

Once more at sea, I had no difficulty in determining my course. All my party were eager to visit the wonderful gold-countries, and Bichri persisted in saying that he should like to catch sight of the black men; Himilco just at first protested against going in a direction where wine would not be forthcoming, but his objection was soon overruled, and he was contented with our resolution to sail southward. What caused us much bewilderment as we advanced, was, that not only did the sun rise higher over our heads, but the Cabiri descended lower towards the horizon. Himilco complained that we were sailing out of reach of the protection of the gods; I pondered the matter, but kept my thoughts to myself.

After running some distance to the east, the coast resumed its southerly direction; and then it was that the sun, which day by day had gradually risen higher in the heavens, stood vertically over our heads, and then began to change its position, shining at last upon my left hand instead of upon my right. Evening after evening, too, brought into view constellations that were quite unknown to us; and so great was the amazement of all on board, that I resolved upon holding a general consultation of officers and pilots, and the more intelligent of the sailors, in order to discover a solution of the mystery.

Hamilcar gave it as his opinion that the gods must have been making some alterations in the face of the heavens; Hasdrubal suggested that perhaps we had passed the bounds of our own world and entered upon another; whilst Himilco avowed his suspicion that unless something of that kind had occurred, the world must be round, and we were on the other side of it. Absurd and outrageous as Himilco's conjecture appeared to every one else, I confess it chimed in to a certain degree with my own speculations, and set me reflecting that if it were so it must be the sun and the stars that were standing still, and the world that was moving round them. But, after all, Himilco was much more inclined to believe in a prodigy than to entertain any of these fanciful theories.

Pressed with inquiries as to what I intended to do, I announced my resolution of continuing my course to the south; if ultimately the coast should incline to the west (or what I presumed to be the west), I should return to the Fortunate Islands; but if, as I anticipated, it turned to the east, I should go on following it, under the expectation of getting to the north at last, and reaching Egypt by way of the Sea of Reeds. This scheme of circumnavigating the entire land of Libya commended itself entirely to the judgment of my pilots, but it quite baffled the comprehension of Hannibal and all the landsmen.

When I spoke to Hannibal about arriving at Egypt, he looked quite aghast, and exclaimed:

"Egypt! here are we sailing farther and farther away from the Straits of Gades; and yet you talk about getting this way to Egypt. Impossible!"

"Patience!" I said; "perhaps we may find you a short cut even yet!"

He shook his head dubiously; and even Hanno observed that the mysteries of navigation were very abstruse, and that the studies which he had pursued at Sidon did not enable him to solve these enigmas.

"Ah! you should have travelled more, young man," said Himilco; "and you should have learned to know the stars."

"I should think this voyage is travelling enough for any one," replied Hanno.