Lords of the World Part 14

Cleanor was punctual at the appointed time.

"I have been thinking it over," said the physician when he had satisfied himself that he could not be overheard. "And I don't see any chance of success except by bribery. I know where the child is--in the high-priest's house. I was called in two or three days ago to see a child who was ill there. I thought it strange, for the priests have no families. Still, it might be a child of a relative. But it was stranger still when, after I had prescribed for the little fellow and was going away, I heard the voices of other children. Then it was all explained by what I told you this morning. They keep the poor little creatures, when they have got them by persuasion or force, in the high-priest's house.

That is one step, then. We know where the boy is. And the next, by great good luck, is made easy for us. The little fellow that I have been attending will certainly die. I feel almost sure that I shall not find him alive when I go this afternoon. Well, I shall have to report his death to the high-priest, who will have to find a subst.i.tute for him, and will, I suppose, kidnap another child. That is a horrible thing; but we can't help it. Now for my plan. You must bribe the attendant who will have to remove the child and see to its burial. That will be easy enough. He is a fellow of the lowest cla.s.s, and will do anything for a score of gold pieces. And you must also bribe the priest who has the business of actually offering the children. That will be a more serious matter. The practice is for the high-priest to offer the first, and to hand over the rest to a subordinate. This is the man you will have to deal with. It isn't that it will be a matter of faith with him.

Generally, in my experience--not always, mark that--but generally the nearer the altar the less the faith; and this man I know. But it is a dangerous affair, and, besides, the man can make his own terms. I should say that a hundred gold pieces will be wanted. Now, can you manage that?

It isn't every young officer that has a hundred gold pieces to spare. I can help you a little, but a physician's fees are small and hard to come by."

"A thousand thanks!" said Cleanor, "but I have as much as will be wanted."

"Come again after dark," the physician went on. "You will have to settle with the men, for I must not appear in the matter, but I will arrange a way for you to see them."

"Everything is going as well as possible," said the physician when the two met again. "As I expected, the child was dead. And here I have made a little change in our plans. I thought that it might make complications if two were engaged in the affair. And the priest might object if he found his secret shared by an attendant of far inferior rank. It might mean, he would say, endless blackmailing. What I did, then, was to tell the man that there was something very strange about the child's illness, that I wanted to discover the real cause, and that I would give him a couple of gold pieces--to offer him more would have been suspicious--if he would let me have the body. That is disposed of, then. Now for the priest. He comes here to-night; he has long been a patient of mine, and he wants to see me. The fellow, who is one of the hardest drinkers in Carthage, would have been dead long ago but for me. You will see him, and tell him what he is to do, which, in a word, is to put a dead child for a living one, and what you will give him for doing it. That is the naked truth, but you will wrap it up as you think best."

"But will not that be an impossible thing--a dead child for a living?"

asked Cleanor.

"Not at all," replied the physician, "and not by any means so hard as you think. You don't know, I daresay, that the children are drugged as heavily as possible without making them actually insensible. All the creatures that are brought to be sacrificed have to be drugged. You know that it is thought to be the very worst omen if a bull or a ram breaks away from the attendants as they are bringing it to the altar. You don't suppose that there is a miracle perpetually worked so that what happens every day in the slaughter-house never happens in a temple? And this makes the affair comparatively easy. There is not much difference between a drugged child and a dead child."

The priest came in due course. The physician with some cautious hints excited his curiosity and greed, and Cleanor found his task neither so difficult nor so costly as he had antic.i.p.ated. It is needless to relate the negotiations. As the physician had antic.i.p.ated, the priest's faith was not a difficulty. He had not a vestige of belief. He had been a party to too many impostures to have anything of the kind left.

Fraudulent miracles were a part almost, it might be said, of his daily business. But he made the most of the risk of the proceeding, and this was undoubtedly great. Not only was the dead child to be subst.i.tuted for the living, but the living was to be smuggled away. The physician had provided a temporary refuge for it; it was to be received into the family of the couple which kept his house. The thing probably appeared to be more difficult than it really was, chiefly because no one would have any idea that it would be attempted. A bargain was ultimately made for a somewhat smaller sum than the physician had named. The priest was to receive five-and-twenty gold pieces down, and fifty pieces more when Cleanor was satisfied of the safety of the child.

Cleanor was long in doubt whether or not he should be present at the hideous ceremony of the coming day. All the instincts of his own nature and his race revolted against such doings. The Greek temper was not particularly merciful, and certainly never shrank from taking life when occasions of policy or promptings of revenge seemed to suggest it, but it had no liking for spectacles of blood. Even in its degradation it revolted from the savage amus.e.m.e.nts which fascinated the Romans. And Cleanor had the best feelings of his race in high development. On the other hand, he reflected that if any chance suspicion should arise his presence might help to disarm it. Above all, his interest in the fate of his little foster-brother was so overpowering that he felt it impossible to keep away.

The solemnities of the day began with a great procession, in which the inferior deities of the Carthaginian faith were carried to pay their homage, as it was said, to Baal Hammon their chief. Each had his own company of priests and temple attendants; both the deity and his satellites were decked out for the occasion with all the splendours which the temple treasuries--most of them rich with the acc.u.mulation of centuries--could furnish.

First,--for it was right that the most dignified visitor should be the first to arrive,--came Melcart, Hammon's vicegerent, as he might be called, who had under his special protection the daughter cities of the Phoenician race, as he had the great mother-city of Tyre. The G.o.d was not represented by any human figure, but a great sun, with gilded rays, was borne under a canopy of rich purple curtains. Next to Melcart came Tanit or Astarte, symbolized by a similar image of the moon, but smaller, and with silver rays; and after Tanit again, Dagon, the fish-G.o.d, the special protector of the fleets of Carthage, held in less reverence since the eldest daughter of Tyre had lost the hereditary supremacy of the seas. These were the three great dignitaries of the procession; after them followed a crowd of inferior powers with figures of man or brute, always heavy with gold or sparkling with gems, but grotesque or even hideous in shape, for the Phoenician craftsman made no effort to emulate the grace of his Greek rival.

Hammon's temple was thronged, and indeed had been thronged from the hour of dawn, when its gates were thrown open, with an excited mult.i.tude. A lane, however, was kept clear in the middle by two ranks of stalwart guards, native Carthaginians, all of them splendid in gilded helmets, with nodding plumes of the African ostrich, and armour of s.h.i.+ning steel, with short purple cloaks over their shoulders. This lane was left for the approach of the divine visitors. As the first of these drew near, the great doors, themselves covered with a scarlet curtain, that separated the sanctuary from the body of the temple, were thrown back, and the holy place became visible, to most of those present that day for the first time in their lives.

In the centre of a semicircular recess at the further end, on a throne of gold, approached by twelve steps, each flanked by the image of a lion, sat the colossal statue of Hammon. The canopy above it was formed by the meeting wings of two stooping figures. The image was made of some black stone, probably basalt, carved into a rude similitude of the human figure, with arms of steel which extended forwards. In front, so close to the image as to be partly under the arms, was an opening six feet wide, from which, now and then, a slender tongue of coloured flame might be seen to shoot forth.

When the opened doors revealed the image, an instantaneous silence fell upon the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude, in striking contrast to the babel of sounds which had filled the temple a minute before. The awful moment had come, and the mult.i.tude waited with mingled wonder and terror for what was to follow.

The silence was first broken by the voice of the high-priest as he began to chant the litany of supplication. It was heard plainly enough, but few understood it, for the form had not been changed from the earliest times, and the language was mostly obsolete. At certain intervals the voices of the inferior priests might be heard coming in with the refrain. The ancient formula ended, the high-priest added special supplications for the day. He invoked blessings on Carthage, on her armies, her fleets, her priests, and her people. He cursed her enemies, Rome first of all, with special mention of the name of Scipio. The supplications ended, the high-priest turned to the people, crying, "Sons of Carthage, offer with a willing heart, and of your best, to your Lord and Saviour Hammon!"

There was a momentary pause. Then the Shophetim descended from the seats on which they had been sitting, and, coming forward, cast gold and spices into the opening. No one imitated, or was expected to imitate them. They represented the people, and their gifts symbolized the offering of the people's wealth. The more solemn part of the sacrifice remained to be performed, and this part, for evident reasons, the priests retained in their own hands.

The high-priest began again:

"O Baal Hammon, we have given thee the most precious of things without life; now we give thee flesh of our flesh, and life of our life."

So saying, he took from the hands of a subordinate priest something--what it was no one could discern--wrapped in white linen, and placed it on the outstretched arms of the colossus. The image, worked by concealed machinery from behind, bowed its head, and at the same time lowered its arms, dropping the burden that had been placed upon them into the chasm underneath. Something between a roar and a shriek went up from the mult.i.tude that filled the temple. There was the joy of seeing that the great Hammon accepted their offering; there was the horror--for even the Carthaginians were human--of knowing what the offering was. The next instant a loud crash of sound came from the cymbal-players, who had been stationed in a recess out of sight of the mult.i.tude. Every time another burden was placed on the arms and dropped into the chasm there was the same outburst of wild music.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE HIGH PRIEST PLACED THE SACRIFICE ON THE OUTSTRETCHED ARMS OF THE G.o.d."]

Cleanor watched the horrible ceremony with intense attention. Now and then he fancied--he had found a place, it should be said, not far from the sanctuary--that he saw a movement, and even heard a cry. But he could not feel certain. He recognized the priest who handed the first child to the high-priest, and who placed the others on the arms of the image, as the man with whom he had negotiated, and he felt sure that on one occasion he made a slight gesture, which no one else would notice, in his direction. It was a great relief when the horrible rite was finished. As to the fate of the child he could not immediately satisfy himself. It would have been imprudent to make any inquiries. He had, however, the satisfaction of receiving, during the course of the next day, a message from his friend the physician that the boy was safe. The same comforting intelligence was conveyed to the mother. She, of course, had to be content with an occasional sight of her child, and the hope of regaining him at some happier time.

CHAPTER XVII.

MOVE AND COUNTERMOVE.

The great festival of Hammon, with all its lurid splendours, did not fail to produce something at least of the effect which the authorities had expected from it. The flagging zeal of the Carthaginian people regained its old energy; the hope that their country might yet be saved to them, a hope almost abandoned during the last few months, began to revive. Hammon, they thought, must be propitiated by a piety so devoted, must interfere to save so dutiful a city.

There was, indeed, need of all the encouragement that could be had, for the situation of the civil population of Carthage was precarious in the extreme. The Senate had not neglected to lay up in the time of peace such provisions for the war that they knew to be impending as it had been possible to collect. But the work had had to be done almost by stealth. Rome had watched with suspicion anything that looked like preparations for war, and had remonstrated more than once against the purchase of unnecessary stores.

What was done in this way had to be done without the knowledge of her regularly appointed agents and of residents who were secretly in her pay. Something had been accomplished; the garrison had ample supplies; the houses of the upper cla.s.s were, for the most part, well furnished.

But the poor, who had no room for stores in their dwellings, even if they had the means to purchase them in advance, were dangerously near to want. It is for the needs of this cla.s.s that public provision has to be made in any city that expects to be besieged, and it was in respect of this public provision that the action of the Carthaginian government had been hampered.

Things had grown rapidly worse since the building of the walled camp across the isthmus. Nothing could now be brought into the besieged city by land. The sea was still partly open. The Roman fleet kept up a blockade, but it was not really effective. As soon as the wind began to blow from the sea the war-s.h.i.+ps had to stand off from the sh.o.r.e, and the blockade-runners had their opportunity. Prices ruled so high in the city that a trader who contrived to take safely to its destination one cargo out of two made a very handsome profit.

All the fis.h.i.+ng population of the African coast for a hundred miles on either side of the besieged city was busily employed in the traffic.

Light vessels drawing but little water were chiefly used, for they could be safely navigated in places where a war-s.h.i.+p would inevitably have grounded. So rudely and cheaply were they built that the loss, if they were wrecked, was insignificant. The great difficulty was the weather; if this continued to be fine for ten days together, a large part of the besieged population came within an easily measurable distance of starvation.

Scipio now resolved on making a great counter-move--he would block up the approach to the harbour. He had, in fact, for some time past foreseen the necessity of taking this step, and had prepared a vast amount of material for the work, employing great numbers of the native population in quarrying stone and cutting timber. So much had been accomplished in this way that when the time came for executing the work little more than the actual construction remained to be done. This was not so difficult as it had seemed. The harbour mouth was not very far from the sh.o.r.e occupied by the Romans.

The first thing was to lay a foundation for the mole that it was proposed to build. This was done by sinking huge blocks of roughly-hewn stone, chiefly during moonless nights. During this stage of the work the besieged took little heed of what was going on, or, anyhow, took no pains to interrupt or hinder it. There was a suspicion, and more than a suspicion, of Scipio's purpose, but Hasdrubal, himself indolent and incompetent, haughtily refused to listen to any suggestion from his subordinates. But even Hasdrubal was roused when the structure reached the surface of the water. What he saw was a mole, more than thirty yards broad, stretching across the mouth of the harbour, and shutting off every channel available even for the smallest craft.

Hasdrubal now developed, or accepted, a plan which for a time at least was a virtual check to Scipio's move. He kept up a brisk discharge of missiles on the men employed in building the mole. So sharp and continuous was it that the besiegers had little attention to give to what was being done on the opposite side of the harbour. It was a surprise, and a very unwelcome surprise to them, that no sooner had they stopped up one mouth of the harbour, than they found that another exit had been created. The whole population, every man, woman, and child in the city, that could ply a spade or a pick, wheel a barrow-load or carry a basket of earth, had been working night and day at excavating another mouth to the harbour.

Nor was this all; a still greater surprise, so great, indeed, as to be almost overwhelming, remained behind.

One of the conditions of the peace granted to Carthage after the fatal defeat of Zama[37] had been the surrender of all the s.h.i.+ps of war but twenty. In a way this condition had been observed. There had never been more than twenty s.h.i.+ps in commission at one time; but the old hulks had not always been destroyed. At first they had been kept to serve various purposes; latterly, as another war began to loom in the future, they had been preserved with the intention of using them again. A number of merchant vessels also were furnished with crews and an armament that was at least pa.s.sably effective.

And, marvellous to relate, all this had been done without the knowledge of the besiegers. There was a constant flow of deserters from the city, increasing as time went on and the prospects of Carthage became less and less hopeful. Yet none of them had any definite information to give.

That something was going on they knew; they had heard for some time a great sound of hammering--that, indeed, had been audible in the Roman camp when the wind blew from the dockyard--but the restrictions on admission to the a.r.s.enals had been rigidly enforced. So there ended the information which they were able to give.

Nothing, then, could have exceeded the astonishment of the besiegers when a new fleet, the existence of which no one had suspected, issued from a harbour mouth which no one had ever seen. A thin bank of earth had been kept to the last, so that to observers from outside, as also to the Roman s.h.i.+ps as they cruised backwards and forwards along the coast, nothing appeared to have been changed. When everything else was ready, all the available labour in Carthage was set to work to clear this bank away. The task was finished by dawn. At sunrise the new fleet, magnificently equipped, for there had been a lavish expenditure on the ornament as well as the armament of the s.h.i.+ps, sailed out of the harbour by its new exit.

Unfortunately for Carthage there was no one to make the most of the opportunity. A vigorous attack on the Roman fleet--scattered as it was, and altogether unprepared for action, some of the s.h.i.+ps being under repair, and nearly all of them but half-manned, their crews being largely employed on sh.o.r.e--might have been successful, and have even postponed the fate of Carthage. But it was not to be. Hasdrubal, self-opinionated and incapable, paralysed everything and everybody. The fleet paraded for a while along the coast, and had the barren honour of holding without dispute, for that day at least, the possession of the sea.

"The crews must be exercised first," said Hasdrubal, who was on board what we may call the flag-s.h.i.+p, to the veteran who directed its navigation; "but in a few days--"

"There's no exercise like fighting," growled the old man as he turned away.

And this was the common opinion of Carthage. So strong and so general was it, and so vigorously expressed, that Hasdrubal could not afford to disregard it. Word was pa.s.sed round to the captains that they must be ready to engage the next day. In the morning, accordingly, the fleet sailed out again. Every one was in high spirits, for it is an immense relief for those who have been long cooped up within walls, occupied with the tedious task of a protracted defence, to renew the more adventurous and interesting experience of attack. Some victories were won. One of the Carthaginian s.h.i.+ps contrived to ram two antagonists in rapid succession. This vessel was a present to the state by one of the merchant companies, and no expense had been spared in making it of the strongest build and furnis.h.i.+ng it with an effective crew of freeborn, well-paid rowers. Another captured one of the Roman s.h.i.+ps by boarding.

Cleanor was serving in this, and, owing to the death of one and the disablement of the other of his superior officers, had the unexpected honour of leading the boarders. There was a sharp struggle, but ultimately the Roman crew was overpowered and compelled to surrender.

On the other hand, there were counterbalancing, or almost counterbalancing losses, for towards the end of the day the Romans had recovered from their surprise, and more than held their own.

Scipio was everywhere, conspicuous in the scarlet cloak of the general-in-command. Once as he pa.s.sed he was well within a javelin-throw of our hero. Cleanor, as he doubted whether he ought not to do his best to rid Carthage of a formidable enemy, fancied that he saw a smile of recognition on his face. When it grew dark, the struggle was suspended by mutual consent.

The next morning it was renewed. This time fortune declared itself unequivocally against Carthage. It was not that there was any marked falling-off in the efficiency or courage of the crews. It was the s.h.i.+ps themselves that began to fail. Many, as has been said, were old hulks patched up to serve again. Two days of incessant use, with occasional collisions with friends and enemies, had not improved them. The seams began to open and old leaks to show themselves, so that by noon at least a score were more or less water-logged. Those that had suffered most, about half the number, fell into the hands of the enemy. Five other s.h.i.+ps were sunk.

The Roman loss was less than half of this amount. It was not a crus.h.i.+ng defeat, but it was sufficient to show that Carthage could not hope for deliverance from her fleet. Still, some advantage remained to the besieged. It would be impossible to close up the new mouth of the harbour, so deep was the water into which it opened. On this side, therefore, the Roman blockade could never be made complete.

Notwithstanding this gain, the whole result was a heavy discouragement.