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.
[Illustration: THE CHILD HAD FOUND THE LEAK.
_To face page 293._]
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.
[Illustration]