Marcia, the little daughter of Marcus Vitalos the farmer, sat on a
sheltered corner of a stone wall, making a willow basket. Basket weaving
was one of the first things that all children of her people learned, and
she was very clever at it. Her strong, brown fingers wove the osiers in
and out swiftly and deftly, as a bird builds its nest. The boys and girls
cut willow shoots, and reeds, and grasses that were good for this work, at
the proper time, and bound them together in bundles tidily, for use later
on. The straw, too, could be used for making baskets and mats after the
grain was threshed out of it.
A great many baskets were needed, for they were used to hold the grain,
and the beans, and the onions, and the dried fruit, and the various other
things that a thrifty family kept stored away for provisions. They were
also used to gather things in and to carry them in, and sometimes they
took the place of dishes in serving fruit or nuts. Almost every size and
shape and kind could be made use of somewhere. The one Marcia was making
was round and squat and quite large, and it was to have an opening at the
top large enough to put one’s hand into easily, and a cover to fit.
The house in which she lived was one of the oldest in the village on the
slopes of the Mountain of Fire. It was so old that there was no knowing
how many children had grown up in it, but they were all of the same
family,—the family of the Marcus Vitalos Colonus who built it in the first
place. This long-ago settler was called Colonus, the farmer, not because
he was the only farmer in the neighborhood, for everybody worked on the
land, but because he was an unusually good one, a leader among them in the
understanding of the good brown earth and all its ways.
His sons after him took the name Colonus, for among their people it was
considered very important to belong to a good family. As soon as a man’s
name was mentioned his ancestry was known, if he had any worth the naming.
The ancestor of all this people was said to have been Mars, the god of
manhood and all manly deeds. Their names showed this, for the common ones
were Marcus, Mamurius, Mavor, Mamertius and so on, with some other name
added to describe their occupations, or the place where they lived, or
some peculiar thing about them. Plautus meant the splay-footed man;
Sylvius, the man of the forest; Marinus, the seaman,—and there had been a
Marcus Vitalos Colonus in this family, ever since the first one. Marcia’s
elder brother, two years older than she was, had this name, but he was
usually called Marcs, for in their language the last syllable was apt to
be slurred over.
It was very quiet in the village just now, for all the men were off
getting in the harvest. The grain lands and the pastures were some
distance away, wherever the land was suitable for crops or grazing. Every
morning, directly after breakfast, every one who had anything to do away
from the village went out, and usually did not come back until supper
time. It was said that the first Marcus Vitalos was the leader who had
persuaded the people to settle down in one place instead of moving about,
driving their herds here and there. It was said also that he began the
custom of a common meal in the middle of the day for all the men who were
working on the land. This not only saved time and trouble, but made them
better acquainted and gave them time to talk over and plan the work during
the hottest part of the day. When the day’s toil was finished, each man
returned to his own house and had supper with his family. The houses were
built, not too near together, around an open square. The wall around the
house enclosed the sheepfold and the cattle sheds besides. The people
worked and played together for much of the time, but there was a certain
plot of ground that came down from father to son in each family and
belonged to that family alone. Nobody else had any rights there at all.
The people were very careful to do everything according to custom. Almost
everything they did had been worked out long ago into a sort of system,
which was considered the best possible way to do it. Certain customs were
always observed because the gods of the land were said to be pleased with
them. Whether the gods had anything to do with it or not, these children
of Mars were certainly more prosperous than most of their neighbors, and
had many things which they might not have had if it had not been for their
careful ways. The soil of the sunshiny mountain slopes was rich and
fruitful and easy to work; the clear mountain waters were pleasant and
wholesome, and in certain places there were hot springs which had been
found good to cure disease. It was not strange that they believed the gods
took especial care of them and would go on being kind to them so long as
proper respect was shown.
Marcia wove her basket, putting a band of red around the curve before she
began to draw it in, and her thoughts went far and near, as thoughts do.
The family spent very little time indoors when it was possible to be in
the open air. The mother sat spinning in the doorway, and the baby played
at her feet. The father was harvesting, and Marcs was out with the sheep.
The next younger brother, Bruno they called him, had gone fishing. Supper
was in an earthen pot comfortably bubbling over the fire. It would be
ready by the time they all came home. Marcia had had her dinner and helped
clear away before she came out here. Although the people had some
vegetables and herbs, their main crop was grain. It was a kind of cereal a
little like wheat and a little like barley, with a small hard kernel, and
they called it “corn,” which meant something that is crushed or ground
into meal. When it was pounded in a mortar and then boiled soft, it made
good porridge. Boiled until it was very thick, and poured out on a flat
stone or board to cool, it could be cut into pieces and eaten from the
hand. The children had all they wanted, with some goat’s-milk cheese and
some figs. Marcia could hear them laughing and shouting as they played
with the pet kid. He was old enough now to butt the smaller ones right
over on their backs, and he did it whenever they gave him a chance.
Marcia was rather a silent girl, with a great deal of long black hair in
heavy braids, level black brows over thoughtful eyes, and a square little
chin. As she began to draw in her basket at the top, she was thinking of
the stories the old people sometimes told about a long-ago time when their
ancestors lived in another and far more beautiful place. There the rivers
ran over sands that gleamed like sunshine, and all the land was like a
garden. The houses were larger than any here and built of a white stone.
There were stone statues like those she and Marcs sometimes made in clay
for the children to play with, but as large as men and women and painted
to look like life. The gods came and went among the children of men and
taught them all that they have ever known, but much had since been
forgotten. So ran the story.
Sometimes in the heart of this mountain there were rumblings underground,
as if the thunder had gone to earth like a badger. The old people said
then that the smith of the gods was working at his forge. The noises were
made by his hammer, beating out weapons for the gods. The plume of smoke
that drifted lazily up from the deep bowl-shaped hollow in the mountain
top came from his fires. To these people the mountain was like a great
still creature, maybe a god in disguise. The forest hung on the slopes
above like a bearskin on the shoulders of a giant. Up higher were barren
rocks and cliffs, where nothing grew.
Marcia looked up at the mighty crest so far above, and then down across
the valley, where the stubble of the grain fields shone golden in the
westering sun. The river, winding away beyond it, was bluer than the sky.
She wondered whether, if her people should ever go away, they would tell
their children how beautiful this land was. But of course they never would
go. They had lived too long where they were ever to be willing to leave
their home on the mountain. No other place could be like it. The floods
that sometimes ruined the lowlands never rose as high as this; the
wandering, warlike tribes that sometimes attacked their neighbors did not
trouble them here. They belonged to the mountain, as the chestnut trees
and the squirrels did.
“Me make basket,” announced her little sister, pulling at the withes, her
rag doll tumbling to the ground as she tried to scramble up on the wall.
“Up! up!”
“O Felic’la (Kitty), don’t; you’ll spoil sister’s work! I’ll begin one for
you.”
The Kitten had got her name from her disposition, which was to insist on
doing whatever she saw any one else doing, just long enough to make
confusion wherever she went. What with showing the little fingers how to
manage the spidery ribs of the little basket she began, and working out
the braided border of her own basket, Marcia’s attention was fully taken
up.
She did not even see that Marcs was driving in the sheep until they began
crowding into the sheepfold. The walls of this, like the walls of the
house itself, were of stone, laid by that long-ago Colonus, and as solid
and firm as if they were built yesterday. The stones were not squared or
shaped, and there was no mortar, but they were fitted together so cleverly
that they seemed as solid as the mountain itself. They hardly ever needed
repair. The roofs, of seasoned chestnut boughs woven in and out, seemed
almost as firm as the stonework. This place had been settled when the
farmers had to fight wolves every year. Even now, if the wolves had a hard
winter and got very hungry, they sometimes came around and tried to get at
the sheep. Then the men would take their spears and long knives and go on
a wolf-hunt. But that had not happened now for several years.
Why were the sheep coming in so early?
Marcs looked rather disturbed, and he was in a hurry. Bruno too was coming
home without any fish, an unusual thing for him; and he looked both scared
and puzzled. The mother was standing in the door, shading her eyes with
her hand and looking at the sky. Marcs caught sight of the girls in their
corner.
“You had better pick up all that and go in,” he called to them. “Pater
sent us home as quick as we could scamper. See how strange the sky is.”
They all looked. Little Felic’la, with round eyes, dropped her basket and
pointed.
“Giants,” said she.
It did not take much imagination to see, in the dark clouds spreading over
the heavens, huge misty figures like gigantic men, or like gods about to
descend upon the earth.
“Mater,” said Bruno, “the spring and the stream have dried up.”
The father was hurrying up from the grain fields, and the boys ran to help
him manage the frightened cattle and get the load under cover. Other
flocks of sheep and other men with oxen were hastening to shelter. The sky
was growing darker and darker. Blue lights were wavering in the marshy
lands by the river. The fowls, croaking and squawking in frightened haste,
huddled on to their roosts, all but Felic’la’s pet white chicken, which
scuttled for the house. Birds were flying overhead, uttering some sort of
warnings in bird language, but there was no understanding what they said.
[Illustration: Other flocks of sheep and other men with oxen were hurrying
to shelter]
Suddenly there was a crash as if the earth had cracked in two. Everything
turned black. The air was filled with smoke and dust and ashes raining
down from the sky.
Marcia caught up her little sister and the baskets together and groped her
way to the door. Her mother darted out to drag them in and barred the door
against the unknown terrors outside. The boys and their father were under
the cattle shed, with the stout timber brace against the door; it had been
made to keep out wild beasts. In the roar of the tumult outside the
loudest shout could not have been heard.
The terrific detonations above were heavier than any thunder that ever
rolled down the valley, sharper than any blows of a giant hammer. The
earth trembled and rocked under foot. Then came a pounding from all sides
at once, like the trampling of frantic herds. An avalanche of dust and
cinders came through the smoke hole and put out the fire. Part of the roof
had fallen in, for they could hear stones tumbling down on the earth
floor. Through the opening they saw a crimson glow spreading over the sky.
Only the beams in one corner, the corner where the mother and her children
were, still held firm.
At last the rain of ashes was over, the stones no longer fell, and it was
light enough for them to see each other’s faces. They had no way of
knowing how long they had crouched there in the dark, but they had been
there all night. The house had no windows and only one door. Now the
father and the boys were trying to get the door open against a heap of
fallen roof beams and thatch and stones and ashes and broken furniture. In
a minute or two they got it far enough open to let them in.
“Are you safe, Livia? And the children?” The man’s deep voice was shaking.
But even as he spoke he saw that they were alive and unhurt. He took his
baby boy from his wife’s arms, and put the other arm round the two girls,
while the little boys clung to him as far up as they could reach. Livia
sprang up at the first sight of Marcs and Bruno, for Marcs was bleeding
all down one side of his face and his shoulder, where a stone had glanced
along.
“I was trying to catch the white heifer,” he said rather shamefacedly,
“but she got away. It’s only a scrape along the skin—let me go, Mater.”
And before she had fairly done washing off the blood and bandaging the
cuts, he was out from under her hands and out of doors after Bruno.
Cautiously they all went out, and stood outside the wall, gazing about
them. Everything as far as they could see was gray with ashes and cinders
and stones. Here and there the woods were on fire. Far up toward the top
of the mountain, one tall tree by itself was burning like a torch. An
arched hole was broken out in the cliff above, and down through it flowed
a fiery river of molten rock, like boiling honey or liquid flame, cooling
as it went. Ravines were broken out, great slices of rock and earth had
fallen or slid, and the river, choked by fallen trees and earth and rocks,
was tearing out another channel for itself. The very face of the earth was
strange and unnatural.
The walls of their own house and of most of the others in the village had
been wrenched and thrown down in places by the twisting of the earth. Then
the roof had given way under the pelting rocks. In the corner where Livia
and her children had taken shelter, one timber, a tree trunk set deep in
the ground, had held firm and kept the roof from falling. The same thing
had happened in the narrow cattle shed. They went on to see how their
neighbors had fared.
There was less loss of life than one might have expected, considering that
the oldest man there had never seen anything like this. The people were
trained to obey orders and look out for themselves. The father was the
head of the family, and in any sudden emergency the people did not run
about aimlessly but looked to whoever was there to give orders. The
children had each the care of some younger child or some possession of the
family. Even Felic’la, trotting along beside Marcia, held tightly in her
arms her white chicken. The chicken was trying to get away, but Felic’la
felt that this was no time for the family to be separated.