The preparations at the village on the Mountain of Fire were completed
during the winter, and the little company of men, women and children made
ready to go out into the unknown world as soon as a favorable day arrived.
It was a more serious undertaking than any they had known or even heard of
before. Even when their ancestors came to this place, so long ago that no
one could remember when it was, it was after a lifetime of wandering; they
were not used to anything else. This company was made up of people who had
never in their lives been more than a day’s journey from the place where
they were born, and what was more, hardly any of their forefathers had,
for generations.
It was made still more difficult and doubtful by the fact that they were
taking their women and children with them. There was no other way. There
was not too much to eat in the village, as it was, and there would be
less, if the men went away for a year and left their families to be
supported. Although the men would have preferred to go first and explore
the land, the women were privately better pleased as it was. They felt
that if their husbands were to be killed they wanted to die too. As for
the children who were old enough to understand the situation, their
feelings were mixed. It was exciting and delightful to be going to see new
lands, and made them feel important and responsible, but when the time of
leaving actually approached and they began to think of never seeing their
old home again, they felt very sober indeed.
They left the mountain on the day that was later called the Ides of March,
at the beginning of spring, and slowly they followed the shining river out
into the valley. Two-wheeled carts drawn by the oxen were loaded with the
stores and clothing they were able to take with them. The fighting men had
their weapons all in order. The boys were helping drive the cattle and
sheep, and the married women had the younger children with them. Every one
who was able to walk, walked. The eldest girl in each of the families—none
was over ten years old—had charge of one most important thing—the fire.
The little maidens walked soberly together, feeling a great dignity laid
upon them. Each carried a round, strong basket lined with clay and covered
with a beehive-shaped lid of a peculiar shape. In this were live coals
carefully covered with ashes, for the kindling of the next fire. No matter
what happened, they must not let those coals go out.
[Illustration: The little maidens walked soberly together]
“What-_ever_ happened?” repeated a little yellow-haired girl, called
Flavia because she was so fair. She was the daughter of Muraena the smith,
and the youngest of the ten.
Ursula, the biggest girl, laughed. “If we were crossing a river and one of
us got drowned, I suppose her fire would be lost,” she said teasingly.
“But they wouldn’t excuse us for anything short of that.”
“But if it did go out—if all of the fires were put out?” persisted Flavia,
walking a little closer to Marcia, whose word she felt that she could
trust. She had visions of a dreadful anger of the gods,—another night of
darkness and terror like the one they all remembered. “Should we never
have a fire again, and have to eat things raw, and freeze to death, and
let the wolves eat us up?”
“Certainly not,” answered Marcia reassuringly. “Father told me all about
that when I was younger than you are. Don’t you remember how they kindled
the fire in the new year?”
Flavia shook her yellow head. “I never noticed.” She had been so taken up
with the chanting and the ceremonies that she had not seen how the fire
actually blazed up on the altar.
“They do it with the _terebra_ and the _tabula_. The _tabula_ is a flat
wooden block with a groove cut in it, and the _terebra_ is a rubbing-stick
that just fits the groove. They have some very fine chaff ready, and they
move the stick very fast in the groove until it is quite hot. Don’t you
know how warm your hands are after you rub them together? When there is a
little spark it catches in the chaff, and then it is sheltered to keep it
from going out, and fed with more chaff and dry splinters until the fire
is kindled. They can _always_ kindle a fire in that way.”
“What if the _terebra_ and the _tabula_ were lost?” asked Flavia.
“They would make others.”
“If I rubbed my hands together long enough, would they be on fire?” asked
the child. She did not yet see how fire could be made just by rubbing bits
of wood together. In fact, it was so much easier to keep the fire when it
was once made that this was hardly ever done. It was only done regularly
once a year, at the beginning of the month sacred to Mars. Then all the
altar fires were put out and the priest kindled the sacred fire in this
way afresh.
The girls all laughed, and Marcia answered,
“No, dear, it is only certain kinds of wood that will do that. I suppose
the gods taught our people long ago which they were. The hearth god lives
in the fire, you know. I always think it is like a living thing that will
die without care. Father says that the fire keeps away the wicked fever
spirits.”
“What’s fever?” asked Yaya, on the other side. “Did you ever have it?”
“No, never; but Father did once, when he was working on the road across
the marsh, before I was born. It makes all your bones ache as if they were
broken, and you cannot keep still because the spirits shake you all over.
You grow hot and grow cold, and have bad dreams, and talk nonsense. Father
woke up one day when he had the fever, and said that there were great rats
coming to carry off my brother Marcs, who was a baby then, and he tried to
get up and kill the rats, when there were none there. And when he was well
he never remembered seeing the rats at all.”
Although the children did not know it, a blazing fire and wool clothing
help to keep away the malarial fever of a wet wilderness. The people
believed that their gods taught them to keep up a fire, to wear clean wool
garments and to drink pure water, and it is certain that they were wise in
doing all these things religiously, as they did. When they found a good
spring on their journey they filled their water bottles and left a little
gift there for the god of the waters. They kept near pure running water
when they could, and away from standing water, even if they had to go a
long way round to do it. In the sudden damps and chills of the lowlands
through which they traveled the tunics and mantles of pure wool kept them
from taking cold, and there was very little sickness on the journey. They
kept to their own habits of eating, and the children were not allowed to
experiment with strange and possibly unripe fruits.
It was a long time, however, before they came in sight of any place that
could be thought of as a home. Most of the country they saw was not
inhabited except by a stray hut dweller here and there, getting a
miserable living as he could,—simply because the land was not fit to live
in. They crossed a rolling plain, where the marshes were full of
unpleasant looking water, and the air at night was full of singing,
stinging insects that drove the cattle frantic. It was not quite so bad
near the fires. The insects seemed to dislike the smoke, or perhaps their
wings could not carry them through the strong currents of air that the
flames made around them. As soon as possible they moved up toward the
higher land, and here at last they came in sight of the river of the
yellow waters, the great river that ran down to the sea. Beyond that they
could not go without meeting strange people and the worship of strange and
cruel gods.
Every night the beehive covers were taken off the baskets, and the fires
were kindled, and in a round hut that was like a big basket lid, a bed of
coals was made ready for the next day’s journey. It was the duty of the
ten little girls, the guardians of the fire, to take care of this, and
they spent a great deal of time around the miniature temple of the fire
god. One or another was always there.
One night when they were carefully covering the coals with fine ashes,
Marcia and Tullia and Flavia looked up and saw two strange men standing
near and looking down at them. They were startled but not at all
frightened. The strangers would not be there if they were not friends; the
men would not allow it. The two youths did not say anything; they watched
for a few minutes, smiling as if they liked what they saw; then they
turned away. They looked very much alike, and walked alike, and their
voices were alike; but one was a little taller and darker than the other
and always seemed to take the lead. They were not like the rude, ignorant,
pagan people who sometimes came to stare and beg and perhaps to pilfer
when they found some one’s back turned. They looked like the people of
Mars. But what could they be doing away out here?
The next day there was great news to tell. In the first place, the fathers
of the colony had decided to stay here a few days, and let the cattle
feed, and the women wash their clothing and rest for a little before going
on. The water was good, and they had learned that it was a safe part of
the country, though it was too rocky and barren to be a good place to
live. But that was the smallest part of the news. The two youths were
their own kinsmen, born of their own people, sons of a son of the old
chief who had died in a far land many years ago.
This was wonder enough, to be sure, but there was more to come. The wicked
uncle of the two brothers had killed their mother and father, and told one
of his servants to take the twin boys down to the river and drown them.
They were babies then. The servant did not like to do this. He may have
been afraid he would get into trouble if he did it and any of their people
found it out later. He may have hated to do the cruel work, for they were
strong and handsome little fellows. At any rate he put them in a basket
and gave the basket to a slave, telling him to throw it into the river.
The river was in flood just then, and its banks were overflowed for miles
on each side. There was water everywhere, and the ground was soft so that
it was hardly possible to get down to the real river, where the water was
deep and the current strong. If the children had been thrown into that,
they would have drowned at once. But the slave did not take time to go all
the way around the plain to the bank itself. He put the basket down in the
first deep pool he found and left it to be carried down to the river, for
the flood was beginning to ebb. Instead of that the basket lodged on a
knoll and stayed there, not very far from the banks.
[Illustration: The little creatures inside the basket were not cubs or
lambs]
In flood time, as Ursula had often heard her father the hunter say,
animals are sometimes so frightened that the fierce and the timid take
refuge together on some island or rocky ridge, without harming each other
at all. This flood had come up suddenly and drowned some of them in their
dens. A wolf that had lost her cubs in that way was picking her steps
across the drenched plain, when she heard a noise—two noises—from a willow
basket under a wild fig tree. She went quietly over there and looked in.
The little creatures inside the basket were not cubs or lambs, but they
were hungry; any one would know that from the way they squalled. Wolf talk
and man talk are quite different, but baby talk and cub talk are
understood by all mothers. The wolf tipped the basket over with her paw,
and the little things tumbled out in the cold and wet and cried louder
than ever. Perhaps they thought she was a big dog. At any rate they
crawled toward her, and plunged their strong little chubby hands into her
fur, and crowed. When she lay down they snuggled close to her warm furry
side, and she licked them all over.
A shepherd named Faustulus came that way when the flood had gone down,
looking after a lost sheep. He found wolf tracks, and grasping his spear
firmly, traced them to this knoll. He found the gray wolf curled up there
with the two babies, asleep and warm and rosy, in the circle of her big,
strong body.
The shepherd did not know just what to do. He thought that if he tried to
take the children away from her she would fight, and they might be hurt,
and he probably would be hurt himself. He decided to go and get help.
Later in the day he came back with some of his friends, and set a rude
box-trap for the wolf, baited with fresh meat from a drowned calf. When
they had trapped her they took her home and the children also, in their
basket. They kept the wolf for some time, and she seemed quite tame; but
at last she ran away and never came back. They fed the babies on warm
milk, and the shepherd and his wife both fell in love with them from the
very first. They heard a rumor after awhile, whispered about secretly as
such things are, that the chief Amulius had had his two little nephews
drowned. The shepherd guessed then who the foundlings might be, but he
kept quiet about it. The city was not too far away, and some one might be
sent even yet to kill the twins. In the language of the country the word
for river was Rumon, and the word for an oar was Rhem. He named the boys
Romulus and Remus, and those were all the names they had. They grew up to
be fine active fellows, afraid of nothing and good at all manly sports. As
they grew up, they gathered other young men outside the villages into a
sort of clan, to protect the countryside against robbers, and to fight and
hunt and earn a living in one way and another. They had a rocky stronghold
on the mountain, where they lived, and whenever strangers came that way,
some one was sent to see who and what they were. That was how the two
brothers came to the camp of the colonists.
When this remarkable story was told, there was intense interest in the
strange kinsmen. The girls were a little afraid of them. Their eyes were
so bright and keen, their teeth so white, and their faces so bronzed and
stern that they looked rather savage, especially in their wolf-skin
mantles and tunics. But the boys all wished that they could join the
patrol in the mountains.
For two days the colonists remained where they were, talking with the two
brothers about the country. At last it was settled that the very hills
where the two foundlings had grown up would be the best place for the
colony to live!
Near the yellow river, there was a group of seven irregular hills which
had never been inhabited, because the place was far from any town, and the
neighboring chiefs had no especial use for it. There was good water on
these hills and pasture enough for all the herds, if the woods were
cleared off. The hills were so shaped that they could be defended, and
from those heights they could see for miles and miles across the plain.
The wild face of Romulus changed and kindled as he talked, and Marcus
Colonus saw that here in this youth, his kinsman, in spite of his
adventurous and untrained life and his ignorance of the old and
time-honored ways, he had found a true son of the Vitali, who loved his
land and his people.
The colonists crossed the plain to the seven hills, with the brothers
guiding them, and on the largest, which stood perhaps a hundred and fifty
feet above the river, they made their camp and set up the beehive temple
for the last time. Here, they hoped, the sacred fire would burn year after
year, and their people find a home.