THE TRIAL.
The next morning Caesar, accompanied by his generals, set out for the
bank which commanded the mouth of the Loire, where a tent had been set
up for him. From this place the sea and its dangerous shores, strewn
with sand-bars and rocks level with the water, could be seen in the
distance. The wind was blowing a gale. Moored to the bank was a
fisherman's boat, at once solid and light, rigged Gallic fashion, with
one square sail with flaps cut in its lower edge. To this craft Albinik
and Meroe were forthwith conducted.
"It is stormy, the sea is menacing," said the interpreter to them. "Will
you dare to venture it alone with your wife? There are some fishermen
here who have been taken prisoners--do you want their help?"
"My wife and I have before now braved tempests alone in our boat, when
we made for my ship, anchored far out from shore on account of bad
weather."
"But now you are maimed," answered the interpreter. "How will you be
able to manage!"
"One hand is enough for the tiller. My companion will raise the
sail--the woman's business, since it is a sort of cloth," gaily added
the mariner to give the Romans faith in him.
"Go ahead then," said the interpreter. "May the gods direct you."
The bark, pushed into the waves by several soldiers, rocked a minute
under the flappings of the sail, which had not yet caught the wind. But
soon, held by Meroe, while her husband managed the tiller, the sail
filled, and bellied out to the blast. The boat leaned gently, and seemed
to fly over the crests of the waves like a sea-bird. Meroe, dressed in
her mariner's costume, stayed at the prow, her black hair streaming in
the wind. Occasionally the white foam of the ocean, bursting from the
prow of the boat, flung its stinging froth in the young woman's noble
face. Albinik knew these coasts as the ferryman of the solitary moors of
Brittany knows their least detours. The bark seemed to play with the
high waves. From time to time the couple saw in the distance the tent of
Caesar, recognizable by its purple flaps, and saw gleaming in the sun
the gold and silver which decked the armor of his generals.
"Oh, Caesar!--scourge of Gaul--the most cruel, the most debauched of
men!" exclaimed Meroe. "You do not know that this frail bark, which at
this moment you are following in the distance with your eyes, bears two
of your most desperate enemies. You do not know that they have
beforehand given over their lives to Hesus in the hope of making to
Teutates, god of journeys by land and by sea, an offering worthy of
him--an offering of several thousand Romans, sinking in the depths of
the sea. It is with hands raised to you, thankful and happy, O, Hesus,
that we shall disappear in the bottom of the deep, with the enemies of
our sacred Gaul!"
The bark of Albinik and Meroe, almost grazing the rocks and glancing
over the surges along the dangerous ashore, sometimes drew away from,
sometimes approached the bank. The mariner's companion, seeing him sad
and thoughtful, said:
"Still brooding, Albinik! Everything favors our projects. The Roman
general is no longer suspicious; your skill this morning will decide him
to accept your services; and to-morrow, mayhap, you will pilot the
galleys of our enemies----"
"Yes, I will pilot them to the bottom, where they will be swallowed up,
and we with them."
"What a magnificent offering to the gods! Ten thousand Romans, perhaps!"
"Meroe," answered Albinik with a sigh, "then, after ending our lives
here, even as the soldiers, brave warriors after all, we shall be
resurrected elsewhere with them. They will say to me: 'It was not
through bravery, with the lance and the sword, that you overcame us. No,
you slew us without a combat, by treason. You watched at the rudder, we
slept in peace and confidence. You steered us on the rocks--in an
instant the sea swallowed us. You are like a cowardly poisoner, who
would send us to our death by putting poison in our food. Is that an act
of valor? No, no longer do you know the open boldness of your fathers,
those proud Gauls who fought us half naked, who railed at us in our iron
armor, asking why we fought if we were afraid of wounds or death.'"
"Ah!" exclaimed Meroe, sadly and bitterly, "Why did the druidesses teach
me that a woman ought to escape the last outrage by death! Why did your
mother Margarid tell us so often, as a noble example to follow, the
deed of your grandmother Syomara, who cut off the head of the Roman who
ravished her, and carrying the head under the skirt of her robe to her
husband, said to him these proud and chaste words: 'No two men living
can boast of having possessed me!' Why did I not yield to Caesar?"
"Meroe!"
"Perhaps you would then have been avenged! faint heart! weak spirit!
Must then the outrage be completed, the ignominy swallowed, before your
anger is kindled?"
"Meroe, Meroe!"
"It is not enough for you, then, that the Roman has proposed to your
wife to sell herself, to deliver herself to him for gifts? It is to your
wife--do you hear!--to your wife, that Caesar made that offer of shame!"
"You speak true," answered the mariner, feeling anger fire his heart at
the memory of these outrages, "I was a spiritless fellow----"
But his companion went on with redoubled bitterness:
"No, I see it now. This is not enough. I should have died. Then perhaps
you would have sworn vengeance over my body. Oh, they arouse pity in
you, these Romans, of whom we wish to make an offering to the gods! They
are not accomplices to the crime which Caesar attempted, say you?
Answer! Would they have come to my aid, these soldiers, these brave
warriors, if, instead of relying on my own courage and drawing my
strength from my love for you, I had cried, implored, supplicated,
'Romans, in the name of your mothers, defend me from the lust of your
general'? Answer! Would they have come at my call? Would they have
forgotten that I was a Gaul--that Caesar was Caesar? Would the 'generous
hearts' of these brave fellows have revolted? After rape, do not they
themselves drown the infants in the blood of their mothers?----"
Albinik did not allow his companion to finish. He blushed at his lack of
heart. He blushed at having an instant forgotten the horrible deeds
perpetrated by the Romans in their impious war. He blushed at having
forgotten that the sacrifice of the enemies of Gaul was above all else
pleasing to Hesus. In his anger, he rang out, for answer, the war song
of the Breton seamen, as if the wind could carry his words of defiance
and death to Caesar where he stood on the bank:
Tor-e-benn! Tor-e-benn![4]
As I was lying in my vessel I heard
The sea-eagle calling, in the dead of night.
He called his eaglets and all the birds of the shore.
He said to them as he called:
'Arise ye, all--come--come.
It is no longer the putrid flesh of the dog or sheep we must have--
It is Roman flesh.'
"Tor-e-benn! Tor-e-benn!
Old sea-raven, tell me, what have you there?
The head of the Roman leader I clutch;
I want his eyes--his two red eyes!'
And you, sea-wolf, what have you there?
'The heart of the Roman leader I hold--
I am devouring it.'
And you, sea-serpent, what are you doing there,
Coiled 'round that neck, your flat head so close
To that mouth, already cold and blue?
'To hear the soul of the Roman leader
Take its departure am I here!'
Tor-e-benn! Tor-e-benn!"
Stirred up, like her husband, by the song of war, Meroe repeated with
him, seeming to defy Caesar, whose tent they discerned in the distance:
"Tor-e-benn! Tor-e-benn! Tor-e-benn!"
Still the bark of Albinik and Meroe played with the rocks and surges of
those dangerous roads, sometimes drawing off shore, sometimes in.
"You are the best and most courageous pilot I have ever met with, I, who
have in my life traveled so much on the sea," said Caesar to Albinik
when he had regained dry land, and, with Meroe, had left the boat.
"To-morrow, if the weather is fair, you will guide an expedition, the
destination of which you will know at the moment of setting sail."