CHAPTER XIX.BODMILCAR AGAIN.
Someeasy 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 atknuckle-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 theAshtoreth, I met Himilco and Gisgo, both extremelyexcited, 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, theMelkarth, 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 madehis 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 besidemyself 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 theMelkarth. 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 theMelkarthand 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 LEAKExpandTHE CHILD HAD FOUND THE LEAK.To facepage 293.
ExpandTHE CHILD HAD FOUND THE LEAK.
To facepage 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 theAdonibaland theCabiroswere 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 mightbreak 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.