Prisoners of War/Chapter 1

BIREME, Julius Cæsar's until Tros captured it and used it against Cæsar, plunged and rolled before a westerly gale, not shipping much water, because Tros was at the helm, but swinging her fighting-top like a pendulum and making her working crew of British fishermen miserably seasick.

Forward, on the deck between the citadel and the bow, more than a score of British gentlemen lay dead, a sail spread over them and a guard of four not so badly wounded men posted in their honor. Below, in the dark of the creaking hold, the more severely wounded groaned and grumbled at the crude surgery of their unwounded friends, whose methods, whatever their motives, were abrupt and painful. They kept the rats at bay, whatever else.

Tros, amber eyes heavy with weariness, his great jaw grinding, shaking his head at intervals to throw the black hair from his eyes, steered a course far closer to the coast of Britain than was necessary to make Thames-mouth; he had come from the mouth of the Seine and might have stood nearly due East toward the Belgian sands in order to take full advantage of wind and tide.

Orwic, nephew of Caswallon, King of the Trinobantes, disguised like a Roman legionary, except that he had a mustache and his fair hair fell to his shoulders, swung himself up from the hold and climbed the poop by the broken ladder. For a minute or two he leaned overside and vomited, then worked his way hand over hand along the rail toward Tros and pointed at the coast of Britain, where the chalk cliffs stood like ghosts in a gray mystery of drifting fog.

"Too close!" he objected. "A Roman ship—we look like Romans. If we put in there, they'll—" he leaned overside, but managed to control himself—"remember the Northmen," he went on. "Two longships—ran from us toward Pevensey. They'll have burned some villages. The next foreign-looking ship that runs for shelter will"

He vomited again, clinging to the lee rail. Tros waited for him to recover and then gestured toward the opposite coast of Gaul, invisible beyond a howling waste of gray sea.

"I would run in for the sake of the wounded; this cold wind tortures them. Better a fight with Britons than another brush with Cæsar!" he said grimly. "But Cæsar has had time to reach Caritia by chariot and put a dozen ships into the water. He has had time to set a dozen traps. He'll risk storm and everything to catch and crucify us. Twenty of us fit to fight—crew no good—torn sail—and who is to man the oars?"

"But if you hug the shore our own Britons may put out and throw fire into us," said Orwic. "That's what we always try to do to the Northmen."

"Not in this gale!" Tros answered. "Of two foes, shun the stronger. Cæsar is the craftiest of Romans. We have stung him, Orwic. We have made a mock of him before his own men. We have tricked a prisoner out of his camp by forgery and boldness. We have made him run; he had to swim for it. And I know Cæsar!"

"A pity we didn't catch him!"

"Aye, I am ashamed!" Tros ground his teeth. "And what shall I say to Caswallon, who lent me a hundred gentlemen to take Cæsar alive! Half of them dead or wounded—no plunder—nothing to show him but my father's corpse, for which I must beg obsequies!"

"Caswallon will remember who wrecked Cæsar's ships off Kent a while ago. You saved Britain for us, Tros. Caswallon will not forget that."

But Tros smiled sourly. "It is only grudges that endure. Kings' memories are as short as Cæsar's for a friendship."

Orwic, too weak to argue, lay down near the lee rail, hugging himself in his cloak. Not long ago he had ridden in triumph to Lunden to announce Cæsar's hurried midnight retreat from Britain; he relished no more than Tros did the prospect of slinking up Thames with nothing to show but a foreigner's corpse to offset more than sixty dead and wounded gentlemen.

Mere seamen would hardly have mattered; but by the irony of fate not one of the twenty hirelings had suffered a scratch, except when Tros and Conops hit them with belaying pins or knife-hilts to stir their energy. In a sense Orwic was as much responsible as Tros; it was he who had supported Tros first and last; he was second-in-command of the expedition. Worse! The Lunden girls had seen the off; they would be waiting now to kiss victorious warriors—expecting to see Cæsar brought forth from the hold in chains.

Instead of Cæsar in his scarlet cloak they would see dead and wounded friends—relations—lovers.

Orwic was as young and as imaginative as the girls who reckoned him the bravest man in Britain.

Tros gave the helm to Conops, his Greek freed-man, whose one eye, keener than a gimlet, betrayed one sole emotion just then—curiosity. He looked comical in an imitation of a Roman tunic, with his red Greek seaman's cap pulled low over his brow, an impudent nose beneath it, and a slit lip that showed one eye-tooth like a dog's.

To him nothing mattered except that his master Tros was alive and in command. He worshipped Tros, regarded him, young as he was, as the greatest seaman in the world; and seamanship, in Conops' view, was much the greatest of all attributes; any fool could stand or run on dry land, but it called for something superhuman to control a storm-tossed ship in chartless seas, bully a mutinous crew and make a landfall after days and nights of beating against headwinds under a viewless sky.

Conops was merely curious to know what was to happen next; he had perfect confidence in Tros' ability to meet it. Hardship meant no more to him than other men's feelings or opinions; his whole interest in living was to serve Tros loyally; the one reward he craved, a nod from Tros, maybe a smile, and a word or two of terse, ungilded praise.

"Keep the wind at the back of your right ear," Tros commanded. "The tide 'll be slack in an hour; watch for the surf on the quicksands on your starboard bow. Keep clear of that, and follow the tide around the coast when it starts to make. If there's any trouble with the crew, wake me."

E WENT below, into the cabin where his father's body lay on Cæsar's bed, with Cæsar's scarlet cloak spread over it. And for a while he stood steadying himself with one hand on an overhead beam, watching the old man's face, that was as calm as if Cæsar's tortures had never racked the seventy-year-old limbs, the firm, proud lip showing plainly through the white beard, the eyes closed as in sleep, the aristocratic hands folded on the breast.

It was dark in there and easy to imagine things. The body moved a trifle in time to the ship's swaying.

"Sleep on!" Tros muttered.

He could not imagine his father dead, not even with the corpse before his eyes. No sentiment, not much emotion, had been lost between them. Tros actually loved his father more that minute than he had ever done. As a prince of Samothrace, deep in the Inner Mysteries, old Perseus had had scant respect for the claims of human personality, reckoning himself—as he was reckoned by the hierarchs—a failure to the extent that he had married and begotten a son, who might add to the afflictions of the world. He had spared no pains to educate that son, teaching him mastery of fear—since no man may escape fear, but a few may learn to rise triumphant over it—and above all, seamanship; but he had conceded nothing to the claims of mere human affection.

Not once had he tempted Tros to take the vow of an initiate, although that was his heart's desire, as Tros well understood. The first law of the Mysteries forbade the use of even the slightest influence, as between father and son for instance, to induce any one to become a candidate for initiation, and Tros had taken full advantage of that. He felt no impulse to devote himself to esoteric aims. He could not stomach non-resistance. His father had died not cursing and not blessing Cæsar, who tortured him, but utterly indifferent to Cæsar's crimes provided his own acts should pass the critical judgment of his own conscience. Tros on the other hand ached for revenge and determined to have it.

He could not have explained why. He had inherited his father's passion for free will and full responsibility, each man for his own acts. He did not question his father's right to submit to torture rather than reveal to Cæsar the least hint of what the secrets of the Samothracian and Druidic Mysteries really were; he would have done the same himself.

Nor did he question his father's right to be unvindictive; he was rather proud of the old man's conquest over self to the point where he could suffer torture and not shriek for vengeance or slaver with sickening meekness. He was immensely proud to be the old man's son.

Yet love him, in any ordinary sense, he knew he never had done; and, strangely enough, he hardly hated Cæsar. He was the enemy of Cæsar; he despised his vices and admired his genius, loathed his cruelty and liked his gentlemanly wit.

Old Perseus had been no man's enemy but all the world's friend, reserving his own right to be its friend in his own way. Tros gloried in being the enemy of Cæsar, of Rome, of any man or any power that dared to come between him and the freedom of earth and sea that his heart told him was a free man's heritage.

He fell asleep at once and his dreams were all of Cæsar, Cæsar standing on the bireme's bow in the mist at Seine-mouth, laughing, charmingly sarcastic, promising to crucify him by and by, plunging beneath a flight of arrows into the waves and continuing to laugh out of a fog-bank while the bireme pitched over the shoals at river-mouth and left Cæsar swimming safely out of reach.

He did not sleep long. He heard Conops shout from the poop and sprang out of the cabin sword in hand ready to deal with mutiny. But there was no mutiny. Conops and a dozen Britons were staring at a Gaulish fishing boat not far astern that looked as if it had been rebuilt by Roman engineers; it was plunging in masses of spray toward the British coast, making for Hythe in all likelihood;

"See the way they handle her!" Conops sneered. "Romans, or I'll eat my knife-hilt! Put about, master, and let's ram them! Did you ever see such landlubbers! Can't even quarter the sea! Straight from point to point like a plowshare into a field of turnips! There—they swamp!"

But the boat was decked, and the deck must have been strong and watertight. She rose out of a welter of gray sea, dismasted but right side up, and Tros could see men, who certainly were Romans, chopping at the rigging with their short swords.

"Go about and ram them!" Conops urged again, and Tros considered that for a minute. But he would likely enough lose his own sail if he tried to turn into the wind.

"They'll smash on the rocks when the tide carries them inshore," he prophesied and went below again to make up arrears of sleep.

He did not wake again until nightfall, when he relieved Conops at the helm. By that time the tide had carried them well out into the North Sea. The wind backed suddenly to the northwest, increasing in strength, and he had to heave to.

There were no stars visible, no moon, nothing to do but pace the poop to keep warm, judging the drift by the feel of the wind, with the cries of the wounded and the thought of that Gaulish-Roman fishing-boat with her Roman crew, to haunt and worry him.

Tros tried to persuade himself that the boat could not be Cæsar's. But calculations, made and checked a dozen times, assured him that Cæsar would have had time to reach Caritia by chariot from Seine-mouth and to send that boat in the teeth of the gale across the Channel; in fact, he would have had about two hours to spare, which was ample in which to choose and instruct men for his purpose, whatever that might be.

LACK night on a raging sea was neither time nor place for shrewd guessing at Cæsar's newest strategy, but Tros did not doubt it would run true to form and be brilliant if nothing else. To land a dozen Romans openly on the shore of Britain would be madness; if they were not killed instantly they would be held as hostages. Direct overtures to Caswallon would be laughed at—Cæsar would not try any such foolishness as to send messengers to Lunden. What then?

Cæsar's notorious luck would probably throw up his men all living on the beach, or might even cause the mastless boat to drift into a sheltered cove. What then? What then?

Even supposing that boat should have been lost with all hands, the fact remained that Cæsar was attempting something. He would persist. He would send another boat. For what purpose? To avenge himself on Tros undoubtedly, but how?

Cæsar played politics like a game, staking kingdom against kingdom. Incredibly daring and swift decisions were the secret of his campaigns; but there was something else, and as Tros paced the poop, wet to the skin with spray, he tried to analyze what he knew of Cæsar, knowing he must outguess him if he hoped to escape the long reach of his arm.

He tried for a while to imagine himself in Cæsar's place; but that was difficult; the very breath Tros breathed was the antithesis of Cæsar's. Cæsar yearned to impose the Roman yoke on all the world; Tros burned to see a world of free men, in which each man ruled himself and minded his own business.

It was that thought, presently, that gave him what he thought might be the key. Well-bred, vain, self-seeking rascal though Cæsar was, there was something splendid in his method, something admirable in his constancy of purpose and in his ability to make men serve him in the teeth of suffering and death. What was it? In what way was Cæsar different from other men?

His vices were unspeakable; his treachery was a byword; his extravagance was an insult to the men who died for him and to the nations from whom he extorted money with which to bribe Rome's politicians. He had personal charm, but that was not enough; men grow weary of a rogue, however successful and however personally charming. There was some other secret.

And at last it seemed to Tros he had it! Rome! The glamour of the word Rome. The idea of Rome as mistress of the world, with all men paying tribute to her—one law, one senate, one arbiter of quarrels, one fountain-head of authority. A sort of imitation of Nature, with the fundamental truth of brotherhood and freedom left out! Cæsar served his own ends, but he served Rome first; he might loot Rome and make himself her despot, but he would leave her mistress of the world.

No other people, possibly no other man than Cæsar had that obsession fixed so thoroughly in mind that he himself was almost the idea. Foreigners might send their spies to Rome, and bribe her public men almost openly, but none could set Roman against Roman when Rome's profit was in question. On the other hand, Rome sent spies, or openly acknowledged agents, and successfully set tribe against tribe, faction against faction, until domestic strife ensued, and Rome stepped in and conquered.

The Britons, for instance, were divided into petty kingdoms, jealous of their own kings. Caswallon, who had defeated Cæsar with Tros' help and sent him sneaking back to Gaul by night, had been at his wits' end to raise an army, even for that purpose. The half of one British tribe, the Atrebates, lived in Gaul and had accepted Cæsar's rule, under a king of Cæsar's making.

The Iceni traded horses to the men of Kent, but fought them between-times; and as far as the other British tribes were concerned, they were to all intents and purposes foreigners, loosely united by occasional marriages but with no real bond other than Druidism.

The Druids taught brotherhood, it was true; but that was too easily interpreted to mean friendship toward foreigners and strife at home.

The only enemy the Britons really held in common was the Northmen, who plundered the coasts whenever their own harvests failed or their own young men grew restless to wed foreign wives. But the Britons made friends with the Northmen, intermarried with them, let prisoners settle in their midst, and absorbed them, without making them feel they were a part of one united nation.

Self-seeking rogue though he was, then, Cæsar was Rome, to all intents and purposes; or so Tros argued it. Britain was a loosely knitted congeries of tribes, without any central authority, governed by chiefs who were hard put to it to have their own way, suspicious of one another. Cæsar, driven out of Britain, being Cæsar, would never rest until he had reversed defeat.

Therefore, that boat, undoubtedly containing Romans, must be a move in Cæsar's game, a move that would mean nothing else but an attempt to set Britons against Britons, since that was all a handful of men could do in an enemy country.

But Cæsar never neglected himself or his own feuds while he spread Rome's power abroad. He never failed to follow up his threats; never neglected to avenge personal defeat. He was not only Rome, he was Cæsar.

Tros had laughed at him, had tricked a prisoner away, had fooled him; out-guessed him, drowned a hundred men and almost caught Cæsar himself. It was safe, then, to wager that, coming so swiftly after that encounter, the gale-swept Gaulish fishing-boat in some way was connected with revenge on Tros.

PIES might have told a great deal; but Cæsar was astute enough in any event to guess how strongly Tros stood in Caswallon's favor, and successful guile delighted Cæsar even more than winning battles.

It was not unreasonable to suppose that Cæsar had sent messengers in that boat—no doubt with expensive presents—to tell tales that should reach Caswallon's ears.

As he turned that over in his mind and calculated how much time the Roman messengers would have for intrigue—supposing that dismasted boat to have reached the coast—Tros almost made up his mind to run for the Belgian lowlands and seek refuge there. He did not doubt he could make good friends among the Belgæ.

All that restrained him was his own pride. He had made a promise to Caswallon; he would keep it. Those young gallants who had sailed with him—mutinous cockerels—had their rights; their dead should be buried in British earth.

But he almost wished the gods might relieve him of responsibility by sinking the bireme in that raging sea, that pitched and rolled her, wind across the tide, burying her bow in smothering green water as she lurched unsteadily to leeward, tossing the wounded about in the hold and shaking her spar and fighting-top until it was a mystery why the mast did not go overboard.

The gods—the pantheon of gods he sensed around him—knew drowning was no enviable death; but neither was the prospect anything but vile, of groaning wearily up Thames-mouth in a damaged ship, with two-thirds of her complement dead or wounded, their friends, expectant of victory, waiting to receive them, and a possibility, almost probable, that Cæsar's messengers had already bribed or cozened influential Britons into a distrustful, if not an openly hostile frame of mind. He was quite willing to drown just then, provided he might go down handsomely.

Orwic frankly friendly, throwing off the seasickness and gathering strength for another dive into the hold to tend the wounded, was aware of Tros' quandary and did his best to encourage him.

"Lud of Lunden is a good god. He will send us an achievement!" he yelled in Tros' ear, then swung himself down from the poop and disappeared in darkness.

"Achievment [sic]!" Tros muttered. "And thirty seasick men to wrest it from destiny! We will all do well if we achieve a decent death!"

For the first time in his life he had begun to think that destiny might be his enemy and not bis friend; that Cæsar, the Romans, Rome, might be fortune's favorites and he and his friends, the Britons, nothing but grist in the eternal mill.

The wind shrieked through the rigging; bitter cold spray drenched him. He had to cling to the rail, and his eyes ached, staring at stark, dark seas that pitched the bireme like a cork.

"I will die free. I will set others free. I must! I burn to live! But is it all worth the burning?" he wondered.