Hypatia - or New Foes with an Old Face

la after another, till the reaches of the banks hid them from his sight, with many a yearning to know what sort of places those gay buildings and gardens would look like on a ne

dotted with the same line of logs and stones strewn along the water's edge, which turned out as he approached them to be basking crocodiles and sleeping pelicans. His eye, wearied with the continual confinement and want of distance, longed for the boundless expanse of the desert, for the jagged outlines of those far-off hills, which he had watched from boyhood rising mysteriously at morn out of the eastern sky, and melting mysteriously into it again at even, beyond which dwelt a whole world of wonders, elephants and dragons, satyrs and anthropophagi,-ay, and the phoenix itself. Tired and melancholy, his mind returned inward to prey on itself, and the last words of Arsenius rose again and again to his thoughts. 'Was his call of the spirit or

ds the monster, in spite of its sudden and frantic wheelings; and when it dashed madly across the stream, some twenty oars flashed through the water in pursuit. All was activity and excitement; and it was no wonder if Philammon's curiosity had tempted him to drift down almost abreast of the barge ere he descried, peeping from under a decorated awning in the afterpart, some dozen pairs of languishing black eyes, turned alternately to the game and to himself. The serpents!-chattering and smiling, with pretty little shrieks and shaking of glossy curls and gold necklaces,

tention of dying tamely or unavenged. In an instant he had freed himself from the line; drawn the short knife which was his only weapon; and diving suddenly, avoided the monster's rush, and attacked him from behind with stabs, which, though not deep, still dyed the waters with gore at every stroke. The barbarians shouted with delight. The hippopotamus turned furiously aga

.... and paddled round again,.... and thought of the basilisk eyes;.... he might escape the crocodiles, but who could escape women?.... and he struck out valiantly for shore.... when he was brought to a sudden stop by finding the stem of the barge close on him, a noose thrown ove

fight, but tastelessly bedizened with classic jewels, brooches, and Roman coins, strung like necklaces. Only the steersman, who had come forward to wonder at the hippopotamus, and to help in dragging the unwieldy brute on board, seemed to keep genuine and unornamented the costume of his race, the white linen leggings, stra

iant to the old hero of the bearskin cloak; 'and understands wearing

rs, Amalric the Amal. What did to sa

mongrel mixture of the Roman military and civil dress, his neck wreathed with a dozen g

get to Asgard up this ditch in the sand, you h

essed a question to the young monk, which h

in Gree

ngue. Make a slave tal

you understand this fellow's talk.

' replied a soft voice from underneath the aw

the last nonsense you taught me?-and ask this wild man of the sands

fanned with peacock's feathers, and glittering with rubies and to

ough the thin gauze robe, while her lower limbs were wrapped in a shawl of orange silk, embroidered with wreaths of shells and roses. Her dark hair lay carefully spread out upon the pillow, in a thousand ringlets entwined with gold and jewels; her languishing eyes blazed like diamonds from a cavern, under eyelids darkened and deep

What is

at the giant for f

' interposed the old warrior, h

to the interpreter, turning his head away fro

eneral laugh by all except the l

just as likely, I believe, to reach it by flying, as by rowing

e equally trustworthy traditions which the Goths had picked up at Alexandria. There was nothing which that river did not do. It rose in the Caucasus. Where was the Caucasus? He did not know. In Paradise-in Indian Aethiopia-in Aet

among these dragons,' quoth Smid th

aught Snake Midgard with the

rney more, all round Arabia and India, among

r, Smid!' growled

e Wulf, eh?' quoth Smid; 'I mu

from the country where the phoenix lived, and nobody knew where that was. And then there were the cataracts, and the inundations-and-and-and above the cataracts, nothing but sand-hills and ruins, as full of devils as they could hold.... and as for Asgard, no one had ever hea

'How should such a poor beast

s well as that ape of a R

thousands of miles up the river, and cross the deserts among fiends a

rossing themselves, while two or three of the most enthusiastic were half-minded to go forward and kneel to Phil

d, Smid! I believe that prefect's quill-driver was humbu

asked

to be giving reasons like a rascally Roman lawyer? I say the governor looked like a liar; and I s

sure it's not my fault; I could only say wh

roared the Amal. 'Let me have him ou

any one, except I with you, for mishearing and misunderstanding, and meddling, as you are always doing? I shall do as I threatened

n the Am

ly shall not up this road. As for fame and all that, though I've had enough, there's plenty to be got anywhere along the shores of that Mediterranean. Let's burn and plunder Alexandria: forty of us Goths might kill down all these donkey-riders in two days, and hang up that lying prefect who sent us hereon this fool's errand. Don't answer, Wulf. I knew he was humbugging us all along, but you were so open-mouthed to all he said, that I was bound to let my elders choose for me. Let's go back; s

t harlots,' growl

my king!' sighed Pelagia; 'but Alexand

rang up fie

nd mine? Was it not that we should move and move, southward and southward ever, till we came back to Asgard, the city where Odin dwells for ever, and gave into his hands the kingdom of all the earth? And

f, the son of Ovida,

own and wallow, what will the herd do for a leader? If the king-wolf lose the scent, how will

u choose. Pelagia sings

caught at the hint, and poured

g and gliding by tower and town; Life is so short at be

hat, Wulf?' shout

holy city? And when he went to Valhalla, and the ships were wrecked off Sicily, and Adolf the Balth turned back like a lazy hound, and married the daughter of the Romans, whom Odin hates, and went northward again to Gaul, did n

s. 'Will you drive us blood-mad again, just as we are settling down in

ard, wolves of the Goths!' shouted

ghting and marching

isfy Odin ten times over? If he wants

inds again before

r tires; he has a winter-wolf's legs under

e monk says?-we can never

ging from the thwart where he had been sitting, he caught up a bill with one hand, and seized

, as he grappled with the warrior, clutched with his left hand the up-lifted wrist, and with his right the girdle, and

heir lovers to part the

Itho, or they will be over you! That's right, my Smid, don't use the knife! They w

er astonishment of the onlookers, he suddenly loosed his hold, shook himself free by one powerful wrench, and quietly retreated to

nt which they would of course have deeply deplored, but with which, as men of honour, they could not on any account interfere, but merely console themselves for the loss of their comrade

calmly in the face.... The old warrior's eye caught the bank, which was now receding rapidly past them; and when he saw that they were really floating downwards again, w

uoth another. 'Blood we must see, and it had better be yours, master

y would have; and not frantically, like Celts or Egyptians, but with the cool humorous cruelty of the Teut

into which he had been plunged, the new companions with whom he had fallen in, had driven him utterly from his moorings, and now anything and everything might happen to him. He who had promised never to look upon woman found himself, by circumstances over which he had no control, amid a boatful of the most objecti

minutes more, in some shape too ugly to be mentioned: but, a

do not let them!

, and know what is proper. And what ca

from her cushions, and thrown herself into

e him for my sak

you mustn't interru

Philammon; and as she stood, with all the outlines of her bea

ch him beneath that shawl!-

not the Messalina of Alexandria, but a woman; and true to the old woman-worshipping instinct, they looked one and all at he

emed for a moment doubtful, when Pelagia felt a heavy han

e him to me. He is your man. You could have killed him

ulf! We have not seen

ard. The boy is mine, and a brave boy. He has upset a warrior fairly t

d up the pro

n now. Do you

dressed, could only shake his head-though if he had known wh

does not like it! He is

e, because his blood is soon hot and soon cold. A brave man's grip grows the firmer the longer he holds, because the spirit of Odin comes upon him. I wat

s as he rowed by us; and if we are to go back to a cow's

artily intended to torture him to death, and then went forward, as many of them as were not rowing, to examine the strange beast which they had just slaughtered, pawing him over from tusks to tail, putting their heads into his mouth, trying their knives on his hide, comparing him to all beasts, like and unlike, which they had ever seen, and laughin