CHAPTER XXII

The day after Gelimer's surrender Fara's camp was broken up and the
train of victors and captives began the march to Carthage. Couriers
were despatched in advance to Belisarius.

At the head rode Fara, Procopius, and the other leaders on horses and
camels; in the centre were led the captive Vandals, bound, for the sake
of precaution, hand and foot with chains which permitted walking and
even riding, but not running, and surrounded by foot-soldiers; the Hun
cavalry formed the rear. So, resting at night in tents, they slowly
traversed in fourteen days the road over which, in their swift pursuit,
they had gone in eight.

Verus usually rode alone; he avoided the Vandals, and the Byzantines
shunned _him_.

On the second day after the departure from Mount Pappua,--Fara and
Procopius were far in advance,--at a turn in the road, the priest
checked his horse and waited. The prisoners approached. Many a fettered
hand was raised against him, many a curse was called down on his head;
he neither saw nor heard. At last, holding in his manacled right hand a
staff that extended into a cross, Gelimer tottered forward on foot.
Verus urged his horse through the ranks of the guards, and now rode
close beside him; the prisoner looked up.

"You, Verus!"

He shuddered.

"Yes, I, Verus. I waited for you here--you and this hour,--this hour
which at last has come, slowly, lingeringly; this hour for which I have
wished, longed, labored by prayer, by counsel and action, for which
alone I have lived, suffered, struggled during years and tens of
years."

"And why, O Verus, why? What injury have I done you?"

Verus uttered a shrill laugh, and reined in his horse, stopping
suddenly.

Gelimer started. He had rarely seen this man smile, never had he heard
him laugh aloud.

"Why? Ha! ha! You can still ask? Why? Because--But to answer this
question I should have to repeat the whole story of our--the Romans',
the Catholics'--sufferings from the first step which Genseric took upon
this soil. Why? Because I am the avenger, the requiter of the hundred
years of crime called 'the Vandal kingdom in Africa.' Hear it, ye
saints in Heaven! This man--he was present when all my kindred were
horribly murdered, and he asks why I have hated and, so far as I had
power, destroyed him and his people?"

"I know--"

"You know nothing! For you can ask me: _Why_? You know, you mean, of my
dying mother's curse. But this you