fits are not
cut, you may make my Ancestors' Oracle my master. Rome has been! Rome has
been!" Then he turned on his side to sleep.

'"He has it," said Maximus. "We will get to what _I_ need."

'He unrolled full copies of the number of men and supplies on the
Wall--down to the sick that very day in Hunno Hospital. Oh, but I groaned
when his pen marked off detachment after detachment of our best--of our
least worthless men! He took two towers of our Scythians, two of our North
British auxiliaries, two Numidian cohorts, the Dacians all, and half the
Belgians. It was like an eagle pecking a carcass.

'"And now, how many catapults have you?" He turned up a new list, but
Pertinax laid his open hand there.

'"No, Caesar," said he. "Do not tempt the Gods too far. Take men, or
engines, but not both; else we refuse."'

'Engines?' said Una.

'The catapults of the Wall--huge things forty feet high to the head--firing
nets of raw stone or forged bolts. Nothing can stand against them. He left
us our catapults at last, but he took a Caesar's half of our men without
pity. We were a shell when he rolled up the lists!

'"Hail, Caesar! We, about to die, salute you!" said Pertinax, laughing. "If
any enemy even leans against the Wall now, it will tumble."

'"Give me the three years Allo spoke of," he answered, "and you shall have
twenty thousand men of your own choosing up here. But now it is a gamble--a
game played against the Gods, and the stakes are Britain, Gaul, and
perhaps, Rome. You play on my side?"

'"We will play, Caesar," I said for I had never met a man like this man.

'"Good. To-morrow," said he, "I proclaim you Captains of the Wall before
the troops."

'So we went into the moonlight, where they were cleaning the ground after
the Games. We saw great Roma Dea atop of the Wall, the frost on her
helmet, and her spear pointed towards the North Star. We saw the twinkle
of night-fires all along the guard-towers, and the line of the black
catapults growing smaller and smaller in the distance. All these things we
knew till we were weary; but that night they seemed very strange to us,
because the next day we knew we were to be their masters.

'The men took the news well; but when Maximus went away with half our
strength, and we had to spread ourselves into the emptied towers, and the
townspeople complained that trade would be ruined, and the Autumn gales
blew--it was dark days for us two. Here Pertinax was more than my righ