ers, asking all the
people whether no Vandals had been seen. One--this time it was a Gothic
count named Totila, as handsome as he was insolent--had just answered,
laughing and shrugging his shoulders: "Seek your enemies yourselves. I
would far rather go with the Vandals to find and sink you." I was
thinking how correctly this young Barbarian had perceived the advantage
of his people and the folly of his Regent, when, vexed with the Goths,
with myself, and most of all with Belisarius, I turned a street corner
and almost ran against some one coming from the opposite direction. It
was Hegelochus, my schoolmate from Caesarea, who, I knew, had settled as
a merchant, a speculator in grain, somewhere in Sicily, but I was
ignorant in which city.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, after the first exchange of
greetings.

"I?--I am only looking for a trifle," I answered rather irritably, for
I already heard in imagination his jeering laugh. "I am searching
everywhere for a hundred and fifty to two hundred Vandal war-ships. Do
you happen to know where they are?"

"Certainly I do," he replied, without laughing. "They are lying in the
harbor of Caralis in Sardinia."

"Omniscient grain-dealer," I cried, rigid with amazement, "where did
you learn that?"

"In Carthage, which I left only three days ago," he said quietly.

Then the questioning began. And often as I squeezed the shrewd,
sensible man like a sponge, a stream of news most important for us
flowed out.

So we have nothing to fear for our fleet from the Vandal war vessels.
The Barbarians as yet have no suspicion that we are advancing upon
them. The flower of their army has gone on the dreaded galleys to
Sardinia. Gelimer feels no anxiety for Carthage, or any other city on
the coast. He is in Hermione, in the province of Byzacena, four days'
journey from the sea. What can he be doing there, on the edge of the
desert? We are, therefore, safe from every peril, and can land in
Africa wherever wind, waves, and our own will may guide us.

During this conversation, and while I was constantly questioning him, I
had wound my arm around my friend's neck, and now asked him to come to
the harbor with me and look at my ship, which lay at anchor there. It
was a very swift sailer of a new model. The merchant agreed. As soon as
I had him safely on board, I drew my sword, cut the rope which moored
us to the metal ring of the harbor mole, and ordered my sailors to take
us swiftly to