noble. This appeal did not win a single Vandal to our side
during the entire campaign. These Germans have become enfeebled. But
there was not even _one_ traitor among them!"

CHAPTER III

Many days' march westward from the road which the Byzantines were
following toward Carthage, and a considerable distance south of Mount
Auras, the extreme limit of the Vandal kingdom in Africa, lay a small
oasis. It was within the sandy desert which extended southward into the
unknown interior of the hot portion of the globe. A spring of drinkable
water, a few date-palms in the circle around it, and, beneath their
shade, a patch of turf of salt grass, affording sufficient fodder for
the camels--that was all. The ground in the neighborhood was flat,
except that here and there rose waves of the yellow, loose, hot sand
swept together by the wind. Nowhere appeared shrub, bush, or hillock;
as far as the eye could rove in the brightest light of day, it found no
resting-place till, wearied by the quest, it sought some point close at
hand.

But it was night now, and wonderfully, indescribably magnificent was
the silent solitude. Over the whole expanse of the heavens the stars
were glittering in countless multitudes with a brilliancy which they
show only to the sons of the desert. It is easy to understand that
deity first appeared to the Moors in the form of the stars. In them
they worshipped the radiant, beneficent forces which contrasted
benignly with the desert's scorching heat, the desert's storms. From
the course, position, and shining of the stars, they augured the will
of the gods and their own future.

Around the spring were pitched the low goatskin tents of the nomad
Moors, only half a dozen of them, for the whole tribe had not gathered.
The faithful camels, carefully tethered by the feet among the tent
ropes, and covered with blankets to protect them from the stings of the
flies, were lying in the deep sand with their long necks outstretched.
In the centre of the little encampment were the noble racers, the
battle stallions, and the brood mares, confined in a circle made with
ropes and lances thrust into the sand. On the round top of one of the
tents towered a long spear, from whose point hung a lion's skin; for
this was the shelter of the chief.

The night wind, which blew refreshingly from the distant sea in the
northeast, played with the mane of the dead king of the wilderness,
sometimes tos