It was as though a new health were making Lucius strong and cheerful. Yes, it seemed to Thrasyllus that Lucius was no longer thinking of Ilia and that he was cured of his carking grief. In the Ethiopian forests, which now almost surrounded them with an impenetrable wall of huge trees and dense foliage and tangled creepers, he abandoned himself enthusiastically to the delights of the great hunts which Caleb organized, with the aid of the mighty hunters whom he had hired for his noble client. These hunters included five Elephantophagi, with whom Lucius hunted the elephants which sometimes pass through the forests in herds. The elephants were often shot by archers, three of whom served one heavy bow: two men, leg forward, held the bow; the third drew back the string; and the arrow, dipped in snake poison, struck the elephant, who fell stunned. If the elephant was not killed, he was surrounded with a network of ropes; and, when he recovered consciousness, he was tamed and made to lure other elephants. If the elephant, however, was not to be tamed and if, after recovering his senses, he relapsed into a dangerous rage, then he was driven, amid much shouting and yelling, against a tree, which had purposely been sawn through at the foot. Elephants are accustomed to rest against trees; but, as soon as the untamable elephant leant against this tree, it fell over him and prevented him from rising, so that he broke the bone of his leg and was killed. This often implied cruelty, but it also implied danger; and Lucius’ newly aroused manhood found satisfaction in this robust, virile sport.
But there was also the hunting of the swift-footed ostriches, with hunters selected from the tribe of the Struthophagi; and this hunt provided the maddest enjoyment and excited Caleb and Tarrar in particular; and Thrasyllus and Cora also came to look on, for it was a most diverting spectacle, in which the hunters disguised themselves as ostriches, with little skirts of feathers and with one hand stuck into a stuffed ostrich-neck, with the stuffed head sticking out on top. There were first wild bird-dances; then the hunters darted forward and scattered corn and lured the real birds, which rushed after them and pecked at the grains, until they were caught in ravines from which they could find no issue and were shot with arrows. And with their precious feathers, bleached and curled, the Struthophagi made costly coverings, soft and white and downy, which Caleb bought for a song to send to Alexandria and Rome, where they were a great luxury, so that Caleb made a pretty penny by the transaction.
Sometimes there was danger in the forest. There was danger when the Struthophagi met the Sionians, a tribe of nomads with whom they were always at war; it was dangerous when the Acridophagi appeared, the verminous locust-eaters; but the travellers’ strong escort, the huge Libyans and nimble Arabs, inspired respect and the wild nomads fled at the first bowshot. And Caleb was afraid of nobody; he feared only the wood-nymphs, who, when they have caught you in their arms, which are pythons, laugh and laugh into your ears, until you go mad, and then dance round with you, until you drop dead. And, when he lay down at night to sleep under a black ostrich-feather covering, he also feared the scorpions, which have no fewer than four jaws and whose bite is not fatal but produces a slow, incurable canker.
They also caught lions, in nets, and hippopotami, in pits, and wild buffaloes, which they pursued with the huge hounds of the Cynamolgian hunters. They hunted from tall trees and they hunted from the reeds in the water. It was a rude and stimulating life; and Caleb once said to Lucius, seriously, that he felt the courage to go on and to go on again … to fight the great snake in the ocean that encompassed the earth. …
It did not come to that, however. But the caravan was approaching Napata and the Ethiopian emerald-mines and topaz-rocks. The emerald-mines were like marvellous green, magic caves, in which thousands of slaves were working; the topaz-rocks were visited at night time: the stones, because of their yellow sheen, are almost invisible by day, but glitter in the dark night; then little metal tubes are planted over each stone that is found, so as to make it easier to recognize the stones in the daytime and to grub them out. In former ages, the Egyptian and Ethiopian kings maintained separate guards around these mines and rocks.
At Napata, where the travellers now arrived, they saw their first entirely native, barbarian town. There was not a word of Latin spoken here; Lucius and Thrasyllus could not have made themselves understood without Tarrar and Caleb; and even then the little Libyan slave and the Sabaean guide found it difficult to grapple with the language. The Ethiopians, who wore no clothing save the skin of some animal round their waist, surprised the travellers by the smallness of their stature. Everything about them was small: their houses built of palm-leaves and bamboo, their oxen and goats and sheep; and Thrasyllus
