Curiosity was in every countenance. I made a genuflexion to the four points of the compass, devoted a gesture of peculiar solemnity to the procurator’s tent, and while all eyes were drawn in that direction, sprang on the barb’s back and was gone like an arrow. I heard a clamor of surprise, mingled with outrageous laughter, and looking round, saw the whole crowd of the loose riders of the encampment in full pursuit up the hill. Florus was at his tent door, pointing toward me with furious gestures. The trumpets were calling, the cavalry mounting; I had roused the whole activity of the little army. The slope of the valley was long and steep, and the heavy horsemanship of the legionaries, who were perhaps not very anxious for my capture, soon threw them out. A little knot of the more zealous alone kept up a pursuit, from which I had no fears. An abrupt rock in the middle of the ascent at length hid them from me. To gain a last view of the camp, I doubled round the rock and saw, a few yards below me, the tribune, with his horse completely blown. I owed him a debt, which I had determined to discharge at the earliest possible time, partly on my own account, and partly on that of the old captain. I darted upon him. He was all astonishment; a single buffet from my naked hand knocked the helpless taunter off his charger. “Tribune,” cried I, as he lay upon the ground, “you have had one specimen of my art to-day, now you shall have another. Learn in future to respect an Arab.” I caught his horse’s bridle, gave the animal a lash, and we bounded away together. The scene was visible to the whole camp; the troopers, who had reined up on the declivity, gave a roar of merriment, and I heard the old corpulent captain’s laugh above it all. CHAPTER XXVIII _The Power of a Beggar_ [Sidenote: The Contents of the Saddle-Bag] I had escaped, but the delay was ruinous. The sun sank when I reached the brow of the mountain, and Masada lay many a weary mile forward. I cast off the tribune’s horse, thus giving his insolent master evidence that I did not understand the main point of my trade, and stood pondering to what point of the mighty ridge that rose blue along the horizon I should turn, when, in the plunge of the horse as he felt himself at liberty, his saddle came to the ground. The possibility of its containing reports of the state of the enemy led me to examine its pockets; they were stuffed with letters worthy of the highest circles of Italian high life; the ill-spelled registers of an existence at a loss how to lose its time; of libertinism sick of indulgence, and of pecuniary embarrassment driven to the most hopeless and whimsical resources.