At the gray dawn of morning with the blast of the trumpets he summoned all the warriors; that is, all who were sober. His bodyguard now came hastily in deep shame. Instead of thanks and praise, he gave leaders and men a lecture such as I never before heard from his lips. We have become mere hired soldiers, adventurers, ruffians, fierce and brave, like greedy beasts of prey; well suited for bloody pursuit, like hunting leopards, but not fit to leave the captured game to the hunter or bring it in and fasten it in a cage; we must first have our share of the blood and the food. It is by no means beautiful; yet it is far more enjoyable than philosophy and theology, rhetoric, grammar, and dialectics. But the Vandal War is over, I think. To-morrow we shall doubtless capture the fugitive King. * * * * * I always say so. The most weighty decisions hinge upon the most trivial incidents. Or, as I express it when I am in a very poetical mood, the goddess Tyche likes to sport with the destinies of men and nations, as boys toss coins in the air and determine gain and loss by "heads" or "tails." You, O Cethegus, have condemned my philosophy of the world's history as old wives' croaking. But judge for yourself. A bird's cry, a blind delight in hunting, a shot sent to the wrong mark, and the result is this: the Vandal King escapes when already within the grasp of our fingers; the campaign, which seemed ended, continues, and your friend must spend weeks in an extremely tiresome besieging camp before an extremely unnecessary Moorish mountain village. Belisarius had committed the pursuit of the fugitive King to his countryman, the Thracian Althias. "I choose you," he said, "because I trust you above all others where swift, tireless action is needed. If you overtake the Vandal before he finds refuge, the war will be over tomorrow; if you permit him to escape, you will give us long-continued severe toil. Choose your own men, but do not take time to breathe by night or day until you seize the tyrant, dead or alive." Althias blushed like a flattered girl. He took besides his Thracians several of the bodyguard and about a hundred Herulians under Fara. He asked me also to accompany him, less, probably, for the sake of my sword than my counsel. I willingly consented. And now a flying chase, such as I had never imagined possible, began in the rear of the Vandals. Five days and five nights, almost without a pause, we pursued the fugitives; their hoofmarks and footprints in the sand of the desert were unmistakable. We gained on them more and more, so that on the fifth night we were sure of overtaking and stopping them the next day before they reached the protection of the mountain--Pappua, it is called.