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Updated: June 9, 2025
When presently his handsome wife attracted the notice of the legate, he endeavored to gain profit and advancement through her, but Sirona had rebuffed Quintillus with such insulting disrespect, that his superior officer became the centurion's enemy, and contrived to procure his removal to the oasis, which was tantamount to banishment.
Their officers, who amounted to seventeen or eighteen, were all lodged in the first lieutenant's cabin, under a constant guard of six men, and the General, as he was wounded, lay in the Commodore's cabin with a sentinel always with him, and they were all informed that any violence or disturbance would be punished with instant death; and that the Centurion's people might be at all times prepared, if notwithstanding these regulations any tumult should arise, the small arms were constantly kept loaded in a proper place, whilst all the men went armed with cutlasses and pistols, and no officer ever pulled off his clothes, and when he slept had always his arms lying ready by him.
His people said that when he was in this condition, the centurion's ghastly demon had entered into him, and he himself believed in this evil spirit, and dreaded it; nay, he had attempted to be released through heathen spells, and even through Christian exorcisms. Now he sat in the dark room on the sheepfell, which in scorn of his wife he had spread on a hard wooden bench.
He began to heal the sick, and his fame soon spread so widely that sufferers came from Syria and beyond Jordan, and even from Jerusalem, several days' journey away, to be cured of their diseases. Here he healed the centurion's servant and Peter's mother-in-law, and multitudes of the lame and the blind and persons possessed of devils; and here, also, he raised Jairus's daughter from the dead.
With this view he represented to them how little foundation there was for their apprehensions of the Centurion's being lost; that he was not without hopes that she might return in a few days, but if she did not, the worst that could be supposed was that she was driven so far to the leeward of the island that she could not regain it, and that she would consequently be obliged to bear away for Macao, on the coast of China; that, as it was necessary to be prepared against all events, he had, in this case, considered of a method of carrying them off the island and joining their old ship the Centurion again at Macao; that this method was to haul the Spanish bark on shore, to saw her asunder, and to lengthen her twelve feet, which would enlarge her to near forty tons burthen, and would enable her to carry them all to China.
There was a lamp burning on the table, and on a bench by the wall of the room, which was lined with colored stucco, lay the helmet, the centurion's staff, and the other portions of the armor which Phoebicius had taken off before setting out for the feast of Mithras, in order to assume the vestments of one of the initiated of the grade of "Lion."
He owed it chiefly to the young tribune Aurelius Apollinaris that he had very soon regained the centurion's staff, in spite of his humble birth; he had saved that officer's life in the war with the Armenians to be here, in Alexandria, cruelly mutilated by the hand of his sovereign. The centurion had a faithful heart.
He observed it and was silent, but when they could no longer see him he laughed to himself and muttered, while he rubbed a weal that the centurion's whip had left upon his back, "If they think that a Gaul's cudgel has a pleasant flavor they are mistaken, however I would not exchange it for a skin of Anthyllan wine; and if they could only know that at least one of the stripes which torments me is due to each one of themselves, they would be surprised!
But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great. Now when he had ended all his sayings in the audience of the people, he entered into Capernaum. And a certain centurion's servant, who was dear unto him, was sick, and ready to die.
But Adan Centurion's heart failed him; to cut out the old Sea-wolf from under one of his own batteries was more than he had the stomach for, and he accordingly sailed away.
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