They crossed the city. The streets were deserted. The entire population had gone up to the Acropolis. Actæon stopped a moment before Sónnica's warehouses to give the news of his journey to her slaves, and then he followed his friend, riding forth from the city.
Alorcus lodged in one of the inns in the suburb, an enormous edifice with extensive stables and broad courtyards, where continuously rang the diverse tongues of the interior of the Peninsula, hoarsened and made strident by dickering for merchandise and the bartering of beasts. Five men of the tribe accompanied the young Celtiberian during his stay in Saguntum, taking care of his horses and serving him as free domestics.
On learning that they were to depart these sons of the mountains shouted with joy. They had languished with inactivity in that rich and fruitful country amid customs which they detested, and they made preparations for the journey in haste.
The sun was setting when they started. Alorcus and Actæon rode in advance, their mantles thrown over their heads, padded linen breastplates to protect their chests after the Celtiberian fashion, and short broadswords, and leather shields hanging at their sides. The five servants and the messenger brought up the rear, armed with long lances, driving the mules laden with Alorcus' clothing and provisions.
Throughout the afternoon they traveled upon the roads, being still in the Saguntine domain, and they passed cultivated and fruitful fields, beautiful villas and compact little towns clinging close around the tower which served them as defense. When night closed in they camped close to a miserable village in the mountains. There the territory of Saguntum ended. Beyond lay the tribes which were almost constantly warring with the people of the coast.
Next morning the Greek beheld a wholly different landscape. The sea and the green plains lay behind him, and he saw only mountains and more mountains, some covered with great pine forests, others red, with bluffs of bluish stone, overgrown with dense thickets which, brushed by the passing caravan, sent forth clouds of frightened birds, while terrified rabbits scampered under the very horses' hoofs.
The trails were not the work of man. The beasts laboriously picked their way in the tracks left by former travelers; they often twisted around masses of rock fallen from the summits, and again they forded streams which ran across their path. They skirted mountains; they climbed heights into a silent region seldom penetrated by man, where eagles screamed, flapping their wings in anger at this invasion. They rode down into gorges, deep crevices, in which reigned a sepulchral penumbra and where buzzards hopped close by the dead body of some abandoned animal.