rom Maikar at that moment hastened their deliberations.

"Are you going to cumber yourself with your weapons?" asked Arkal, as
they were about to spring from the side, observing that his friend took
up his sword and shield.

"Ay--that am I. It is not a small matter that will part my good sword
and me."

Both men sprang overboard at the same moment, and made for the spot
where little Maikar was still giving vent to bubbling yells and
struggling with his oar.

Bladud was soon alongside of him, and, seizing his hair, raised him out
of the water.

"Got the cramp," he shouted.

"Keep still, then, and do what I tell ye," said the prince, in a tone of
stern command.

He caught the poor man under the armpits with both hands, turned on his
back and drew him on to his chest. Swimming thus on his back, with
Captain Arkal leading so as to keep them in the right direction, the
three were ultimately cast, in a rather exhausted condition, on the
shore of the little bay.

CHAPTER FIVE.

AFTER THE WRECK.

It was on the southern shore of what is now known as France that our
hero and his comrades in misfortune were cast.

At the time we write of, we need hardly say, the land was nameless.
Even her old Roman name of Gaul had not yet been given to her, for Rome
itself had not been founded. The fair land was a vast wilderness, known
only--and but slightly--to the adventurous mariners of the east, who,
with the spirit of Columbus, had pushed their discoveries and trade far
beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

Of course the land was a vast solitude, inhabited, sparsely, by a few of
those wandering tribes which had been driven westward--by conquest or by
that desire for adventure which has characterised the human race, we
suppose, ever since Adam and Eve began to explore the regions beyond
Eden. Like the great wilderness lying to the north of Canada at the
present time, it was also the home of innumerable wild animals which
afforded to its uncivilised inhabitants both food and clothing.

Captain Arkal was the only one of the three survivors of the wreck who
had seen that coast before or knew anything about it, for, when Bladud
had entered the Mediterranean many years before, he had passed too far
to the southward to see the northern land.

As they staggered up the beach to a place where the thundering waves
sent only their spray, Bladud looked round with some anxiety.

"Surely," he said, "some of the crew must have escaped.