ame to
me I rose and defied them, saying, "Cast me forth, if ye will; but if ye
cast me forth ye shall perish."

For in my heart I cared little, having no more any love of life,
but rather a desire to die, though I greatly feared to pass into the
presence of my Holy Mother Isis. But my weariness and sorrow at the
bitterness of my lot overcame even this heavy fear; so that when, being
mad as brute beasts, they seized me and, lifting me, hurled me into the
raging waters, I did but utter one prayer to Isis and made ready for
death. But it was fated that I should not die; for, when I rose to the
surface of the water, I saw a spar of wood floating near me, to which I
swam and clung. And a great wave came and swept me, riding, as it were,
upon the spar, as when a boy I had learned to do in the waters of the
Nile, past the bulwarks of the galley where the fierce-faced sailors
clustered to see me drown. And when they saw me come mounted on the
wave, cursing them as I came, and saw, too, that the colour of my
face had changed--for the salt water had washed way the pigment, they
shrieked with fear and threw themselves down upon the deck. And within a
very little while, as I rode toward the rocky coast, a great wave poured
into the vessel, that rolled broadside on, and pressed her down into the
deep, whence she rose no more.

So she sank with all her crew. And in that same storm also sank the
galley which Cleopatra had sent to search for the Syrian merchant. Thus
all traces of me were lost, and of a surety she believed that I was
dead.

But I rode on toward the shore. The wind shrieked and the salt waves
lashed my face as, alone with the tempest, I rushed upon my way, while
the sea-birds screamed about my head. I felt no fear, but rather a wild
uplifting of the heart; and in the stress of my imminent peril the love
of life seemed to waken again. And so I plunged and drifted, now tossed
high toward the lowering clouds, now cast into the deep valleys of the
sea, till at length the rocky headland loomed before me, and I saw the
breakers smite upon the stubborn rocks, and through the screaming of
the wind heard the sullen thunder of their fall and the groan of stones
sucked seaward from the beach. On! high-throned upon the mane of a
mighty billow--fifty cubits beneath me the level of the hissing waters;
above me the inky sky! It was done! The spar was torn from me, and,
dragged downwards by the weight of the bag of gold and the cli