re and dignified bearing, Schalit, Ledscha's
father.

The meeting between the Biamite ship-owner and his child, after so long
a separation, was a singular one; for the young wife held out her hand
to her father timidly, with downcast eyes, and he refused to take it.
Directly after, however, as if constrained by an irresistible impulse,
he drew his unruly daughter toward him and kissed her brow and cheeks.

Roast meat and the best wine had been served in the large ship's cabin;
but though Myrtilus and Bias had been locked up as if a bloody battle
was expected, the loud, angry uproar of men's deep voices reached them,
and Ledscha's shrill tones shrieking in passionate wrath blended in the
strife. Furniture must have been upset and dishes broken, yet the giants
who were disputing here did not come to blows.

At last the savage turmoil subsided.

When Bias and his master were again released, Ledscha was standing,
in the dusk of evening, at the foot of the mainmast, pressing her brow
against the wood as if she needed some support to save herself from
falling.

She checked Myrtilus's words with an imperious "Let me alone!" The next
day she had paced restlessly up and down the deck like a caged beast of
prey, and would permit no one to speak to her.

At noon Hanno was about to get into a boat to go to her father's ship,
and she insisted upon accompanying him. But this time the corsair seemed
completely transformed, and with the pitiless sternness, which he so
well knew how to use in issuing commands, ordered her to remain on the
Hydra.

She, however, by no means obeyed her husband's mandate without
resistance, and, at the recollection of the conflict which now occurred
between the pair, in which she raged like a tigress, the narrator's
cheeks crimsoned.

The quarrel was ended by the powerful seaman's taking in his arms his
lithe, slender wife, who resisted him with all her strength and had
already touched the side of the boat with her foot, and putting her down
on the deck of his ship.

Then Hanno leaped back into the skiff, while Ledscha, groaning with
rage, retired to the cabin.

An hour after she again appeared on deck, called Myrtilus and Bias and,
showing them her eyes, reddened by tears, told them, as if in apology
for her weakness, that she had not been permitted to bid her father
farewell. Then, pallid as a corpse, she had turned the conversation upon
Hermon, and informed Myrtilus that an Alexandrian pilot