tratus,
accompanied them. Hermon bade him farewell with a troubled heart, and
the leech, too, parted with regret from the artist to whom, a year
before, he had refused his aid.

CHAPTER XV.

Hermon went, with Philippus and Thyone, on board the ship which was to
convey them through the new canal to Pelusium, where the old commandant
had to plan all sorts of measures. In the border fortress the artist
was again obliged to exercise patience, for no ship bound to Pergamus or
Lesbos could be found in the harbour. Philippus had as much work as
he could do, but all his arrangements were made when carrier doves
announced that the surprise intended by the Gauls had been completely
thwarted, and his son Eumedes was empowered to punish them.

The admiral would take his fleet to the Sebennytic mouth of the Nile.

Another dove came from King Ptolemy, and summoned the old general at
once to the capital. Philippus resolved to set off without delay and, as
the way led past that mouth of the Nile, met his son on the voyage.

Hermon must accompany him and his wife to Alexandria, whence, without
entering the city, he could sail for Pergamus; ships bound to all the
ports in the Mediterranean were always in one of the harbours of the
capital. A galley ready to weigh anchor was constantly at the disposal
of the commandant of the fortress, and the next noon the noble pair,
with Hermon and his faithful Bias, went on board the Galatea.

The weather was dull, and gray clouds were sweeping across the sky over
the swift vessel, which hugged the coast, and, unless the wind shifted,
would reach the narrow tongue of land pierced by the Sebennytic mouth of
the Nile before sunrise.

Though the general and his wife went to rest early, Hermon could not
endure the close air of the cabin. Wrapped in his cloak he went on deck.
The moon, almost full, was sailing in the sky, sometimes covered by dark
clouds, sometimes leaving them behind. Like a swan emerging from the
shadow of the thickets along the shore upon the pure bosom of the
lake, it finally floated into the deep azure of the radiant firmament.
Hermon's heart swelled.

How he rejoiced that he was again permitted to behold the starry sky,
and satiate his soul with the beauty of creation! What delight it gave
him that the eternal wanderers above were no longer soulless forms,
that he again saw in the pure silver disk above friendly Selene, in the
rolling salt waves the kingdom of Poseidon