e curse which his
heart had prepared, he sank powerless on to the ground.

Cambyses beckoned to his followers to make immediate preparations for a
lion-hunt in the Libyan mountains.

CHAPTER XIII.

The waters of the Nile had begun to rise again. Two months had passed
away since Phanes' disappearance, and much had happened.

The very day on which he left Egypt, Sappho had given birth to a girl,
and had so far regained strength since then under the care of her
grandmother, as to be able to join in an excursion up the Nile, which
Croesus had suggested should take place on the festival of the goddess
Neith. Since the departure of Phanes, Cambyses' behavior had become so
intolerable, that Bartja, with the permission of his brother, had taken
Sappho to live in the royal palace at Memphis, in order to escape any
painful collision. Rhodopis, at whose house Croesus and his son, Bartja,
Darius and Zopyrus were constant guests, had agreed to join the party.

On the morning of the festival-day they started in a gorgeously
decorated boat, from a point between thirty and forty miles below
Memphis, favored by a good north-wind and urged rapidly forward by a
large number of rowers.

A wooden roof or canopy, gilded and brightly painted, sheltered them
from the sun. Croesus sat by Rhodopis, Theopompus the Milesian lay at
her feet. Sappho was leaning against Bartja. Syloson, the brother of
Polykrates, had made himself a comfortable resting-place next to Darius,
who was looking thought fully into the water. Gyges and Zopyrus busied
themselves in making wreaths for the women, from the flowers handed them
by an Egyptian slave.

"It seems hardly possible," said Bartja, "that we can be rowing against
the stream. The boat flies like a swallow."

"This fresh north-wind brings us forward," answered Theopompus. "And
then the Egyptian boatmen understand their work splendidly."

"And row all the better just because we are sailing against the stream,"
added Croesus. "Resistance always brings out a man's best powers."

"Yes," said Rhodopis, "sometimes we even make difficulties, if the river
of life seems too smooth."

"True," answered Darius. "A noble mind can never swim with the stream.
In quiet inactivity all men are equal. We must be seen fighting, to be
rightly estimated."

"Such noble-minded champions must be very cautious, though," said
Rhodopis, "lest they become contentious, and quarrelsome. Do you see
those melons lying o