rushed out of the papyrus-beds. Their leader, making
a speaking trumpet of his hand, shouted to the boat his orders to stop.
He was commissioned by the governor to bring it back to Fostat. And the
fugitives seemed disposed to obey, for the boat lay to. The captain
had recognized the speaker as the captain of the watch from Fostat, an
inexorable man; and now, for the first time, he clearly understood the
deadly peril of the enterprise. He was accustomed, no doubt, to evade
the commands of his superiors, but would no more have defied them
than have confronted Fate; and he at once declared that resistance
was madness, and that there was no alternative but to yield. Rufinus,
however, vehemently denied this; he pointed out to him that the same
punishment awaited him, whether he laid down his arms or defended
himself, and the old ship-wright eagerly exclaimed:

"We built this boat, and I know you of old, Setnau; You will not turn
Judas--and, if you do, you know that Christian blood will be shed on
this deck before we can show our teeth to those Infidels."

The captain, with all the extravagant excitability of his southern
blood, beat his forehead and his breast, bemoaned himself as a betrayed
and ruined man, and bewailed his wife and children. Rufinus, however,
put an end to his ravings. He had consulted with the abbess, and he put
it strongly to the unhappy man that he could, in any case, hope for no
mercy from the unbelievers; while, on Christian ground, he would easily
find a safe and comfortable refuge for himself and his family. The
abbess would undertake to give them all a passage on board the ship that
was awaiting her, and to set them on shore wherever he might choose.

Setnau thought of a brother living in Cyprus; still, for him it meant
sacrificing his house and garden at Doomiat, where, at this very hour,
fifty date-palms were ripening their fruit; it meant leaving the fine
new Nile-boat by which he and his family got their living; and as he
represented this to the old man, bitter tears rolled down his brown
cheeks. Rufinus explained to him that, if he should succeed in saving
the sisters, he might certainly claim some indemnification. He might
even calculate the value of his property, and not only would he have
the equivalent paid to him out of the convent treasure, now on board in
heavy coffers, but a handsome gift into the bargain.

Setnau exchanged a meaning glance with his brother, who was a single
man, an