g creature, needing counsel, had come to
old Tabus to appeal to her art of prophecy and, if she wanted them, to
render her any little services; for the old dame on the island was
closely bound to Ledscha, the daughter of one of the principal
ship-owners in Tennis, and had once been even more closely united to the
girl.

Now, as the sun was about to set, the latter gave herself up to a wild
tumult of sweet memories, anxious fears, and yearning expectation.

Not until a cool breath from the neighbouring sea fanned her brow did she
throw down the cord and implement with which she had been adding a few
meshes to a net, and rising, gaze sometimes across the water at a large
white house in the northern part of the city, sometimes at the little
harbour or the vessels on the horizon steering toward Tennis, among which
her keen eyes discovered a magnificent ship with bright-hued sails.

Drawing a long breath, she enjoyed the coolness which precedes the
departure of the daystar.

But the effect of this harbinger of night upon her surroundings was even
more powerful than upon herself, for the sun in the western horizon
scarcely began to sink slowly behind the papyrus thicket on the shore of
the straight Tanite arm of the Nile, dug by human hands, than one new and
strange phenomenon followed another.

First a fan, composed of countless glowing rays which spread in dazzling
radiance over the west, rose from the vanishing orb and for several
minutes adorned the lofty dome of the deep-blue sky like the tail of a
gigantic peacock. Then the glitter of the shining plumes paled. The
light-giving body from which they emanated disappeared and, in its stead,
a crimson mantle, with gold-bordered, crocus-yellow edges, spread itself
over the space it had left until the gleaming tints merged into the
deeper hues of the violet.

But the girl paid no heed to this splendid spectacle. Perhaps she noticed
how the fading light diffused a delicate rose-hued veil over the
light-blue sails, embroidered with silver vines, of the approaching state
galley, making its gilded prow glitter more brightly, and saw one fishing
boat after another move toward the harbour, but she gave the whole scene
only a few careless glances.

Ledscha cared little for the poor fishermen of Tennis, and the glittering
state galley could scarcely bring or bear away anything of importance to
her.

The epistrategus of the whole province was daily expected. But of what
conse