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 had told her father that
he was blind, and her brother-in-law Labaja had heard the same thing.
While saying this, her lips curled scornfully, but when she saw how
deeply their friend's misfortune moved her two prisoners, she waved her
hand, declaring that he did not need their sympathy; the pilot had
reported that he was living in magnificence and pleasure, and the people
in the capital honoured and praised him as if he were a god.

Thereupon she had laughed shrilly and reviled so bitterly the
contemptible blind Fortune that remains most loyal to those who deserve
to perish in the deepest misery, that Bias avoided repeating her words to
his master.

The news of Myrtilus's legacy had not reached her ears, and Bias, too,
had just heard of it for the first time.

Ledscha's object had been to relieve her troubled soul by attacks upon
the man whom she hated, but she suddenly turned to the master and servant
to ask if they desired to obtain their liberty.

Oh, how quickly a hopeful "Yes" reached the ears of the gloomy woman! how
ready both were to swear, by a solemn oath, to fulfil the conditions the
Biamite desired to impose!

As soon as opportunity offered, both were to leave the Hydra with one
other person who, like Bias and herself, understood how to mange a boat.

The favourable moment soon came. One moonless night, when the steering of
the Hydra was intrusted to the Gaul, Ledscha waked