welve hours. Yet, as she could not bury her, and would not
throw her to the sharks, she was minded to give her mistress a royal
funeral after the custom of her own Libyan folk. Here was flame, and
what pyre could be grander than this great ship?

Lifting the body from its couch, Nehushta carried it to the deck and
laid it by the broken mast, closing the eyes and folding the hands.
Then she loosened from about the neck those tokens of which Rachel had
spoken, made some food and garments into a bundle, and, carrying the
lamp with her, went into the captain's cabin amidships. Here a money-box
was open, and in it gold and some jewels which this man had abandoned
in his haste. These she took, adding them to her own store and securing
them about her. This done she fired the cabin, and passing to the hold,
broke a jar of oil and fired that also. Then she fled back again, knelt
by her dead mistress and kissed her, took the child, wrapping it warmly
in a shawl, and by the ladder of rope which the sailors had used, let
herself down into the quiet sea. Its waters did not reach higher than
her middle, and soon she was standing on the shore and climbing the
sandhills that lay beyond. At their summit she turned to look, and lo!
yonder where the galley was, already a great pillar of fire shot up to
heaven, for there was much oil in the hold and it burnt furiously.

"Farewell!" she cried, "farewell!"

Then, weeping bitterly, Nehushta walked on inland.

CHAPTER V

MIRIAM IS ENTHRONED

Presently Nehushta found herself out of sight of the sea and among
cultivated land, for here were vines and fig trees grown in gardens
fenced with stone walls; also patches of ripening barley and of wheat
in the ear, much trodden down as though horses had been feeding there.
Beyond these gardens she came to a ridge, and saw beneath her a village
of many houses of green brick, some of which seemed to have been
destroyed by fire. Into this village she walked boldly, and there the
first sight that met her eyes was that of sundry dead bodies, upon which
dogs were feeding.

On she went up the main street, till she saw a woman peeping at her over
a garden wall.

"What has chanced here?" asked Nehushta, in the Syrian tongue.

"The Romans! the Romans! the Romans!" wailed the woman. "The head of our
village quarrelled with the tax-gatherers, and refused to pay his dues
to Caesar. So the soldiers came a week ago and slaughtered nearly all
of us, and t