The Golden Wind

BOOK VI — Ananias the Judaean

As we beat our way westward, the country became more barren, until it bore a mere scattering of shrubs, like that on the hills in the drier lands about the Inner Sea. Otaspes assured me, however, that the true desert still lay far to the northwest.

Then I fell sick again. I asked Otaspes if it were not well to get me to some peasant's hut to recover.

"I think we shall do better camping out," he said. "The rains are over, and in such a hut you would probably pick up some even deadlier ailment."

So we camped. Otaspes killed an antelope with his bow, so that for a time we ate well. But I seemed to get no better.

"Go on and leave me to die alone," I said. "I'm weary of life, for I've failed in the main task I set myself."

"And what is that?" said Otaspes. "Learning the secrets of the universe from these so-called holy men?"

"Not quite." And at last I told the Persian of my real motive in coming to India.

"Oh," he said. "Well, your slave will not argue with you— one Hellene can out-talk three Persians any day—but I will certainly not leave you to perish. You saved me from the Arjunayanas when I was ready to give up, and I can do no less for you."

So, over my feeble protests, he and Gnouros nursed me back to health. With the return of health came the feeling that, while making love to a woman was certainly one of life's major pleasures, it was not the only one.

The moon was full, in the middle of Maimakterion, when we again took up our journey. The land became yet more desertlike. At night, instead of the snarl of the tiger and the trumpeting of the wild elephant, we were serenaded by the roar of the lion and the howl of the wolf.

Near the headwaters of the Mais, we passed through an area that the rains had missed the past season. Everywhere people were starving and dying. It was hard to find a place near the road to stop for lunch where a shriveled corpse or two did not lie in view. To keep from starving ourselves— since there was no food to be bought—we kidnaped one of those scrawny little cows that wander about, dragged her to a hidden ravine, and slaughtered her. If the Indians had found out, they would have torn us limb from limb. Any right-thinking Indian would as lief eat his own mother as one of these sacred beasts, even to save his life.

Once we passed a huge, stone-lined reservoir that some former king had built, with stone steps leading down from one side for religious ablutions. The reservoir was half full of water, which had been allowed to stand for a long time. The surface was covered with a green scum, under which we found the water clear and drinkable. When I wondered that the Indians did not use this water on their parched fields, Otaspes asked several until he got the story. Years before, it transpired, a man had fallen into the tank and drowned. This rendered the tank religiously polluted, so that they could not use its water again, a generation or more later, even to avert starvation.

This region was strongly Brachmanist. Having been warned of the Brachmanists' hatred of Hellenes, I bought a turban and learnt to wind it so as to be less conspicuous. I also kept my mouth shut around the Indians and let Otaspes do the talking.

Curiously, this land had no king. It was a kind of republic, ruled by an oligarchic senate of big landowners. Now and then we saw members of this aristocracy, going about their affairs and complacently ignoring the skeletal wretches expiring on all sides of them.

We reached the Mais and started down it. The land again became jungled. Progress was hard because many ravines, cut by the tributaries of the Mais, lay athwart our path. Furthermore, the land afforded good cover for tigers and for brigands. We were warned that it had plenty of both. But whatever gods there be must have decided that we had had enough adventures, for we saw neither tigers nor robbers.

And so, at the beginning of Poseidon, we reached Barygaza. I parted with Otaspes, rode to the Ourania's dock, and dismounted. With a yell, Linos rushed ashore to greet me.

"Where's Hippalos?" I asked. "Still in that hut with the Indian girl?"

"No, sir ..." Linos seemed at a loss.

"Out with it, man! What has he been up to?"

"You'll find Hippalos in the woods, Captain, living with that holy man."

"Sisonaga?"

"Aye."

"Hermes attend us! How did that come about?"

"Well, sir, I don't like to carry tales, but that Indian girl ran home to her father, complaining that Master Hippalos had mistreated her."

"How?"

"I don't rightly know. Beatings, I heard, and something about burning with hot coals. Anyway, her old man and two young kinsmen—sons or nephews, I suppose—came looking for Master Hippalos with spears. Hippalos fled to Sis-what's-his-name's hut, because the Indians won't do anything violent around a holy man.

"He's been there for nigh a month. When I go to him to ask about the ship, I find him standing on his head, and all he says is: 'See to it, Linos; I'm solving the secrets of the cosmos.' "

This was a side of Hippalos' character that I had not known of. Later that day, I went to Sisonaga's hut. Sure enough, there was my mate in one of the postures of yoga. He lay on his back, with his body raised in an arch so that only his head, shoulders, and feet touched the ground. Sisonaga, sitting in the sun, was droning philosophy.

When I arrived, Hippalos scrambled to his feet, crying: "Rejoice, dear Eudoxos! By Mother Earth, I didn't know you with that thing on your head. We had begun to fear that you had passed to your next incarnation. Did you get what you went for?"

"No. The man in Mahismati handed out the same kind of rubbish as our friend here." (Since we spoke Greek, Sisonaga could not understand us.) "He sent me to another man in Ozenê, who seemed to talk better sense; but he turned out to be a rascal who tried to rob and murder me."

"Then you've given up your quest?"

"That particular quest. But look here, I want that ship ready to sail in two days. You'll have to get to work right now."

"My dear fellow! The wisdom of the East is far more important Linos can handle the details as well as I."

I glowered at him. "My good Hippalos, that ship will sail hi two or three days, with or without you. If you would be aboard it, you shall obey orders. If you'd rather spend your life listening to this old faker's twaddle, I shall manage without you. I will count ten, while you make up your mind. One —two—three—"

"Oh, I'll come, I'll come, I'll come," cried Hippalos. He turned to Sisonaga, placed his palms together, and bowed over them, saying in Indian: "The world calls me back, reverend guru. I hope to pay you a last visit ere I depart."

As we walked back to the ship, I said: "Do you take all the old man's mystical nonsense seriously?"

"Why Eudoxos, what a way to talk about matters too profound for your limited, materialistic understanding! Of course I take it seriously. Don't you?"

"I think they're either fools or fakers, and often a bit of both."

"You're prejudiced because they couldn't help you to indulge your beastly sensual appetites. I suppose you think you know how the universe works better than men who have devoted a lifetime to thinking about it?"

"I have no idea how the universe works. As for your Indians, I suppose that one of them might hit upon some arcane truth now and then. But which one? Their doctrines differ widely among themselves, and they differ likewise from those of Hellenes who have thought just as long and hard on these matters. Obviously they can't all be right, and if even one of them is, all the others must be wrong. How can one tell?"

Hippalos: "By persevering study, I have thus gained my first glimpse of the true nature of things, and I know it is true because my inner consciousness tells me so. Perhaps it is my karma to bring the truths of yoga to the benighted West."

"If you ever get thrown out of the Ptolemaic court, it'll be useful to have some confidence game to fall back on."

"Incurably blind to the higher truths, that's all you are," said Hippalos. Although he had borne a solemn face, now the corners of his mouth twitched in the old satyrlike grin, and I could swear he gave a half-wink. One never knew whether Hippalos was being serious. Probably he took nothing much to heart, save as it bore upon his own self-interest.

"But tell me of your journey," he continued. "What's Farther India like?"

I told him some of my experiences. When I described conditions in Ozenê, I added: "We in the West may be blind to higher truths, but we have better sense than to fight over religious doctrines or to try to rule people's private lives and morals by law. Now, what's this about your mistreating that Indian girl?"

"Don't believe everything you hear. All I did was to scold the wench for not sweeping the scorpions out of the hut, and she went galloping off to her old man with all sorts of wild tales. I say, what's that thing around your neck?"

"This?" I held up the statue of Ganesha. "A gift from King Girixis of Mahismati." I repeated what the king had told me about the nature of this god and the properties of the amulet.

"Do you believe in these powers?"

"No. That is, I have no reason to believe them, but I would not flatly deny them, either."

"Sisonaga has theories about the action of minds at a distance, by means of some sort of cosmic radiation. He thinks the belief of people in amulets and idols endows these objects with such powers. Would you take a drachma for that little thing?"

"I don't want to sell it."

"Give you two drachmai."

"No," I said.

"Five!"

"I said, I don't want to sell. Don't pester me."

"It's nothing in you; you're a wicked Pyrronian skeptic who believes in nought. But I really want it. I'll pay any reasonable price."

"If you must have an amulet, why don't you buy one in a local shop? They have plenty of them on display."

"Because I feel a mystic affinity for that one. It must be that the stars were in the same positions when it was cast as when I was born, or something. Why won't you let me have it?"

"I mean to keep it until the end of this voyage, since you've convinced me that it might just possibly work. But I'll tell you. After the journey is over, if you come to see me in Kyzikos, I'll give you this gimcrack free. Now let's think of getting the ship ready. Have you had the bottom scraped?"

We discussed the inspection of ropes and sails, the loading of the cargo, and such professional matters. I spent my first evening with the crew, telling them my adventures. I did not minimize them; but then, sailors expect a yarn to grow in the telling. The following evening, I paid a farewell visit to Otaspes and his wife.

"This man," said Otaspes to Nakia, "is as stout a traveling companion as one could ask: strong, brave, resourceful, and good-humored. But Oramazdes save me from another journey with him!"

"Why, my dear lord?"

"Wherever he goes, troubles and violence spring up; he draws them as a lodestone draws nails. I have had enough narrow escapes to last me the rest of my days. And then I end the journey with a loss—not his fault, but there you are."

"Speaking of which," I said, "let me repay you for the loss of your trade goods in Ozenê."

"I would not think of it!" he cried. "It was your servant's risk; the loss might as well have been yours ..."

We had an hour-long, amiable wrangle, I pressing payment upon him and he refusing on his honor as a Persian gentleman. At last he let me give him the horses on which Gnouros and I had ridden home.

I also told him about the curious doings of Hippalos in my absence. Nakia said:

"Believe not that man's tale, Master Eudoxos. I saw the burns on the girl's body. The father brought her here, hoping that Otaspes could do something to get justice, for my lord has a good name in Barygaza."

On the fifth day after my return, we loaded our last supplies. Otaspes and Nakia came down to see me off; we embraced and parted. I never saw those dear people again; for, when I returned to India, they had left for their Karmanian home.

The return voyage was uneventful. As the six-month wind wafted us across the Arabian Sea towards the Southern Horn, Hippalos brought out a game set he had bought in Barygaza —at least, I suppose he bought it. This is a kind of war game called chaturanga. It is played on a square board divided into sixty-four small squares. Four players play as pairs of partners. Each player has an "army" of eight pieces: four foot soldiers, a horse, a ship, an elephant, and a king. Each piece has its own rules for moving, which makes the game far more complex than "robbers" or "sacred way." The pieces are beautifully carved from ivory—at least, those of Hippalos' set were. Each player sets up his army in one corner of the board, and throws of dice determine who shall move first.

The usual players were Hippalos, Linos, the cook, and I, although one or another of the sailors sometimes took part. We had to keep the stakes very low, for otherwise the crew could not have afforded to play at all. Hippalos urged me to stake my partner with some of my gems while he staked his with pearls. I tried this once; but, after Hippalos had won a good sardonyx from me, I saw through his maneuver. Since he had had the most practice, he was by far the most skilled player amongst us, and he hoped to use his skill to get my gems away from me. So we went back to playing for pence and chick-peas.

When we grew tired of chaturanga, I asked Hippalos: "What were those tricks I saw you amusing the Indians with in Barygaza?"

He grinned. "Old boy, didn't you know I have mysterious powers, drawn from the nighted caverns of the underworld and the black gulfs of outer space? That, with a wave of my hand, I could make this ship and all aboard it vanish in a puff of smoke?"

"Ha! Let's have the truth for once. Where did you pick up these tricks?"

He was reluctant to discuss this skill at first; but at length his own boredom with the peacefulness of the voyage persuaded him to open up. "I learnt sleight-of-hand when I was a wandering entertainer," he said, "in the years after the fall of Corinth, when I was a stripling. The boss of our little band of showmen taught me, for his own fingers were getting too stiff with age for the tricks. Of course, it's easier to learn these things when one is young and limber, as I was. You, I fear, are much too old."

"Is that so! Suppose you try to teach me, and we shall see."

At last I won Hippalos' consent to make me his apprentice magician. As he had warned, I found my fingers exasperatingly clumsy; but, with hard work and incessant practice, I improved faster than he had thought possible.

He also taught me the patter and the tricks of misdirection. These presented no great difficulty, since a merchant's sales talk is basically the same sort of thing. Having, in my time, sold perfumes to stinking Scythian nomads and fur-trimmed mantles to sweltering Egyptians, I had no trouble with the verbal parts of Hippalos' lessons.

On the fourteenth of Anthesterion, [* Approx. February 4.] we moored the Ourania at the same rickety pier at Myos Hormos, whence we had set out seven months before. The port officials, who had never expected to see us again, were so astonished by our return that they never searched us and so did not discover the fortunes in pearls and gemstones that we bore, sewn into pockets on the insides of our belts. We had agreed that Hippalos should set out at once for Alexandria to report to the king, whilst I followed with our cargo. The day after we arrived, I saw him off, jouncing away on the desert road on a camel.

What with transferring my cargo from the Ourania to camels, and from camels to a barge at Kainepolis on the Nile, I did not reach Alexandria until the third of Elaphebolion. Spring was well advanced, although in those latitudes there is no real winter. I came out on the deck of the barge that morning to find us rowing gently through a predawn mist along the Alexandrine Canal, which follows the winding shore of Lake Mareotis. Now and then I glimpsed the surface of the lake through the immense beds of reeds that border it.

As the sky lightened, I was surprised to see, on the flats between the canal and the lake, what appeared to be a large, dark, shiny boulder. If there is any place where boulders are not to be found, it is the Delta, which is a great, flat, muddy plain cut up by the many serpentine arms of the Nile. As the mist thinned, the light waxed, and the barge came closer, I was startled to see the boulder move. At my exclamation, one of the Egyptian boatmen looked around, grunted "Tebet!" and went back to his rowing. It was a river horse, which had been grazing on some unlucky farmer's wheat. It trotted off towards the lake at our approach.

The sun was well up when we came to the south wall of Alexandria. The space between the wall and the canal was given over to flower gardens, now in a riot of color. After we had rowed along the south wall for ten or twelve furlongs, we pulled into the canal harbor and tied up. An inspector, followed by a couple of civilians and four soldiers, came aboard. The inspector said:

"Are you Eudoxos of Kyzikos?"

"Yes. This is—"

"Let's see your manifest."

"Here," said I. "This stuff belongs to His Divine Majesty."

The inspector ran his eye down the list and made a sign to the soldiers. Quick as a flash, two of them seized my arms and twisted them behind my back.

"E!" I cried. "What's this? Tm on a mission for the king—"

"You're under arrest," said the inspector. "Strip him."

In twenty winks, I was standing naked, while the civilians went through my clothing. One said:

"Here they are, Inspector.

He held up my belt, showing the little pockets on the inside. With a knife he slit the stitching of one pocket and squeezed out the emerald it contained. There was a gasp from the customs squad and the boatmen, for it was a fine stone.

The inspector looked again at the manifest. "As we thought, that stuff is not entered. Put his shirt back on but hold the belt for evidence."

'You stupid idiots!" I shouted with a fine show of indignation, "of course it's not entered! Do you think I want the king's jewels stolen by the first rascal who hears a rumor of this treasure? Those gauds are all to be presented to His Majesty in person. By the gods, you shall sweat when he learns of this outrage!"

"Shut up," said the inspector, and cuffed me across the mouth.

Rage gave me more than my usual strength, which even in middle age was considerable. With a mighty heave, I hurled one soldier away from me, so that he fell sprawling on the deck. I staggered the other with a blow from my free arm and then tried to tear loose to get at the inspector. Could I have reached him, I believe I should have broken his neck. Bat the rest of the boarding party sprang upon me and bore me to the deck in a kicking, clawing mass. Somebody whacked me on the head with the weighted pommel of a the handle, so that I saw stars and the world spun dizzily.

When I got my senses back, I was standing with arms tied behind me and a noose around my neck. One soldier held the other end of the rope, so that if I tried to pull away I should merely strangle myself.

Soon I was being marched through the Canopic Quarter to the law courts. After half a day's wait, my case was called. The inspector showed the judge the belt and dug a double handful of gems from the secret pockets. I saw nothing of the emerald they had taken on the barge; no doubt the inspector had appropriated it for himself.

This man," said the inspector, "has not only violated the taw in regard to traffic in gemstones, but he also resisted arrest. Such a hardened criminal deserves a severe penalty."

The judge asked me if I had anything to say. I repeated in more detail the story I had told the inspector on the barge: how I had hidden the gemstones to protect them from thieves until I could present them to the king in person.

The judge listened without expression. With a faint smile, he picked up a roll of papyrus, saying:

"I have here the confession of the confederate of the accused, one Hippalos of Corinth, wherein he states: 'My captain, Eudoxos of Kyzikos, suggested that we try to get around His Divine Majesty's monopoly of all trade in gemstones in Alexandria and in Egypt, arguing that it was unfair for us to take all the risks of this voyage to unknown lands, while the king got all the profit. So we bought pearls and gems in India with our own money and had a native craftsman make us belts to hide these things in."

I was startled to hear that Hippalos had been caught, too, and then angry when I heard how he had put all the blame on me. I swore vengeance upon him if I should ever catch him.

"Such being the case," continued the judge, "I find you guilty and sentence you to hard labor in the mines for the rest of your life. Next case."

They hustled me away to a cell. A few days later, I found myself one of a gang of fifty-odd convicts on their way to the mines of Upper Egypt, with a squad of soldiers to guard us. We, walked the whole two hundred-odd leagues. It took us a month and a half, into late Mounychion. At least, I think that was the time, albeit I lost track of the days.

Each convict had a fetter cold-forged around his right ankle. A chain was threaded through a large ring in each fetter and secured by a padlock through the last link. Since I was the largest man in the gang, I was given the last position on the chain, so that I could carry the padlock.

Up the Nile we trudged, past Memphis with its pyramids and its palm groves, and on into Upper Egypt. We had to march in step to avoid tripping over the chain. With each stride, fifty-odd right feet lifted the chain into the air and dropped it back into the dust with a clank. The soldiers and their officer did not treat us with any special brutality, but neither did they make any allowances. When a couple of elderly convicts collapsed and could go no further, the soldiers unshackled them, knocked them on the head, and threw the bodies into the Nile, where I suppose the crocodiles made short work of them.

At Koptos, we left the Nile for a road across the desert, between the Nile and the Red Sea. The heat was fearful. To keep us from collapse, the soldiers let us sleep in the shade of the boulders during the heat of the day and marched us most of the night.

At last we came to the rocky hills that sundered Egypt from Ethiopia. Here were heavily guarded stockades, which spread out for many furlongs. My gang clanked into one of these stockades. The gate slammed shut behind us, and I heard the heavy wooden bolt on the outside shot home.

People swarmed inside the stockade. They were mostly men, but there were also women and children, working the gold-bearing ore. Most were completely naked. All were filthy, and the men had long hair and beards. The women were such bedraggled creatures that, even in my lecherous youth, I do not think that the sight of them would have aroused my lusts. Supposing that Hippalos had received a sentence like mine, I kept looking for him but did not see him.

The officer in charge of us unlocked the padlock on the end af our chain, and we were unshackled and presented to a civilian official. This man asked each of us what language we spoke. I said:

"Greek."

"Any others?"

"Scythian, and a little Syrian and Indian."

"You shall go to Stockade Five, with these others. Next!"

In Stockade Five I was again lined up and looked over by is official, who said:

"You're too old and too tall for the galleries. We'll put you at the mortars. Next!"

I was taken to a large mortar and handed a sledge with a head of black basalt. Presently a naked boy of twelve approached with a basket of ore on his head. He dumped the ore into the mortar, and my overseer said:

"Now, you swine, pound that ore until it is crushed to fine gravel. Go ahead; I'll tell you when to stop."

I heaved up my sledge and brought it down on the ore. And again and again. The unfamiliar labor made my arms ache until I got the knack of it, but the instant I slowed up the overseer brought his whip down on my back.

When the ore was crushed finely enough, another boy appeared with a pail and a scoop. He scooped out the ore and took it in the pail to another part of the inclosure, where it was put into a large mill like a grist mill. Women and old men, with chains through their ankle rings, turned these mills by pushing capstan spokes round and round. The instant one of them faltered, he received a cut of the whip. Water boys trotted about with their buckets and dippers, not as a kindness, but because it was impossible in that heat to get much hard work out of men without a constant supply of water.

My overseer—unlike the officer who had marched me from Alexandria—was one of the nasty kind, who beat people for the fun of it. He was always seeking a pretext for inflicting insult or injury on his prisoners. But, even with his best efforts, he could not keep me busy all the time, because there were frequent delays between loads of ore. During these pauses, I looked about and learnt how the mining was organized.

The young, able-bodied men were sent into the underground galleries with lamps attached to their foreheads and picks and hammers in their hands, to follow the veins of gold-bearing quartz. Children gathered the ore in baskets and brought them out to the mortars. These were arranged in a long line, mine being in the middle. A score of hammers, pounding away at the same time, made a deafening racket.

The pounded ore was transferred to the mills, where it was ground to powder. Finally, this powder was taken to a large shed. There, I learned, skilled workmen separated the gold dust from the powdered rock by washing the ore down inclined wooden troughs with baffles across the bottom.

I got through the afternoon somehow. Black-skinned Nubian soldiers herded all of us in Stockade Five to a barrack, where we were lined up and served bowls of stew, big slabs of bread, and water laced with vinegar. While the food was a far cry from that served at Physkon's table in Alexandria, I have seldom tasted anything better. There is no sauce like a ravenous appetite.

After dinner we were taken in squads to the latrine and then back to barracks, where we were chained together by our ankle rings before being locked up for the night. The women were chained in a group at one end of the building. Only the children were not chained, it being assumed that each child would seek out its mother for the night.

When the guards had all gone out, leaving a hundred-odd naked convicts asprawl in their chains, I struck up acquaintance with my chain mates. The man on one side of me swore that he was no lawbreaker but had been put here by some envious kinsman, who had filed a false accusation. Perhaps; but he was a whiny sort of man whom I should not have believed no matter what he said.

My other neighbor was quite a different sort. He said he had been a burglar—"and the best mother-futtering burglar in Alexandria, too!"

"Why," I asked, "do they put all us Greek-speakers together?"

'To make it harder to escape. You see that our fornicating guards are Nubians? None knows a word of Greek, and I've never known a Hellene who spoke Nubian. Likewise you'll find the Egyptian convicts guarded by Celts, and the Judaeans bv Illyrians, and so on. So there's no chance for collusion or bribery."

"Does nobody ever escape?"

"Not since I've been here. You work, and work, and work, and at last you die, and that's that. Most of these poor slobs are glad to die. Many kill themselves."

"But not you?"

The burglar spat, "Not I! By Poseidon's prick, I can stand it. Next year, who knows? Maybe that fat-arsed King Sausage will die, and his successor will celebrate by freeing us."

"Do you really think so?"

He gave me a gap-toothed grin in the dim moonlight that came through the small, barred windows. "Dip me in dung, man, but funnier things have happened; so why not hang on to what fornicating little hope we have? While you're alive, anything can happen; but once you're dead, you're gone for good."

I would have spoken more to him, but fatigue carried me off to dreamland in the middle of a sentence.

As things fell out, I did not have to put my cheerful, foul-mouthed burglar's philosophy to the test. The second day after my arrival, I was whaling away at my mortar when I saw that a youngish man in a clean tunic and a broad-brimmed hat, with a close-cut black beard, had entered the stockade and was speaking to my overseer. Looking vaguely familiar, he was followed by a small group of men. Two were soldiers; the third was a stubby, familiar-looking shape. The overseer led the group to where I worked, saying:

"There he is."

"Gnouros!" I yelled.

"Master!" The little Scythian rushed forward to seize my hand and kiss it. Meanwhile, the man in the hat pulled out a roll of papyrus and handed it to the overseer. While the latter was reading, slowly and with much lip-moving effort, I asked Gnouros:

"How in the afterworld did you get here? And what's up? Have they condemned you to the mines, too?"

"No, sir. They held me with your other property. Was going to be auction to sell us, but then this man—this m-m-" A fit of stuttering overcame him until finally he said: "You see now."

The young man stepped in front of me, staring. At last he said:

"What is your name, my man?"

"Eudoxos of Kyzikos," I said, resting my sledge on the ground. "And you, sir?"

"Don't you know me?"

"Wait," I said. There was something familiar about that guttural Judaean accent. "By Bakchos' balls, aren't you Colonel Ananias?"

The man smiled. "The same. You I didn't know, either. The last time I saw you, you were decently dressed and clean shaven; now you're down to a wisp of rag and wear a great, gray beard. You're covered with dirt and burnt as black as an Ethiop."

"And the last time I saw you, you wore a suit of gilded parade armor. To what do I owe the honor of this visit?"

"Keep your voice down, Master Eudoxos. It was thought that my uniform would be too conspicuous. Besides, in this heat, inside a helmet your brains fry. My royal mistress has sent me to get you out of the country."

I whistled. "But what—"

"Details later. First we must make you look like a human being again."

They took me to the camp smith, who chiseled the fetter off my leg. This was a painful business, which left my ankle bruised and bleeding. They took me to the bathhouse used by the guards and officials. The camp barber trimmed my hair and whiskers. Ananias' men unloaded a couple of bags from a camel. The bags contained the personal possessions I had brought back from India. My Scythian bow and arrows were there; my scabbard was present but not the sword.

"I'm sorry about the sword," said Ananias. "Somebody must have stolen it. But then, you're lucky that I rescued your gear when I did; a couple of days later it would have been auctioned, and never again would you have seen it."

The bags also contained my spare clothes and the little Indian statuette. When I was again decently clad, Ananias said:

"Almost again I can recognize you."

After a hasty meal, we set out on fast camels along road to Koptos. I said to Ananias:

"Now let's have the news."

"What do you know about Hippalos' arrest?"

"Only what I heard in court. The judge read an alleged confession, in which Hippalos admitted trying to smuggle pearls and put the blame on me. I thought I should meet the temple thief at the mines, but I didn't see him—"

"The scoundrel never got to the mines. He arrived in Alexandria about a ten-day before you did. But then he had to give a wild party for some of his cronies in a public tavern. He got drunk and hinted that he had worked some clever trick on the king. Then the perfume was in the soup. One of his so-called friends thought this a good chance to curry favor with the king, so back to the palace he bore the tale. His Majesty instantly sent police agents to pick up Hippalos. As soon as they searched him, they found that his belt was sewn full of pearls.

"He was convicted the next day and sentenced to the mines; and then, of course, he had to be tortured to reveal the names of his accomplices. The coward did not wait to suffer any actual pain. As soon as the executioner swished his scourge, Hippalos dictated that confession.

"He was put back into his cell to await the next draft of convicts for Upper Egypt. The following night, Her Majesty, Kleopatra the Sister, sent men to the prison with orders to smuggle the rascal out of the country. He was after all one of her faction, and doubtless she hoped to make further use of him. In strict confidence, the king has been unwell of late, and I think the Sister hopes to survive him and send Hippalos on another Indian voyage."

"I'm sorry for the poor jailer," I said, "getting contradictory orders from his different sovrans. Won't Physkon have his head when he finds out?"

Ananias shrugged. "Being confined to his bed, he will probably not find out. Besides, that jailer has survived these things before."

"Then how about me?"

"The judge who sentenced Hippalos passed a copy of his confession on to the customs department, and for you they were lying in wait. Agatharchides the tutor got wind of your fate. He rushed to my royal mistress, Kleopatra the Wife, pleading that it would be a crime against scholarship to bury you alive in the mines when you had just returned with all that first-hand knowledge of unknown lands. At least, that was the reason he gave for his intercession."

The Judaean shook his head, as if incredulous that any man connected with a royal court could act from such a disinterested motive. He continued: "It was Agatharchides' talk of the jewels of India that really interested Her Majesty. She hopes to put you to the same use as the Sister hoped to put Hippalos, after—ahem—a certain person is no longer with us."

The talk then turned to other matters, such as court gossip and my experiences in India. Ananias seemed to have a simple and fairly typical soldier's mind. He thought mainly of the brawls, carousals, and battles in his past and of promotion and pay in his future, and he cared not a whit for culture or intellect.

A few days later, however, as we were sailing down the Nile, he showed that he was not so simple after all. Like most courtiers, he had a sharp eye for the main chance. He said:

"O Eudoxos, if things change in Alexandria so that you can return hither safely, would you like to make another Indian voyage?"

"You mean under the patronage of your divine mistress?"

He made a face. "We Judaeans dislike to use the word 'divine' for anything but our God; but no matter. Have you such a plan in mind? I had rather it were you instead of that knave Hippalos, with whom I have a long score to settle."

"I might, if things fell out that way."

"You know that, but for me, you would still be sweating in the mines. I could have said I could not find you, or some such excuse made."

"What are you getting at?"

"That, as your go-between with the Wife, I expect a share of your profits on such a voyage."

"Go on," I said.

"You will naturally approach the queen through me. You also understand that, if you tried to cut me out of my share, I could easily spoil your deal through my brother, General Chelkias."

"I understand all that," said I, a bit nettled. "As I see it, considering the monopolies your sovrans claim, there won't be any profit to share. And India, while very interesting, is no place to visit for pleasure. If I ever went there again, it would only be to make a killing by trading on my own."

"The queens understand that, Eudoxos. When the time comes, you'll find them willing to make a reasonable agreement. I can help to bring them around, and I want to make sure I am not forgotten when the loot is divided."

"What had you in mind? Ten per cent?"

"Ha! Are you mad? I expect half, at least."

Knowing how courtiers made their living, I was not surprised. Nor was I affronted, since one Hellene should be worth two Syrians or three Judaeans in a bargaining session any day. We settled down to a real oriental haggle. For the next three days, while we drifted down the Pelusiac Branch of the Nile, we argued and threatened and chaffered. By the time we reached Pelousion, at the mouth of the river, we had agreed on twenty-five per cent of my net profits for Ananias and had roughed out the methods by which this should be calculated.

At Pelousion, I was surprised to find Agatharchides awaiting me. The old fellow had ridden one of the big, white Egyptian asses all the way from Alexandria to quiz me about India, while I waited for a coastal vessel to take me north. He also showed keen interest in my account of the gold mines of Upper Egypt and took voluminous notes.

Just before I boarded my ship, however, he showed that he had not made the journey solely in quest of geographical lore. Hesitantly, he said:

"Old boy, I don't like to press you when you have just suffered a financial shipwreck. But you did promise to nodes-write publication of some of my writings if I got you that captaincy—"

"Have you the writings with you?"

"I have brought the main one, my History of Europe."

'Then give me the manuscript and I'll arrange to have it copied in Kyzikos."

"Hermes attend you, Eudoxos! If more men of means west like you ..." And he began to weep.

When he pulled himself together, he handed me a sack full of book rolls, comprising the only manuscript of this work. Then he embraced me affectionately, and I boarded the ship with a bag of Ptolemaic silver from Ananias to get me home. Luckily, no disaster befell the precious manuscript, and in due course it was published as I had promised.

When I reentered my home in Kyzikos, Astra looked at me as if I were a ghost. Then she gave a little shriek.

"Eudoxos! Darling!" she cried, and threw herself into my arms.

"I thought you dead," she said. "Then I didn't know you with another of those horrible beards. For Hera's sake, shave it off! It makes you look old enough to be my grandfather, and it's like kissing an ilex bush."

We had gone through this routine several times before, when I had returned bewhiskered from a voyage. "Now, dear one," I protested, "is that the way to greet a man who's been gone a year, who has escaped a score-of deaths by a hairbreadth, and who has had all the profits of his voyage snatched from him by a greedy king? To carp at his beard? But to please you, the beard shall go. Here's a little something for you."

I pulled out a cheap silver bracelet, explaining: "I brought you some fine things from India, but Physkon got his fat paws on them, and I was lucky to get away with my head on my shoulders. I bought this in Tyre. I left Egypt with just enough money to get me home, and if I had spent more I should have starved. Where's Theon?"

"Out playing. Tell Gnouros to go fetch him."

Gnouros duly recovered my son. Then he made the rounds of my kinsmen, who came running. My middle brother wanted to give a feast at his house that evening, but I said:

'Tomorrow, please. I have an engagement tonight"

They hung around all afternoon, while I told them of the main events of my voyage. They in turn gave me bad news of the firm. One of our ships had been wrecked two months before on the Karian coast. The crew had survived, but the natives had stolen all the cargo.

Astra and I talked late that night. Next morning, when I awoke, I performed my husbandly duties like a lusty young man. I wondered if things had not changed permanently for the better.

But as Herakleitos says, one cannot step twice into the same stream. As the days passed and I settled into the routine of the business, my marital relations soon sank back into their former frustrating state. I became moody. I spent hours pacing the shore, throwing stones at sea birds, shouting snatches from Euripides, defying the gods, and weeping.

During the rest of the season, I voyaged to Peiraieus, Delos, Rhodes, and Pantikapaion, to sniff out cargoes and to renew my contacts in those parts. Everywhere the word had gotten around of my Indian voyage. I was plied with free food and drink by other traders and shipmen, eager to learn what I could tell them. I held many a symposium spellbound with my tales of India.

For obvious reasons, however, I was not eager to start a stampede of voyages thither. Hence I stressed the tigers, the serpents, the deadly diseases, and the difficulties of dealing with India's peculiar people. I said nothing of the six-month seasonal wind, which furnished the key to direct voyages. News of the meteorological phenomenon, I thought, would leak out from Alexandria soon enough.

When shipping closed down for the winter, I oversaw the building of a new ship in my father-in-law Zoilos' shipyard, to take the place of the one lost off Knidos. Many an hour I spent at the slip, exposed to the cold winds and whirling snow out of Scythia, in furious argument with Zoilos over details of construction, until one would have expected us to come to Wows. Each time, when it was over, we sought refuge from the weather in a tavern, where we got tipsy and roared old songs.

One day in spring, after our new Ainetê had been launched and shipping had started up again, I was at home reckoning my accounts. Gnouros announced a visitor.

"Is sailor," he said.

I went to the door, stared, and cried: "By the! Hippalos!"

"The same," he said with that old satyrlike grin. It was no wonder that it had taken us an instant to recognize each other. The last time he had seen me, I had worn a full, graying beard, which I had now taken off to please Astra. On the other hand, he, who had been clean-shaven throughout our Indian voyage, now flaunted a beard as red as his hair, he wore a sailor's little round cap.

"Come on in," I said after a slight hesitation.

I knew that Hippalos was a slippery character. I had left Egypt full of rancor towards him. Had I met him then, I should have had at him with my stick. But in the ensuing year my anger had died. He was always amusing company, and I was curious to hear what had befallen him.

"Get out a jug of that good Samian," I told Gnouros. I recounted my tale, and Hippalos told his. He apologized handsomely for his shortcomings.

"I'm truly sorry that I put the blame on you in the confession, old boy," he said. "But if I hadn't they'd have tortured me until I named somebody plausible anyway, and yours was the only plausible name I could think of."

"How did Physkon's men find out about your pearls in the first place?" said I, watching him narrowly.

"They saw me treating all my friends and reasoned: Here's Hippalos, who is always broke and cadging drinks, throwing his money around. He must have some clever scheme to cheat the king in mind."

"I heard that you boasted at that party that you did, in fact, have such a scheme."

"By the Dog of Egypt, that's absolutely untrue! I never said a word. They just looked at the feast I had ordered and drew their own conclusions."

"What happened after you were arrested?"

"The Sister sent an officer to get me out of jail. She told him to send me as far from Egypt as possible, so he put me on a grain ship for Rome.

"There I picked up a living in various ways—teaching Greek, for instance—but after a few months I got tired of Rome. It's a beastly, squalid sort of place. The ruling class are a haughty, stuffy lot, and the proletariat are a lot of thugs. Some upper-class Romans claim to be enthusiasts for Greek culture, but it hasn't had much effect. Besides, the Romans have some very odd laws ..."

He paused, then went on without telling me which of these laws he had fallen foul of: "I shipped out to Massilia. I almost sold the Massiliot council a fine scheme for reorganizing their defense, but some envious detractor slandered me to them, and I had to leave. I shipped as a deck hand on a ship of Eldagon of Gades. Do you know that firm?"

"No," I said. "We never get Spanish ships here. Is that what you're doing now?"

"Yes. I've tried to find work worthier of my talents at some of the ports we've stopped at, but without success."

"And you're still sailing for this Gaditanian? How can that be? I've never seen a Spanish ship east of Athens. What in Zeus's name would bring such a craft to Kyzikos?"

"Oh, my ship is not here; it's at Naxos. The Roman governor at Gades insists on real Parian marble for his new palace. So we came east in silver, cinnabar, and salt fish and are returning in Parian marble, Athenian pots, and oriental carpets from Miletos. But our stupid captain ran into a pier at Naxos, and it'll take at least a month to repair us. So rather than idle around Naxos, I've worked my passage hither on a local craft, owned by Agathon and Pelias of Miletos."

"They're competitors of ours. I'm flattered that you should come all this way to see me," I said. "But I'm sure you have some more compelling reason than the wish to talk over old times."

He grinned. 'To tell the truth, I have. Have you still that little bronze of the god Ganesha which you used to wear around your neck?"

"Yes."

"Well, you promised that, if I came to Kyzikos to ask for it, you'd give it to me."

I looked hard at him. I did not want to give up my grotesque little elephant-headed god, my only keepsake from the Indian voyage. On the other hand, a promise is a promise, even to a knave like Hippalos. Noting my hesitation, he said:

"I'm not asking for this for nothing, even though you promised it free. When they stripped and searched me, I managed to save a couple of Indian pearls by hiding them under my tongue. Since these are the entire profit from our voyage, it's only right that you should get half. Here it is."

Into my hand he put a big, handsome pearl. It looked too large for a man to hide a pair of them in his mouth. But then, this was only Hippalos' story; he might have obtained the pearl in some even less legitimate way. However, that was not my business. I thanked him for the pearl and got the statuette of Ganesha out of the chest where I kept such souvenirs. I said:

"You're welcome to the statue. But why should you go to such trouble and cost to get it? The pearl is worth a hundred times as much."

"Still suspicious, aren't you? But I need something to change my luck. Perhaps the statue's mystic powers will bring this to pass. I know you don't take much stock in such ideas. But who knows? The cosmos is full of unknown powers and forces. This amulet may be the focal point of some of them, as old Sisonaga preached.

"Besides, living by one's wits is all very exciting, but I'm nearly forty. It's time I settled down to some solid, respectable occupation. You wouldn't have an opening in your shipping firm, would you? You know I can do almost anything I set my hand to."

"Not just now, best one. Perhaps in a year or two, when a couple of our oldest employees die off ..."

Since Hippalos had come so far, it was only natural to invite him to dinner and to have my kinsmen in to meet him. Since he had not taken lodgings and we had plenty of room, it also seemed natural to put him up while his ship was loading. During these three days, although Astra kept to the women's quarters like a proper Greek housewife, it was en-evitable that she should meet Hippalos. He was formal and respectful, exchanging bows with her and complimenting her on the efficient house she kept. She was polite but cool, confiding to me afterwards that she would be glad when Hippalos—of whose raffish character I had told her—had gone his way. He also played with my son Theon and quite won the lad's heart.

Just before he left, he said: "Old boy, keep your ears cocked to southward. I hear Physkon's health is failing."

"You mean there may soon be a chance for another Indian voyage?"

"That's as the stars shall decide. But bear it in mind. And don't be too surprised if you see me back here. Ask around among your friends in Kyzikos to see if any might have a good job for me. I'm serious about settling down."

And off he went, with the little Ganesha dangling from its chain around his neck.