Wenamon, therefore, strode back to the vessel, and there remained, fuming and fretting, for nine long days.  The skipper Mengebet, however, had no reason to remain at Dor, and seems to have told Wenamon that he could wait no longer.  On the tenth day, therefore, Wenamon retraced his steps to the palace, and addressed himself once more to Bedel.  “Look,” he said to the king, when he was ushered into the royal presence, “you have not found my money, and therefore you had better let me go with my ship’s captain and with those....”  The rest of the interview is lost in a lacuna, and practically the only words which the damaged condition of the papyrus permits one now to read are, “He said, ‘Be silent!’” which indicates that even the patience of a King of Dor could be exhausted.

When the narrative is able to be resumed one finds that Wenamon has set sail from the city, and has travelled along the coast to the proud city of Tyre, where he arrived one afternoon penniless and letterless, having now nothing left but the little Amon-of-the-Road and his own audacity.  The charms of Tyre, then one of the great ports of the civilised world, were of no consequence to the destitute Egyptian, nor do they seem to have attracted the skipper of his ship, who, after his long delay at Dor, was in no mood to linger.  At dawn the next morning, therefore, the journey was continued, and once more an unfortunate lacuna interrupts the passage of the report.  From the tattered fragments of the writing, however, it seems that at the next port of call—­perhaps the city of Sidon—­a party of inoffensive Sicilian merchants was encountered, and immediately the desperate Wenamon hatched a daring plot.  By this time he had come to place some trust in Mengebet, the skipper, who, for the sake of his own good standing in Egypt, had shown himself willing to help the envoy of Amon-Ra in his troubles, although he would not go so far as to delay his journey for him; and Wenamon therefore admitted him to his councils.  On some pretext or other a party led by the Egyptian paid a visit to these merchants and entered into conversation with them.  Then, suddenly overpowering them, a rush was made for their cash-box, which Wenamon at once burst open.  To his disappointment he found it to contain only thirty-one debens of silver, which happened to be precisely the amount of silver, though not of gold, which he had lost.  This sum he pocketed, saying to the struggling merchants as he did so, “I will take this money of yours, and will keep it until you find my money.  Was it not a Sicilian who stole it, and no thief of ours?  I will take it.”