For in my heart I cared little, having no more any love of life, but rather a desire to die, though I greatly feared to pass into the presence of my Holy Mother Isis.  But my weariness and sorrow at the bitterness of my lot overcame even this heavy fear; so that when, being mad as brute beasts, they seized me and, lifting me, hurled me into the raging waters, I did but utter one prayer to Isis and made ready for death.  But it was fated that I should not die; for, when I rose to the surface of the water, I saw a spar of wood floating near me, to which I swam and clung.  And a great wave came and swept me, riding, as it were, upon the spar, as when a boy I had learned to do in the waters of the Nile, past the bulwarks of the galley where the fierce-faced sailors clustered to see me drown.  And when they saw me come mounted on the wave, cursing them as I came, and saw, too, that the colour of my face had changed—­for the salt water had washed way the pigment, they shrieked with fear and threw themselves down upon the deck.  And within a very little while, as I rode toward the rocky coast, a great wave poured into the vessel, that rolled broadside on, and pressed her down into the deep, whence she rose no more.

So she sank with all her crew.  And in that same storm also sank the galley which Cleopatra had sent to search for the Syrian merchant.  Thus all traces of me were lost, and of a surety she believed that I was dead.

But I rode on toward the shore.  The wind shrieked and the salt waves lashed my face as, alone with the tempest, I rushed upon my way, while the sea-birds screamed about my head.  I felt no fear, but rather a wild uplifting of the heart; and in the stress of my imminent peril the love of life seemed to waken again.  And so I plunged and drifted, now tossed high toward the lowering clouds, now cast into the deep valleys of the sea, till at length the rocky headland loomed before me, and I saw the breakers smite upon the stubborn rocks, and through the screaming of the wind heard the sullen thunder of their fall and the groan of stones sucked seaward from the beach.  On! high-throned upon the mane of a mighty billow—­fifty cubits beneath me the level of the hissing waters; above me the inky sky!  It was done!  The spar was torn from me, and, dragged downwards by the weight of the bag of gold and the clinging of my garments, I sank struggling furiously.

Now I was under—­the green light for a moment streamed through the waters, and then came darkness, and on the darkness pictures of the past.  Picture after picture—­all the long scene of life was written here.  Then in my ears I only heard the song of the nightingale, the murmur of the summer sea, and the music of Cleopatra’s laugh of victory, following me softly and yet more soft as I sank away to sleep.

Once more my life came back, and with it a sense of deadly sickness and of aching pain.  I opened my eyes and saw a kind face bending over me, and knew that I was in the room of a builded house.