“I served in that ship until I was its first officer, and by good luck, having been once employed in one of the Sultan’s ships as a pilot during a fierce gale, through which I was enabled, by my good luck, to carry the ship safely.  I was appointed at once a lieutenant in the service, with good pay, and the means of improvement.  The latter my taste led me to take advantage of, and in a short time I found myself in the command, where I was able to serve you.”

“But you had no means whereby to learn of your birth and early childhood?” asked Komel’s mother.

“None; I have thought much of the subject, but what effort to make in order to discover the truth as it regards this matter, I know not.”

“Had you nothing about your person that could indicate your origin?”

“Nothing.”

“Nor could the people with whom you sailed account for these things?” asked Aphiz.

“They said that I was taken off from a wreck on the Asia shore, the only survivor of a crew.”

“How very strange,” repeated all.

“You found nothing then upon you to mark the fact?” asked Komel’s mother once more, sadly.

“Nothing—­stay—­there was an oaken cross upon my neck.  I had nearly forgotten that; I wear it still, and for years I have thought it a sacred amulet, but it can reveal nothing.”

“The cross, the cross?” they cried in one voice, “let us see it.”

As he unbuttoned the collar of his coat and drew forth the emblem, Komel’s mother, who had drawn close to his side, uttered a wild cry of delight as she fell into her husband’s arms, saying: 

“It is our lost boy!”

Words would but faintly express the scene and feelings that followed this announcement, and we leave the reader’s own appreciations to fill up the picture to which we have referred.

Yes, Captain Selim, the gallant officer who had saved Aphiz’s life, and liberated Komel from the Sultan’s harem, was her own dear brother, but who had been counted as dead years and years gone by.  Could a happier consummation have been devised? and Zillah, who loved Selim so tenderly before, now found fresh cause for joy, delight and tenderness in the new page in her husband’s history.

Selim, too, now understood the secret influence that had led him to bid so high for the lone slave he had met in the bazaar, the reason why he had, by some undefined intuitive sense, been so drawn towards her in his feelings, for the dumb and beautiful girl was his unknown sister!

And again when he heard her name mentioned, for the first time, by the Armenian physician, it will be remembered how the name rung in his ears, awaking some long forgotten feelings, yet so indistinctly that he could not express or fairly analyze them.  The same sensations have more than once come over him since that hour while they were suffering together the hardships of the week, and the fearful scenes that followed the gale they had encountered after the chase.