shouted that the Epicurus did not belong to the royal navy, and had come
in search of news.

The Cilician took in his oars; Archibius and Dion entered the vessel and
questioned the commander.

He was an old, weather-beaten seaman, who would give no information until
after he had learned what his pursuers really desired.

At first he protested that he had witnessed on the Peloponnesian coast
a great victory gained by the Egyptian galleys over those commanded
by Octavianus; but the queries of the two friends involved him in
contradictions, and he then pretended to know nothing, and to have
spoken of a victory merely to please the Alexandrian gentlemen.

Dion, accompanied by a few men from the crew of the Epicurus, searched
the ship, and found in the little cabin a man bound and gagged, guarded
by one of the pirates.

It was a sailor from the Pontus, who spoke only his native language.
Nothing intelligible could be obtained from him; but there were important
suggestions in a letter, found in a chest in the cabin, among clothing,
jewels, and other stolen articles.

The letter-Dion could scarcely believe his own eyes-was addressed to his
friend, the architect Gorgias. The pirate, being ignorant of writing,
had not opened it, but Dion tore the wax from the cord without delay.
Aristocrates, the Greek rhetorician, who had accompanied Antony to the
war, had written from Taenarum, in the south of the Peloponnesus,
requesting the architect, in the general's name, to set the little palace