Didymus, with a mournful smile, kissed her grey hair and shouted into her
left ear, which was a little less deaf than the other:

"How young you are still, wife!"




CHAPTER X.

The tempest swept howling from the north across the island of Pharos, and
the shallows of Diabathra in the great harbour of Alexandria. The water,
usually so placid, rose in high waves, and the beacon on the lighthouse
of Sastratus sent the rent abundance of its flames with hostile
impetuosity towards the city. The fires in the pitch-pans and the
torches on the shore sometimes seemed on the point of being extinguished,
at others burst with a doubly brilliant blaze through the smoke which
obscured them.

The royal harbour, a fine basin which surrounded in the form of a
semicircle the southern part of the Lochias and a portion of the northern
shore of the Bruchium, was brightly illuminated every night; but this
evening there seemed to be an unusual movement among the lights on its
western shore, the private anchorage of the royal fleet.

Was it the storm that stirred them? No. How could the wind have set
one torch in the place of another, and moved lights or lanterns in a
direction opposite to its violent course? Only a few persons, however,
perceived this; for, though joyous anticipation or anxious fears urged
many thither, who would venture upon the quay on such a tempestuous