Poor Philammon! He alone was silent, amid the yells of triumph;
sorrowfully he swam round and round his little paper wreck .... it
would not have floated a mouse. Wistfully be eyed the distant
banks, half minded to strike out for them and escape, .... and
thought of the crocodiles, .... and paddled round again, .... and
thought of the basilisk eyes; .... he might escape the crocodiles,
but who could escape women? .... and he struck out valiantly for
shore .... when he was brought to a sudden stop by finding the stem
of the barge close on him, a noose thrown over him by some friendly
barbarian, and himself hauled on board, amid the laughter, praise,
astonishment, and grumbling of the good-natured crew, who had
expected him, as a matter of course, to avail himself at once of
their help, and could not conceive the cause of his reluctance.

Philammon gazed with wonder on his strange hosts, their pale
complexions, globular heads and faces, high cheek-bones, tall and
sturdy figures; their red beards, and yellow hair knotted
fantastically above the head; their awkward dresses, half Roman or
Egyptian, and half of foreign fur, soiled and stained in many a
storm and fight, but tastelessly bedizened with classic jewels,
brooches, and Roman coins, strung like necklaces. Only the
steersman, who had come forward to wonder at the hippopotamus, and
to help in dragging the unwieldy brute on board, seemed to keep
genuine and unornamented the costume of his race, the white linen
leggings, strapped with thongs of deerskin, the quilted leather
cuirass, the bears'-fur cloak, the only ornaments of which were the
fangs and claws of the beast itself, and a fringe of grizzled tufts,
which looked but too like human hair. The language which they spoke
was utterly unintelligible to Philammon, though it need not be so to