BOOK I

THE EARTH AND THE SEA ARE ALWAYS GIVING UP THEIR SECRETS THE
PRINCE OF INDIA


CHAPTER I.

THE NAMELESS BAY


In the noon of a September day in the year of our dear Lord 1395, a
merchant vessel nodded sleepily upon the gentle swells of warm water
flowing in upon the Syrian coast. A modern seafarer, looking from the
deck of one of the Messagerie steamers now plying the same line of
trade, would regard her curiously, thankful to the calm which held her
while he slaked his wonder, yet more thankful that he was not of her
passage.

She could not have exceeded a hundred tons burthen. At the bow and stern
she was decked, and those quarters were fairly raised. Amidship she was
low and open, and pierced for twenty oars, ten to a side, all swaying
listlessly from the narrow ports in which they were hung. Sometimes they
knocked against each other. One sail, square and of a dingy white,
drooped from a broad yard-arm, which was itself tilted, and now and then
creaked against the yellow mast complainingly, unmindful of the simple
tackle designed to keep it in control. A watchman crouched in the meagre
shade of a fan-like structure overhanging the bow deck. The roofing and
the floor, where exposed, were clean, even bright; in all other parts
subject to the weather and the wash there was only the blackness of