Of where we were, save that we were far from land, I had slight knowledge. Full half the way across the sea we must have come, for the north wind had been a strong one while it prevailed and had hurried us for many a league despite the heaviness of our sailing. The westward course, as well, had been with a southward trend and it seemed to me that it were much easier to find a port on the African shore than otherwise. But what manner of port might await us in that strange region? Most barbarous tribes, so the Egyptians had told, inhabited the long reaches of sandy or rocky coast, and luckless were those who landed there. I had no plan we were undetermined of mind as the gulls which swept about us, but land of some sort all men who eat and drink must some time find or perish, and we were not equipped for very long. I counselled with Malchus and Aradnus and, in the end, we acted not unwisely, as the event proved, though there was much to come between. Somewhat we knew of the Egyptians, for between their land and that by the Euphrates there had been a little trade, vast as was the distance to be traversed, including the passage of the strait between the seas, and we knew them as advanced in ways of learning and as generally peaceful. They were unlikely to set upon such weak adventurers as we and of a race which they knew. So it was decided that we should bear to the southeastward straightly as we might and seek one of the mouths of the great river which we call the Nile. The wind held as it was, and slowly, though steadily, we moved toward the east all through the afternoon of this day when I had devised the shifting of the sail, and toward nightfall at a swifter rate, for the sky was now becoming overcast and the wind was rising. Soon there were mounting waves, and the raft-ship, as I have called it for want of a better name, began to rise and fall in its now more hurried progress and to occasionally dip its prow into the sea and take aboard much water, which did not harm us, since it at once washed out again. We would have been content with this mood of the wind and sea had it but remained the same, but that was not to be. The storm-god was abroad that night, and drunken! There be certain men among us Phœnicians who have great gift of words such as I have not, and who can write most eloquently--for we have letters and learning which other peoples lack--some one of whom might, it may be, have described fittingly the storm of that dread night had he but been aboard our raft and had not died of fright, but much I doubt it. There is not stylus to trace the tale of such storm as that in letters! Whereas at the beginning I longed for our staunch bireme beneath our feet, yet long before the morning I thanked the gods that we were lashed firmly to the posts upon our strange new vessel. What a sea-mew proved our riding craft that night!