Before landing for the personal expression of sympathy, the punt was loaded with provisions and dispatched to allay the immediate cravings of hunger. The steamer in the meantime was moored to a wood-rift, from which the captain and members of the corps gained the shore. They were received by a man past the middle age, whose face was exceedingly attractive, although wan with fatigue and anxiety. Momentarily embarrassed, as if with doubt of his capacity to make his emotions of gratitude intelligible, he bowed himself down with the intention of prostrating himself at the feet of the captain, but this act of humiliation was arrested by the grasp and hearty shake of his hands. As distress evokes compassionate emotions with the kind-hearted, the captain’s eyes were not alone mindful in the reciprocation of the stranger’s outburst of grateful tears. Quick in demonstration, when his generous impulses were aroused, the captain exceeded the cautious discretion that usually guarded his movements, from fear of imposition, by bestowing a hearty embrace of sympathy upon the careworn guardian of the rescued flock. This act caused, with one exception, a general prostration accompanied with a grateful outburst of tears. The exception to this indicative act of eastern humiliation, bestowed alike in reverence to the tyrant and benefactor, was a maiden who had probably numbered eighteen seasons. Tall and erect in stature, she stood unmindful of the prostrate throng, but not unmoved by the scene enacted between the representative leaders of the rescuers and rescued. The clear transparency of her skin, with the healthy purity of its texture, combined with a graceful form, exceeding in height those with whom she was associated, declared her at once alien to them by birth. Seemingly aware that grateful expressions confined to pantomimic enactment would at the close of the introductory scene prove embarrassing, she advanced, after securing with touch the companionship of two young maidens who had prostrated themselves beside her. Approaching Captain Greenwood, she addressed him in an unknown tongue, which M. Hollydorf with surprise recognized as an idiom of the Latin language. His wonder was augmented by her confident assumption that there were among us some who would be able to converse with her, and through her interpretation would be enabled to hold communication with her protectors, her companions speaking a dialect in remote correspondence with her own. The captain, although gratefully recompensed for his lack of language by the eyes of the fair vision, felt himself unaccountably moved in his isolation, notwithstanding she continued to bestow upon him from those members sympathetic admiration exceeding the compass of speech. The maiden announced herself as a native of Heraclea of the Falls, a walled city but a few days’ travel remote.