Lives of Alcyone

interest in him, and tried to help him. To this man he told the outline
of his story, and the captain assured him that he might have to wait
for the years before he met with a vessel going to his own part of the
world, which indeed was only vaguely known to the captain, by
reputation. This new friend strongly advised him to take any vessel
which he could find gong up the coast northward, to go wit it as far
as it went, and then to leave it and try for another one which would
take hi further along. In that way he said that by two or three stages
he would certainly be able to get back to some port on the Indian
peninsula, and might even meet eventually with a vessel which
would touch at his own port.
He saw the wisdom of this advice, and when the captain
further offered to come with him to act as interpreter for him and try
to find him a berth on some ship that was northward bound, he fell in
thankfully with the proposed arrangement. The captain was as good
as his word, and he found him a berth upon a small trading vessel
which, though in a slow and leisurely manner, carried him some
hundreds of miles northwards. He left this craft at the northern
extremity of her voyage, and contrived to ship himself upon another
somewhat similar vessel bound still further north, and so in the
course of a year he eventually got back to the mouths of the
Ganges. When once more among people who spoke a variant of his
language he felt himself not far from home, and with but little
difficulty contrived to put himself on board a vessel which called at
the port from which he had sailed on that disastrous voyage, now
tree years ago.
His wife and family greeted the long-lost wanderer with the
wildest demonstrations of joy; they had given him up for lost, but his
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