The life and work of St. Paul

THE VOYAGE AND SHIPWRECK. 563
would be inexpressibly tedious and extremely expensive; and Julius might
rely with tolerable certainty on finding some vessel which was bound from
one of tho great emporiums of Asia for the capital of the world.
St. Paul was spared one at least of the circumstances which would hare
weighed most heavily on his spirits he was not alone. Luke and Aristarchns
accompanied him, and, whether such had bsen their original intention or not,
both were at any rate driven by stress of circumstances to remain with him
during great part of his Roman imprisonment. They, no doubt, were passengers,
not prisoners, and they must either have paid their own expenses, 1
or have been provided with money for that purpose by Christians, who knew
how necessary was some attendance for one so stricken with personal infirmities
as their illustrious Apostle.
The voyage began happily and prosperously. The leading westerly wind
was so far favourable that the day after they started they had accomplished
the sixty-seven miles which lay between them and the harbour of Sidon.
There they touched, and Julius, who can hardly have been absent from the
brilliant throng who had listened to Paul's address before Agrippa, was so
indulgently disposed towards him that he gave him leave perhaps merely
on parole to hind and see h's friends who formed the little Christian community
of that place. This kindness was invaluable to St. Paul. The two
years' imprisonment must have told unfavourably upon his health, and he
must have been but scantily provided with the requisites for a long voyage.
The expression used by St. Luke that Julius allowed him to go to his friend
and " be cared for," 2 seems to imply that even during that one day's voyage
ho had suffered either from sea-sickness or from general infirmity. The day
at Sidon was the one happy interlude which was to prepare him for many
anxious, miserable, and storm-tossed weeks.
For from that day forward the entire voyage became a succession of delays
and accidents, which, after two months of storm and danger, culminated in
hopeless shipwreck. No sooner had they left tho harbour of Sidon than they
encountered the baffling Etesian winds, which blow steadily from the north-
west. This was an unlooked-for hindrance, because the Etesians usually cease
to blow towards the end of August, and are succeeded by south winds, on
which the captain of the merchantman had doubtless relied to waft him back
to his port of Adramyttium. His natural course would have been to sail
straight across from Sidon to Patara, leaving Cyprus on the starboard; but
the very winds which sped St. Paul so blithely along this course to his
Csesarean imprisonment more than two years before, were now against his
return, and the vessel had to sail towards Capo Pedalium, the south-eastern
promontory of Cyprus, hugging the shore under the lee of the island as far
as Cape Dinaretnm. 3 On rounding this cape they could beat to windward
1
Luke, as a physician, might easily have procured a free passage.
* Xivii. 3, arji