"You may learn some day," rejoined the scribe, "that a pen may be a surer and a sharper weapon than an arrow. Would you and Dionysos like to learn to read?"
Startled by the suggestion, the archer caught hold of a rope, and in an instant had slid down to Hanno's feet. Dionysos followed. The monkey flew up to the mast-head.
"To learn to read, did you say?"
"Yes," replied Hanno. "Let us make a compact; you shall teach me to shoot, and I will teach you both to read."
"Agreed!" cried Bichri, enthusiastically; "and I'll warrant that in a month you shall hit a mark no bigger than my hand at the ship's length."
And so the days passed on. Hanno taught Bichri and the young Phocian the alphabet. Himilco, as he piloted the vessel, kept up a perpetual howling over his compulsory abstinence; Chamai and Hannibal, when they were not yawning in idle listlessness, were generally playing at knuckle-bones; the two women gossipped contentedly in their cabin; and Jonah confided to Judge Gebal his dreams of future greatness.
In something more than six weeks we sighted the pillars of Melkarth, and shortly afterwards entered the harbour of Gades. The suffect, Ziba, and all our acquaintances had imagined that we had long since been drowned, and were loud in their congratulations on seeing us back again safe and well, and were full of surprise when I exhibited my magnificent cargo of tin and amber.
I inquired eagerly about Bodmilcar, but could only gather from the suffect's account that fragments of what were supposed to be his vessels had been picked up at the mouth of the Illiturgis, but that nothing whatever had been seen of his gaoul, so that the most probable conjecture I could form was that the scoundrel had been massacred in the interior of the country.
It cannot be denied that we had all been looking forward with much impatience for the opportunity of obtaining some decent food and drink. Himilco was really getting exhausted with his subsistence for so many months on a water diet; so that on reaching land I took the very earliest chance of allowing my men to go ashore, where, doubtless, they directed their steps only too quickly to the wine-shops. Before Jonah left the ship I observed that he had some shekels in his hand, and asked him if he would not put them in his purse.
"No," he said; "they will never be quite safe until I have changed them for wine, and put them into my inside."