The Epicurus overtook and captured the fugitive. The slight resistance the vessel might have offered was relinquished when Archibius’s helmsman shouted that the Epicurus did not belong to the royal navy, and had come in search of news.
The Cilician took in his oars; Archibius and Dion entered the vessel and questioned the commander.
He was an old, weather-beaten seaman, who would give no information until after he had learned what his pursuers really desired.
At first he protested that he had witnessed on the Peloponnesian coast a great victory gained by the Egyptian galleys over those commanded by Octavianus; but the queries of the two friends involved him in contradictions, and he then pretended to know nothing, and to have spoken of a victory merely to please the Alexandrian gentlemen.
Dion, accompanied by a few men from the crew of the Epicurus, searched the ship, and found in the little cabin a man bound and gagged, guarded by one of the pirates.
It was a sailor from the Pontus, who spoke only his native language. Nothing intelligible could be obtained from him; but there were important suggestions in a letter, found in a chest in the cabin, among clothing, jewels, and other stolen articles.
The letter—Dion could scarcely believe his own eyes—was addressed to his friend, the architect Gorgias. The pirate, being ignorant of writing, had not opened it, but Dion tore the wax from the cord without delay. Aristocrates, the Greek rhetorician, who had accompanied Antony to the war, had written from Tænarum, in the south of the Peloponnesus, requesting the architect, in the general’s name, to set the little palace at the end of the Choma in order, and surround it on the land side with a high wall.
No door would be necessary. Communication with the dwelling could be had by water. He must do his utmost to complete the work speedily.
The friends gazed at each other in astonishment, as they read this commission.
What could induce Antony to give so strange an order? How did it fall into the hands of the pirates?