The ruffian laughed. “Why, as for ransom, all the money has been made by them that is likely to be made for some time, unless the Greek that bought them repents of his bargain.”
The speech was received with loud laughter. I grew furious.
“Villains, you have murdered them. Tell me the whole—show me where they lie, or I will deliver you up to the chief of the caravan as robbers and murderers.”
They were appalled; with a single stride I was at the throat of the leading ruffian, and seized the jewel; it was my bridal present to Miriam! My hand trembled, my eyes grew dim at the glance. But in the next moment I found myself pinioned, a gag forced into my mouth, a cloak flung over me, and I heard the discussion—whether I was to be stabbed on the spot, left to die of famine, or have my tongue cut out, and thus unfitted for telling secrets, be turned to gain and sold for a slave.
In Search of a Family
But this was not to be my lot. The quarrel of the banditti increased with their wine; blows were given; the solitary lamp was thrown down in the conflict; it caught some combustible matter, and the tent was in a blaze. By a violent exertion I loosened the cords from my arms, and in the confusion fled unseen. The fire spread, and my last glance at the valley showed the encampment turned into a sheet of fire. Alone, and exhausted with deadly fatigue, I yet had but one thought, that of seeking my family through the world. I wandered on through the vast range of wild country that guards Syria on the side of the desert. I was parched by the burning noon, I was frozen by the keen winds of night; I hungered and thirsted, yet the determination was strong as death, and I persevered. I at length reached the foot of Mount Amanus, traversed the chain, saw from it the interminable plains of Asia Minor, the desert of Aleppo, the shores of Tripoli, and was then left only to choose in which I should again commence my hopeless pilgrimage.
There is something in great distress of mind that throws a strange protection round the sufferer. I passed the Roman guards unquestioned—the robber left me without inquiring whether I was worth his dagger. The wolves, driven down by famine, and devouring all else that had life, neglected the banquet that I might have supplied. Yet I shrank from nothing, and marched on through city, cave and forest. But one evening the sky was loaded with a tempest that drove even me to seek for shelter. I found it in one of the caverns, that so often scare the mariner’s eye, on the iron-bound shore of Cilicia.
Fatigue soon threw me into a heavy slumber. The weight of the tempest toward midnight roused me, and from the mouth of the cavern I gazed on the lightning that disclosed at every explosion the sea rolling in foaming ridges before the gale. In the intervals of the gusts I heard, to my surprise, the murmur of many voices, apparently in prayer, close beside me. But all my interest was suddenly fixed on the sea by the sight of a large war-galley running before the wind. She had neither sail nor oar. Her masts were gone and but for the crowd of people on her deck, whose distracted attitudes I could clearly see by the flashes, she looked a floating tomb.
The Rescue in a Tempest
To warn the galley of the nearness of the shore, I gathered the brushwood beside me, and set it on fire. A shout from the crew told that my signal was understood, and I rushed down the bed of a stream that fretted its way through the precipice. Before I reached the shore, I saw various fires blazing above, and many figures hurrying down on a purpose like my own. We had not arrived too soon. The galley, after desperate efforts to keep the sea, had run for an inlet of the rocks and was embayed; surge on surge, each higher than the one before, now rolled over the ill-fated vessel, and each swept some portion of her crew into the deep. We rushed into the waves and had succeeded in drawing many to shore when a broader burst, the concentrated force of the tempest, thundered on the galley; she was broken into splinters. Stunned and half-suffocated with the surge, I grasped, in the mere instinct of self-preservation, at whatever was nearest and, through infinite hazard, reached the shore with a body in my arms. Need I tell my terror, anxiety, hope, and joy when I found that this being, whom I saw at length breathing, moving, pronouncing my name, falling on my neck, was Miriam!