Out of the Triangle: A Story of the Far East

by Mary E. Bamford

In the dark, he began to climb the rope with trembling fingers. Now he hung by the side of the ship, and now, one hand above another, he drew himself higher, higher, till he grasped the ship's side. He struggled over it, and dropped down on board in the darkness. He waited. No one came. He heard sounds of men that laughed and talked loudly.

He crept a little distance. A rope dangled in his face. He found himself under the aperture where the buckets for bailing were worked. After long and careful groping, Heraklas concealed himself in the vessel's hold, and waited. He suspected that the Christians were in the hold, but he was afraid to search far.

He had not been long hidden before he heard near him the sound of a great sigh and the rattling of a chain, as of some animal half-wakened from sleep.

"It is some wild animal that is to be taken to Rome," suspected Heraklas, not without a little uneasiness at his own proximity to the beast.

It was likely that the creature was well secured, yet the lad crept farther away. He could hear the sound of feet above him and the laughter of men who, no doubt, were drinking on this almost their last night in port.

A sound came from another portion of the hold, and Heraklas listened, trying to discover whether the living being in that direction were a beast or a person. While he listened, a faint light began to shine in the hold. There descended softly into the hold two men, one bearing a light. Heraklas drew back farther into the darkness. The men passed on, their light held so that Heraklas did not see their faces. But the hasty glimpse that the lad had of his surroundings told him that the beast he had crept away from was a lion that was securely caged in one portion of the hold.

Softly the two men proceeded toward the direction from which Heraklas had heard sounds. Stealthily Heraklas rose. He surmised where the two men were going. He wished, yet hardly dared, to follow.

The light swung one side. One man turned to speak to the other, and the light fell full on the speaker's face.

Heraklas leaped softly forward, and followed without hesitation. For the face he had seen was the face of Athribis!

There were eight of the Christians. Heraklas, peering from a distance behind, saw the light held high, as the men paused beside the Christians. Absolutely exhausted, most of them, by the forced march of the desert, and by the lack of enough food, they were asleep, and Heraklas noted with a great pity their gaunt faces.