She had
met the great gale, indeed, but had sheltered from it in a harbour,
where the skill of her captain, Hector, brought her safely. Then she
made her way to Sicily, where she refitted, and so on to one of the
Grecian ports, in which she lay for eight weeks waiting for better
weather, till a favouring wind brought her somewhat slowly to
Alexandria, a port she won only two days before the galley of Marcus.
It would seem, therefore, that the vessel that had foundered in sight
of the _Imperatrix_ was either another ship also called the _Luna_, no
uncommon name, or that the mariners of the _Imperatrix_ had not heard
her title rightly. It may have been even that the dying sailor who told
it to them wandered in his mind, and forgetting how his last ship was
called, gave her some name with which he was familiar. At the least,
through the good workings of Providence, that _Luna_ which bore Miriam
and her company escaped the perils of the deep and in due time reached
the haven of Alexandria.
Before they parted that happy night all their tale was told. Miriam
learned how Caleb had kept the promise that he made to her, although
when he thought her dead his fierce and jealous heart would suffer him
to tell nothing of it to Marcus.
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