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Meanwhile the lad, a precocious fourteen-year-old cabin-boy from the Hydra, pointed to the boat which lay ready, and took Ledscha's bundle in his hand; but she sprang into the light skiff before him and ordered it to be rowed to the Owl's Nest, where she must bid Mother Tabus good-bye.
There seems to be no trace of any such custom as the COUVADE, though the father observes, like the mother, certain tabus during the early months and years of the child's life, with diminishing strictness as the child grows older. The child also is hedged about with tabus.
"It transformed life for me into one long night, illumined by no single ray of light," was the reply; "but, the immortals be praised, I was cured of it, and it was old Tabus, on the Owl's Nest at Tennis, whose wisdom and magic arts you so often lauded, who gave the remedy and advice to which I owe my recovery."
Turning to the freedman, she went on in a louder tone: "You, slave, shall inform Hanno's wife that old Tabus gave the sculptor, whose blindness she caused, the remedy which restored the sight of black Psoti, whom she knew." Here she paused, gazed upward, and murmured almost unintelligibly: "Satabus, Hanno! If this is the last act of the old mother, it will give ye pleasure."
Yet the official ordered the Owl's Nest to be searched. In doing this he made himself guilty of an act of violence, as the island's right of asylum still existed, and this incensed the irritable and refractory Biamites the more violently, the deeper was the reverent awe with which the nation regarded Tabus, who, according to their belief, was over a hundred years old.
Numberless are the jovial and contented husbands who have never suspected, and will never know, that their wives carry about with them, sometimes with silent resentment, the ache of mysterious tabus.
In the presence of these proofs of maternal solicitude the morose, wrinkled countenance of the old sorceress wore a kind, almost tender expression, and the light of joyous anticipation beamed upon her young guest from her red-rimmed eyes. "I am to see them once more!" cried Tabus in an agitated tone. "The last and all three, all! If they But no; they will not set to work so near Pelusium. No, no!
Toward evening, both rowed to the Owl's Nest, taking the five talents with which the runaway wife intended to purchase freedom from her husband. As the men approached the central door of the pirates' house, a middy-aged Biamite woman appeared and rudely ordered them to leave the island. Tabus was weak, and refused to see visitors.
Lastly, Bias was to deliver five talents to old Tabus, who kept the treasure of the pirate family on the Owl's Nest, and tell her that Ledscha, in this money, sent back the bridal dowry which Hanno had paid her father for his daughter. With this she released herself from the husband who inspired her with feelings very unlike love.
She gazed mutely and thoughtfully into vacancy, until at last, turning to Bias, she began more calmly: "You will see her again, man, and must tell her what the clan of Tabus bought with her talents. Take her my curse, and let her know that her friends would be my foes, and her foes should find in Tabus a benefactress!"
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