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Updated: June 7, 2025
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.
The mother of Heraklas had known whom to choose for her charioteer this day. The chariot receded. It passed out of sight. A distance away from the road, a man rose and beckoned. It was the messenger of the morning, disguised, as a beggar. They went northerly toward the sea. The mother's straining eyes looked ever forward. How if the Christians had been discovered! How long the way was!
"The people destroy the possessions of some of the Christians," humbly replied the slave, whose name was Athribis; and Heraklas, stung to the quick by the answer, impatiently motioned the man away. Left alone, Heraklas lifted his head proudly. He would ignore the pain. What had he to do with the Christians?
The sight of any papyrus, however, had been distasteful to him since the night of his adventure on the roof, but he thought the papyri of that escapade safely burned long ago. He knew that Heraklas' mother had ordered those destroyed that were found on the roof. Athribis supposed the one also burnt that had fallen into the court. What else should have become of it?
He bethought himself of caution, and tried to go with his usual step. He passed through the Gate of the Sun, and by discreet inquiries discovered which ship the Christians were on. Then he hid himself near one of the docks, and watched the ship. Two days! One of the days partly gone already! Timokles would go away never to return, surely, this time. "I also am a Christian!" cried Heraklas aloud.
The mother lifted her face, and her cry rang through the room, "O my sons, my sons!" She had execrated Timokles at times when she had spoken of him before Heraklas, and he had thought that the execration came from her heart. But she had longed, with pain unspeakable, to see Timokles once more.
O my Heraklas, I rejoice thou art a Christian! Go! We shall meet again in the kingdom of our God!" "I will never leave thee," answered Heraklas, firmly. "The men are drinking themselves senseless. I will try what I can do." He felt the wall till he found that Timokles' chain was held, not by a hook, but a staple.
Through an open space beside the wind-sail next to him, he could look into a small room below. In that room, his master Heraklas knelt and carefully drew a brick from its place in the wall. Putting his hand into some hole that seemed to be behind the bricks, Heraklas produced a roll of papyrus.
The slave bent before the lad. "How wast thou where I saw thee?" demanded Heraklas. "I was attending to the salted quail. Thou knowest they are drying on the roof," explained Athribis, meekly. Heraklas felt compelled to accept the excuse. There were quail drying, according to the custom of lower Egypt. "But what was it that I read in his face, as he looked down at me?" Heraklas asked himself.
Athribis longed to have time to unroll the scrolls which he had hidden in his garment, but he dared not look at them till he should be alone. A voice sounded in the court. Athribis redoubled his zeal: He recognized the tones of Heraklas' mother. "I was not long gone! I was not long gone!" the guilty Athribis hastily assured himself. "Surely she hath hated the Christians, even as I hate them!
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