Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/140

 at a foreign port and to travel a strange road with beasts equally strange to him and his drivers.

Many of the wealthy fathers and uncles were quite willing to lavish money on their heirs for a journey to Cyrene and a residence there and display before Polyteles and gifts to his daughter, but were unwilling to risk their sons or nephews and their cash on the venture of a sea-voyage. So whereas more than twenty youths from Cyrene itself had aspired to her and more than a hundred had flocked into Cyrene from as far east as the lesser Cathabathmus, from the oases of the south even beyond Agila, Tabudium and Cydamus, from the westering ports past Simnuana and Amaraeas to the north of the Zuchis, full forty of these were cautious or their guardians were timid, so that those suitors of Thessa the daughter of Polyteles who sailed from Apollonia in Cyreniaca for Ambracia in Acarnania were exactly eighty in number and the ships that carried them were twenty-two. So that the fleet that set sail from the harbor of Apollonia was of twenty-eight sail all told, for Polyteles prudently employed Tamos of Naucratis, a skilful pilot, possessed of a stout ship, to sail in the lead and to guide the convoy over the waters.

At dawn on the tenth day before the summer