Their passenger and
cargo shipped, the men fell to their oars and the craft shot out of the
still waters by the landings into midstream and turned toward the north.
As they cleared, the private passage boat belonging to a nobleman swept
up near to them and crossing their track took the same direction
several hundred yards nearer the Libyan shore. Kenkenes noted that it
was a bari of elegant pattern, deep draft and more numerously manned
than his. He noted further that one of the boat's crew was the youth
he had met thrice in a short space at Thebes.
"Small wonder that he was not willing to serve me," he commented to
himself.
If he observed the companion boat during the next five days it was to
remark that since his own vessel kept sturdily alongside one of
superior rowing force his men were of a surety earning the promised
reward. When they entered the long straight stretches of the Middle
country the elegant stranger dropped behind and attended Kenkenes and
his crew more distantly thereafter.
Except for these few occasions, Kenkenes had no thought of his
surroundings. He stood in the prow and looked down the shimmering
width of river, in the direction his heart had taken long before him.
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