When, therefore, two or three days after his visit to Hasdrubal's camp, the Greek knocked at the door of Syphax's little house by the sea, he received a hearty welcome, and was asked no inconvenient questions.
"You're just in time, young sir," cried the old man, "if you are come for the tunnies. We start at sunset, and, if we have luck, we shall be among them by dawn to-morrow. Just now the shoals are pretty near, and we may catch a boat-load before the new moon--it is just full to-day. But you are not in a hurry, I hope, if we should have to go further afield."
"All right, Syphax!" replied Cleanor. "I shall be able to see it through this time."
The old man, who had, indeed, the experience of sixty years to draw from, was quite right in his prediction that they would find themselves among the tunnies at dawn. They had been able to get over a considerable distance during the night. At first their progress had been slow, for it was a dead calm, and the sweeps had to be used. About midnight, when they were well out of the shelter of the land, a light breeze from the south sprang up. The broad lateen sail was gladly hoisted, and the little craft sped gaily along, making, with the wind due aft, some six or seven miles an hour. Cleanor, who had fallen asleep shortly after midnight, not a little fatigued by the share which he had insisted on taking in the rowing, was awakened, after what seemed to him five minutes of slumber, by the captain.
"See," cried the old man, "there they are yonder. Thanks to Dagon, we have got among them quite as soon as I hoped."
And sure enough, about three hundred yards off, just in a line with the sun, which was beginning to lift a crimson disk out of the sea, the water seemed positively alive with fish, little and big. The tunnies had got among a shoal of sardines, and were busy with the chase. Every now and then some score of small fry would throw themselves wildly out of the water to escape their pursuer; behind them the water swirled with the rush of some monster fish, whose great black fin might be discerned, by a keen eye, just showing above the surface. Elsewhere, one of the tunnies would leap bodily into the air, his silvery side gleaming in the almost level rays of the rising sun. The sail had already been lowered, and the sweeps, after some dozen strokes to give a little way to the vessel in the right direction, had been shipped again. In another minute the little craft had quietly glided into the middle of the shoal.