“Oh, well,” said Menelaus, “there’s a good harbour here and a spring of fresh water. We’ll put in till the wind freshens, and fill the casks.”

Helen walked ashore on the narrow bridge the men held for her, as though one always landed in Pharos. After twenty days the food gave out, and the men crawled along the stony shore, trying for fish with a little cord and bare hooks. All those days Helen walked, composed and gracious, in the smoothest paths she could find among the rocks, or sat near the brow of one modest cliff, watching the purple waters and the gulls and the far sky-line. Menelaus avoided his men and wandered alone, at the other end of the island from Helen. But she was not surprised, so far as he could see, when he strolled up at last to her position on the cliff.

“I’m thinking of going back to Egypt,” he began. “These men need better food than they can find here, and we could row to Canopus in a day.”

“If you are asking my advice,” said Helen, “I can only follow your own best judgment. As you say, we seem to need food.”

“At times, Helen, you irritate me,” said Menelaus; “any fool would know we must go back to Egypt. I wasn’t asking your advice. In fact, I ought to have gone back long ago.”

He was prepared to tell her why he hadn’t gone back before, but she annoyed him by not asking. He turned and saw three of his men, wan and hungry, and the helmsman with them, waiting, as it seemed, to say something unpleasant.

“Menelaus,” began the helmsman, “we have followed you so long that you must know we are faithful, but we’ve come to ask you now if you’ve lost your wits. Do you enjoy suffering yourself, or do you like to see us suffer? You keep us on this island to starve, while there is food in Egypt, within one day at the oars, if we had our strength. A few hours longer here, and we shall be too feeble to launch the boat. Waiting for a wind, you say. But if it came now, there’s not food enough to keep us till Sparta; we can’t fish as we sail.”

“I forgive your bad manners because of your hunger,” said Menelaus, “but as it usually happens in such cases, your advice comes late and is therefore superfluous. I had already decided to return to Egypt for supplies, and we shall start at once. Get the boat ready … Did I make myself clear? Launch the boat … Oh, you have something more to say?”

“Yes, Menelaus,” replied the helmsman. “When we reach Egypt we shall make proper sacrifices to the gods, that we may return home in safety. We would have sacrificed at Troy, with our fellows, but you commanded us to come away. Now that we have suffered your punishment with you, we will obey you no longer in this matter, but only the gods. Clearly it is the fate of none of us to see our friends again unless we offer hecatombs to the deathless who keep the heavens and the paths of the sea. No doubt we should have perished before this had there not been with us our lady yonder, your wife, to soften the anger of the gods—herself immortal in our eyes, reverent and careful toward those above who give life or withhold it.”