The Ship: Or, the Wishes (13)

Adimantus

However, I went on and saw evérything, and then I asked one of the sailors how much the vessel brought in to her owner in an average year. Three thousand pounds, he said, was the lowest reckoning. So afterwards, on the way back, I was thinking: Suppose some God took it into his head to make me a present of that ship; what a glorious life I should have of it, and my friends too!

Sometimes I could make the trip myself, at other times I could send my men. On the strength of that three thousand, I had already built myself a house, nicely situated just above the Poecile—I would have nothing more to say to my ancestral abode on the banks of the Ilissus,—and was in treaty for my wardrobe and slaves and chariots and stable. And now behold me on board, the envy of every passenger, and the terror of my crew, who regarded me as next thing toa king; I was getting matters shipshape, and taking last look at the port in the distance, when up comes Lycinus, capsizes the vessel, just as she is scudding before a wishing wind, and sends all my wealth to the bottom.