est movement, and beheld a galley coming down upon him. The tall prow seemed doubly tall, and the red light playing upon its gilt and carving gave it an appearance of snaky life. Under its foot the water churned to flying foam.

He struck out, pushing the plank, which was very broad and unmanageable. Seconds were precious-half a second might save or lose him. In the crisis of the ef- 10 fort, up from the sea, within arm's reach, a helmet shot like a gleam of gold. Next came two hands with fingers extended large hands were they, and strong their hold once fixed, might not 15 be loosed. Ben-Hur swerved from them appalled. Up rose the helmet and the head it encased then two arms, which began to beat the water wildly - the head turned back, and gave the face to the 20 light. The mouth gaping wide; the eyes open, but sightless, and the bloodless pallor of a drowning man-never anything more ghastly! Yet he gave a cry of joy at the sight, and as the face was going 25 under again, he caught the sufferer by the chain which passed from the helmet beneath the chin, and drew him to the plank. The man was Arrius, the tribune.

For a while the water foamed and ed-30 died violently about Ben-Hur, taxing all his strength to hold to the support and at the same time keep the Roman's head above the surface. The galley had passed, leaving the two barely outside the stroke 35 of its oars. Right through the floating men, over heads helmeted as well as heads bare, she drove, in her wake nothing but the sea sparkling with fire. A muffled crash, succeeded by a great outcry, made 40 the rescuer look again from his charge. A certain savage pleasure touched his heart the Astræa was avenged.

After that the battle moved on. Resistance turned to flight. But who were 45 the victors? Ben-Hur was sensible how much his freedom and the life of the tribune depended upon that event. He pushed the plank under the latter until it floated him, after which all his care was 50 to keep him there. The dawn came slowly. He watched its growing hopefully, yet sometimes afraid. Would it bring the Romans or the pirates? If the pirates, his charge was lost.

At last morning broke in full, the air without a breath. Off to the left he saw the land, too far to think of attempting

to make it. Here and there men were adrift like himself. In spots the sea was blackened by charred and sometimes smoking fragments. A galley up a long 5 way was lying to with a torn sail hanging from the tilted yard, and the oars all idle. Still farther away he could discern moving specks, which he thought might be ships in flight or pursuit, or they might be white birds a-wing.

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An hour passed thus. His anxiety increased. If relief came not speedily, Arrius would die. Sometimes he seemed already dead, he lay so still. He took the helmet off, and then, with greater difficulty, the cuirass; the heart he found fluttering. He took hope at the sign, and held on. There was nothing to do but wait, and, after the manner of his people, pray.

The throes of recovery from drowning are more painful than the drowning. These Arrius passed through, and, at length, to Ben-Hur's delight, reached the point of speech.

Gradually, from incoherent questions as to where he was, and by whom and how he had been saved, he reverted to the battle. The doubt of the victory stimulated his faculties to full return, a result aided not a little by a long rest-such as could be had on their frail support. After a while he became talkative.

'Our rescue, I see, depends upon the result of the fight. I see also what thou hast done for me. To speak fairly, thou hast saved my life at the risk of thy own. I make the acknowledgment broadly; and, whatever cometh, thou hast my thanks. More than that, if fortune doth but serve me kindly, and we get well out of this peril, I will do thee such favor as becometh a Roman who hath power and opportunity to prove his gratitude. Yet, yet it is to be seen if, with thy good intent, thou hast really done me a kindness; or, rather, speaking to thy good-will-he hesitated

I would exact of thee a promise to do me, in a certain event, the greatest favor one man can do another - and of that let me have thy pledge now.'

'If the thing be not forbidden, I will do it.' Ben-Hur replied.

Arrius rested again.

Art thou, indeed, a son of Hur, the Jew?' he next asked.

'It is as I have said.'

'I knew thy father'

'A Roman in triumph would have out many flags. She must be an enemy. Hear now,' said Arrius, becoming grave 15 again, hear, while yet I may speak. If the galley be a pirate, thy life is safe: they may not give thee freedom; they may put thee to the oar again; but they will not kill thee. On the other hand, I —' The tribune faltered.

Arrius remained passive.

Thou wilt not?' Judah continued. Not in anger, then, nor in any despite, but to free myself from a hateful obligation, I will give thy gift to the sea. See. O tribune!'

He tossed the ring away. Arrius heard the splash where it struck and sank, though he did not look.

'Thou hast done a foolish thing,' he said: foolish for one placed as thou art. I am not dependent upon thee for death. 55 Life is a thread I can break without thy help; and, if I do, what will become of thee? Men determined on death prefer it at the hands of others, for the reason

that the soul which Plato giveth us is rebellious at the thought of self-destruction; that is all. If the ship be a pirate, I will escape from the world. My mind is fixed. I am a Roman. Success and honor are all in all. Yet I would have served thee; thou wouldst not. The ring was the only witness of my will available in this situation. We are both lost. I will die regretting the victory and glory wrested from me; thou wilt live to die a little later, mourning the pious duties undone because of this folly. I pity thee."

Ben-Hur saw the consequences of his act more distinctly than before, yet he did '5 not falter.

In the three years of my servitude, O tribune, thou wert the first to look upon me kindly. No, no! There was another.' The voice dropped, the eyes became hu- 20 mid, and he saw plainly as if it were then before him the face of the boy who helped him to a drink by the old well at Nazareth. 'At least,' he proceeded, thou wert the the first to ask me who I was; and if, 25 when I reached out and caught thee, blind and sinking the last time, I, too, had thought of the many ways in which thou couldst be useful to me in my wretchedness, still the act was not all selfish; this I 3° pray you to believe. Moreover, seeing as God giveth me to now, the ends I dream of are to be wrought by fair means alone. As a thing of conscience, I would rather die with thee than be thy slayer. My 35 mind is firmly set as thine; though thou wert to offer me all Rome, O tribune, and it belonged to thee to make the gift good, I would not kill thee. Thy Cato and Brutus were as little children compared 40 to the Hebrew whose law a Jew must obey.'

'But my request. Hast-'

Thy command would be of more weight, and that would not move me. I 45 have said.'

Both became silent, waiting.

Ben-Hur looked often at the coming ship. Arrius rested with closed eyes, indifferent.

'Art thou sure she is an enemy?' BenIlur asked.

I think so,' was the reply.

She stops, and puts a boat over the side.'

Dost thou see her flag?'

Is there no other sign by which she may be known if Roman?'

'If Roman, she hath a helmet over the mast's top.'

Then be of cheer, I see the helmet.' Still Arrius was not assured.

The men in the small boat are taking in the people afloat. Pirates are not humane.'

They may need rowers,' Arrius re-
plied, recurring, possibly, to times when
he had made rescues for the purpose.
Ben-Hur was very watchful of the ac-
tions of the strangers.

'The ship moves off,' he said.
'Whither?'

'Over on our right there is a galley which I take to be deserted. The newcomer heads towards it. Now she is alongside. Now she is sending men aboard.'

Then Arrius opened his eyes and threw off his calm.

'Thank thou thy God,' he said to BenHur, after a look at the galleys, thank thou thy God, as I do my many gods. A pirate would sink, not save, yon ship. By the act and the helmet on the mast I know a Roman. The victory is mine. Fortune hath not deserted me. We are saved. Wave thy hand-call to them- bring them quickly. I shall be duumvir, and thou! I knew thy father, and loved him. He was prince indeed. He taught me a Jew was not a barbarian. I will take thee with me. I will make thee my son. Give thy God thanks, and call the sailors. Haste! The pursuit must be kept. Not a robber shall escape. Hasten them!'

Judah raised himself upon the plank, and waved his hand, and called with all his might; at last he drew the attention of the sailors in the small boat, and they were speedily taken up.

Arrius was received on the galley with all the honors due a hero so the favorite of Fortune. Upon a couch on the deck he heard the particulars of the conclusion of the fight. When the survivors afloat upon the water were all saved and the prize secured, he spread his flag of com50 mandment anew, and hurried northward to rejoin the fleet and perfect the victory. In due time the fifty vessels coming down the channel closed in upon the fugitive pirates, and crushed them utterly; not one 55 escaped. To swell the tribune's glory, twenty galleys of the enemy were captured.

Upon his return from the cruise, Arrius

JOHN FISKE (1842-1901)

The life of John Fiske falls into two distinct periods. After his graduation at Harvard, he was a scientist and philosopher, one of the earliest interpreters in America of the philosophy of Darwin and Spencer, an evolutionist in a day when the doctrine of evolution was supposed to be synonymous with atheism. His earliest books bore such titles as The Destiny of Man Viewed in the Light of His Origin, Myths and Myth Makers, 1872, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, 1874. With his American Political Ideas, 1885, he began upon the work by which he will be longest remembered, at least in literary circles, his studies in American history. He followed The Critical Period of American History, 1888, and The Beginnings of New England, 1889, with volumes treating upon the Dutch and Quaker settlements, the discovery of America, and the American Revolution. and at the time of his death he was accumulating materials for what must have been, had he lived to accomplish it, a complete and brilliant history of the American people. His writings fully satisfy the modern demand for documentation and accuracy, and they have, moreover, especially in the department of the historical and biographical essay, a grace of style that admits them into the province of literature. He is simple and straightforward in his narrative, and he is critical and philosophic as well, a philosopher turned historian.

FRANCIS PARKMAN 1

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quiet a lazy doubt as to whether Pontiac might be the name of a man or a place. Had that conspiracy been an event in Merovingian Gaul or in Borgia's Italy. I should have felt a twinge of conscience at not knowing about it; but the deeds of feathered and painted red men on the Great Lakes and the Alleghanies, only a century old, seemed remote and trivial. Indeed, with the old-fashioned study of the humanities, which tended to keep the Mediterranean too exclusively in the center of one's field of vision, it was not always easy to get one's historical perspective correctly adjusted. Scenes and events that come within the direct line of our spiritual ancestry, which until yesterday was all in the Old World, thus become unduly magnified, so as to deaden our sense of the interest and importance of the things that have happened since our forefathers went forth from their homesteads to grapple with the terrors of an outlying wilderness. We find no difficulty in realizing the historic significance of Marathon and Chalons, of the barons of Runnymede or Luther at Wittenberg; and scarcely a hill or a meadow in the Roman's Europe but blooms for us with 30 flowers of romance. Literature and philosophy, art and song, have expended their

In the summer of 1865 I had occasion almost daily to pass by the pleasant windows of Little, Brown & Co., in Boston, and it was not an easy thing to do without stopping for a moment to look in upon their ample treasures. Among the freshest novelties there displayed were to be seen Lord Derby's translation of the Iliad, 10 Forsyth's Life of Cicero, Colonel Higginson's Epictetus, a new edition of Edmund Burke's writings, and the tasteful reprint of Froude's History of England, just in from the Riverside Press. One day, in 15 the midst of such time-honored classics and new books on well-worn themes, there appeared a stranger that claimed attention and aroused curiosity. It was a modest crown octavo, clad in somber garb, and 20 bearing the title Pioneers of France in the New World. The author's name was not familiar to me, but presently I remembered having seen it upon a stouter volume labeled The Conspiracy of Pontiac, of which many copies used to stand in a row far back in the inner and dusky regions of the shop. This older book I had once taken down from its shelf, just to

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