Meanwhile, the Prefect received orders to follow
Athanasius. So, no sooner had he heard of his departure
than he boarded a boat and sailed upstream after him.
Unaware that he was being pursued, Athanasius wished to
stop on the way, so he asked his men to lay anchor. As
they were all relaxing happily under some palm trees,
Abba Athanasius suddenly got up saying: "We are not
sailing upstream; we are going back to Alexandria to
prove that He Who protects us is greater than him who
persecutes us". They all got up at once; and started going
back downstream. Hardly had they sailed a few miles
than a boat crossed their path, and it was that of the
Prefect. Its sailors asked: "Have you seen Athanasius
and his men?" Athanasius who was sitting in the midst of
his own, his face half hidden by its hood, answered calmly
without moving from his place: "He is not far from you".
Not realising who the speaker was, the Prefect's men
speeded up their oars. As for the pursued Pope, the re-
entered Alexandria, and resorted to the tomb of his own
father, where he lived for six months. Only then did the
authorities discover that St. Mark's Successor had not left
his metropolis. But the Emperor was preparing an
expedition against Persia, and envisaging himself as a
triumphant conqueror, he thought it hardly worth his
while to pre-occupy himself with a follower of the
Galilean. So he just gave his men orders to be on the
lookout for him. The friends of Athanasius who were in
the very court of the apostate sent him a secret message
of the Emperor's orders. So the heroic Pope took the
road to the desert once more. He advanced with
prudence: spending a day here, two days there; sleeping
at times in a far away village, at others in some deserted
ancient temple; and often spending the nights amid the
elle
(Elle)
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