Читать бесплатно онлайн книгу  The Lost Continent

автор Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

Prefatory The Legatees of Deucalion

We were both of us not a little stiff as the res­ult of sleep­ing out in the open all that night, for even in Grand Canary the dew-fall and the com­par­at­ive chill of dark­ness are not to be trifled with. For my­self on these oc­ca­sions I like a bit of a run as an early re­fresher. But here on this rough ground in the middle of the is­land there were not three yards of level to be found, and so as Cop­pinger pro­ceeded to go through some sort of dumb­bell ex­er­cises with a couple of lumps of bristly lava, I fol­lowed his ex­ample. Cop­pinger has done a good deal of rough­ing it in his time, but be­ing a doc­tor of medi­cine amongst other things—he takes out a new de­gree of some sort on an av­er­age every other year—he is great on health the­or­ies, and prac­tises them like a re­li­gion.

There had been rain two days be­fore, and as there was still a bit of stream trick­ling along at the bot­tom of the bar­ranca, we went down there and had a wash, and brushed our teeth. Greatest lux­ury ima­gin­able, a tooth­brush, on this sort of ex­ped­i­tion.

“Now,” said Cop­pinger when we had emp­tied our pock­ets, “there’s pre­cious little grub left, and it’s none the bet­ter for be­ing car­ried in a local Span­ish news­pa­per.”

“Yours is mostly to­bacco ashes.”

“It’ll get worse if we leave it. We’ve a lot more bad scram­bling ahead of us.”

That was ob­vi­ous. So we sat down be­side the stream there at the bot­tom of the bar­ranca, and ate up all of what was left. It was a ten-mile tramp to the fonda at Santa Bri­gida, where we had set down our traps; and as Cop­pinger wanted to take a lot more pho­to­graphs and meas­ure­ments be­fore we left this par­tic­u­lar group of caves, it was likely we should be pretty sharp set be­fore we got our next meal, and our next taste of the Pat­ron’s splen­did old coun­try wine. My faith! If only they knew down in the Eng­lish ho­tels in Las Pal­mas what mag­ni­fi­cent wines one could get—with dip­lomacy—up in some of the moun­tain vil­lages, the old vin­tage would be­come a thing of the past in a week.

Now to tell the truth, the two mum­mies he had gathered already quite sat­is­fied my small am­bi­tion. The goat­skins in which they were sewn up were as brittle as pa­per, and the poor old things them­selves gave out dust like a puff­ball whenever they were touched. But you know what Cop­pinger is. He thought he’d come upon traces of an old Guanche uni­ver­sity, or sac­red col­lege, or some­thing of that kind, like the one there is on the other side of the is­land, and he wouldn’t be sat­is­fied till he’d ran­sacked every cave in the whole face of the cliff. He’d plenty of stuff left for the flash­light thing, and twenty-eight more films in his kodak, and said we might as well get through with the job then as make a re­turn jour­ney all on pur­pose. So he took the crow­bar, and I shouldered the rope, and away we went up to the ridge of the cliff, where we had got such a bak­ing from the sun the day be­fore.

Of course these caves were not easy to come at, or else they would have been raided years be­fore. Cop­pinger, who on prin­ciple makes out he knows all about these things, says that in the old Guanche days they had lad­ders of goat­skin rope which they could pull up when they were at home, and so keep out un­desir­able callers; and as no other plan oc­curs to me, per­haps he may be right. Any­way the mouths of the caves were in a more or less level row thirty feet be­low the ridge of the cliff, and fifty feet above the bot­tom; and Span­ish curi­os­ity doesn’t go in much where it can­not walk.

Now lad­der­ing such caves from be­low would have been cum­ber­some, but a light knot­ted rope is eas­ily car­ried, and though it would have been hard to climb up this, our plan was to des­cend on each cave mouth from above, and then slip down to the foot of the cliffs, and start again ab ini­tio for the next.

Cop­pinger is plucky enough, and he has a good head on a height, but there is no get­ting over the fact that he is portly and nearer fifty than forty-five. So you can see he must have been pretty keen. Of course I went first each time, and got into the cave mouth, and did what I could to help him in; but when you have to walk down a ver­tical cliff face fly-fash­ion, with only a thin boot­lace of a rope for sup­port, it is not much real help the man be­low can give, ex­cept of­fer you his best wishes.

I wanted to save him as much as I could, and as the first three caves I climbed to were small and empty, seem­ing to be merely store-places, I asked him to take them for gran­ted, and save him­self the rest. But he in­sisted on clam­ber­ing down to each one in per­son, and as he de­cided that one of my granar­ies was a prison, and an­other a pot-mak­ing fact­ory, and an­other a school­room for young priests, he nat­ur­ally said he hadn’t much re­li­ance on my judg­ment, and would have to go through the whole lot him­self. You know what these thor­oughgo­ing ar­chae­olo­gists are for ima­gin­a­tion.

But as the day went on, and the sun rose higher, Cop­pinger began clearly to have had enough of it, though he was very game, and in­sisted on go­ing on much longer than was safe. I must say I didn’t like it. You see the drop was sel­dom less than eighty feet from the top of the cliffs. However, at last he was forced to give it up. I sug­ges­ted march­ing off to Santa Bri­gida forth­with, but he wouldn’t do that. There were three more cave-open­ings to be looked into, and if I wouldn’t do them for him, he would have to make an­other ef­fort to get there him­self. He tried to make out he was con­fer­ring a very great fa­vour on me by of­fer­ing to take a re­port solely from my un­trained ob­ser­va­tion, but I flatly re­fused to look at it in that light. I was pretty tired also; I was soaked with per­spir­a­tion from the heat; my head ached from the vi­ol­ence of the sun; and my hands were cut raw with the rope.

Cop­pinger might be tired, but he was still en­thu­si­astic. He tried to make me en­thu­si­astic also. “Look here,” he said, “there’s no know­ing what you may find up there, and if you do lay hands on any­thing, re­mem­ber it’s your own. I shall have no claim whatever.”

“Very kind of you, but I’ve got no use for any more mum­mies done up in goat­skin bags.”

“Bah! That’s not a burial cave up there. Don’t you know the dif­fer­ence yet in the open­ings? Now, be a good fel­low. It doesn’t fol­low that be­cause we have drawn all the rest blank, you won’t stumble across a good find for your­self up there.”

“Oh, very well,” I said, as he seemed so set on it; and away I stumbled over the fallen rocks, and along the ledge, and then scrambled up by that fis­sure in the cliff which saved us the two-mile round which we had had to take at first. I wrenched out the crow­bar, and jammed it down in a new place, and then away I went over the side, with hands smart­ing worse at every new grip of the rope. It was an awk­ward job swinging into the cave mouth be­cause the rock above over­hung, or else (what came to the same thing) it had broken away be­low; but I man­aged it some­how, al­though I landed with an awk­ward thump on my back, and at the same time I didn’t let go the rope. It wouldn’t do to have lost the rope then: Cop­pinger couldn’t have flicked it into me from where he was be­low.

Now from the first glance I could see that this cave was of dif­fer­ent struc­ture to the oth­ers. They were for the most part mere dens, roun­ded out any­how; this had been faced up with cut­ting tools, so that all the angles were clean, and the sides smooth and flat. The walls in­clined in­wards to the roof, re­mind­ing me of an ar­chi­tec­ture I had seen be­fore but could not re­col­lect where, and moreover there were sev­eral rooms con­nec­ted up with pas­sages. I was pleased to find that the other cave-open­ings which Cop­pinger wanted me to ex­plore were merely the win­dows or the door­ways of two of these other rooms.

Of in­scrip­tions or mark­ings on the walls there was not a trace, though I looked care­fully, and ex­cept for bats the place was en­tirely bare. I lit a ci­gar­ette and smoked it through—Cop­pinger al­ways thinks one is slur­ring over work if it is got through too quickly—and then I went to the en­trance where the rope was, and leaned out, and shouted down my news.

He turned up a very anxious face. “Have you searched it thor­oughly?” he bawled back.

“Of course I have. What do you think I’ve been do­ing all this time?”

“No, don’t come down yet. Wait a minute. I say, old man, do wait a minute. I’m mak­ing fast the kodak and the flash­light ap­par­atus on the end of the rope. Pull them up, and just make me half a dozen ex­pos­ures, there’s a good fel­low.”

“Oh, all right,” I said, and hauled the things up, and got them in­side. The pho­to­graphs would be ab­so­lutely dull and un­in­ter­est­ing, but that wouldn’t mat­ter to Cop­pinger. He rather pre­ferred them that way. One has to be care­ful about hal­a­tion in pho­to­graph­ing these dark in­teri­ors, but there was a sort of ledge like a seat by the side of each door­way, and so I lodged the cam­era on that to get a steady stand, and snapped off the flash­light from be­hind and above.

I got pic­tures of four of the cham­bers this way, and then came to one where the ledge was higher and wider. I put down the cam­era, wedged it level with scraps of stone, and then sat down my­self to re­charge the flash­light ma­chine. But the mo­ment my weight got on that ledge, there was a sharp crackle, and down I went half a dozen inches.

Of course I was up again pretty sharply, and snapped up the kodak just as it was go­ing to slide off to the ground. I will con­fess, too, I was feel­ing pleased. Here at any rate was a Guanche cup­board of sorts, and as they had taken the trouble to her­met­ic­ally seal it with ce­ment, the odds were that it had some­thing in­side worth hid­ing. At first there was noth­ing to be seen but a lot of dust and rubble, so I lit a bit of candle and cleared this away. Presently, how­ever, I began to find that I was shelling out some­thing that was not ce­ment. It chipped away, in reg­u­lar lay­ers, and when I took it to the day­light I found that each layer was made up of two parts. One side was shiny stuff that looked like talc, and on this was smeared a coat­ing of dark tof­fee-col­oured ma­ter­ial, that might have been wax. The tof­fee-col­oured sur­face was worked over with some kind of pat­tern.

Now I do not pro­fess to any know­ledge on these mat­ters, and as a con­sequence took what Cop­pinger had told me about Guanche habits and ac­quire­ments as more or less true. For in­stance, he had re­peatedly im­pressed upon me that this old people could not write, and hav­ing this in my memory, I did not guess that the pat­terns scribed through the wax were let­ters in some ob­sol­ete char­ac­ter, which, if left to my­self, prob­ably I should have done. But still at the same time I came to the con­clu­sion that the stuff was worth loot­ing, and so set to work quar­ry­ing it out with the heel of my boot and a pock­etknife.

The sheets were all more or less stuck to­gether, and so I did not go in for sep­ar­at­ing them farther. They fit­ted ex­actly to the cav­ity in which they were stored, but by smash­ing down its front I was able to get at the foot of them, and then I hacked away through the bot­tom lay­ers with the knife till I got the bulk out in one solid piece. It meas­ured some twenty inches by fif­teen, by fif­teen, but it was not so heavy as it looked, and when I had taken the re­main­ing pho­to­graphs, I lowered it down to Cop­pinger on the end of the rope.

There was noth­ing more to do in the caves then, so I went down my­self next. The lump of sheets was on the ground, and Cop­pinger was on all fours be­side it. He was pretty nearly mad with ex­cite­ment.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“I don’t know yet. But it is the most valu­able find ever made in the Canary Is­lands, and it’s yours, you un­ap­pre­ci­at­ive beg­gar; at least what there is left of it. Oh, man, man, you’ve smashed up the be­gin­ning, and you’ve smashed up the end of some his­tory that is prob­ably price­less. It’s my own fault. I ought to have known bet­ter than set an un­trained man to do im­port­ant ex­plor­ing work.”

“I should say it’s your fault if any­thing’s gone wrong. You said there was no such thing as writ­ing known to these an­cient Canarios, and I took your word for it. For any­thing I knew the stuff might have been some­thing to eat.”

“It isn’t Guanche work at all,” said he testily. “You ought to have known that from the talc. Great heav­ens, man, have you no eyes? Haven’t you seen the gen­eral form­a­tion of the is­land? Don’t you know there’s no talc here?”

“I’m no geo­lo­gist. Is this im­por­ted lit­er­at­ure then?”

“Of course. It’s Egyp­tian: that’s ob­vi­ous at a glance. Though how it’s got here I can’t tell yet. It isn’t stuff you can read off like a news­pa­per. The char­ac­ter’s a vari­ant on any of those that have been dis­covered so far. And as for this waxy stuff spread over the talc, it’s unique. It’s some sort of a min­eral, I think: per­haps as­phalt. It doesn’t scratch up like an­imal wax. I’ll ana­lyse that later. Why they once in­ven­ted it, and then let such a splen­did no­tion drop out of use, is just a mar­vel. I could stay gloat­ing over this all day.”

“Well,” I said, “if it’s all the same for you, I’d rather gloat over a meal. It’s a good ten miles hard go­ing to the fonda, and I’m as hungry as a hawk already. Look here, do you know it is four o’clock already? It takes longer than you think climb­ing down to each of these caves, and then get­ting up again for the next.”

Cop­pinger spread his coat on the ground, and wrapped the lump of sheets with tender care, but would not al­low it to be tied with a rope for fear of break­ing more of the edges. He in­sisted on car­ry­ing it him­self too, and did so for the lar­ger part of the way to Santa Bri­gida, and it was only when he was within an ace of drop­ping him­self with sheer tired­ness that he con­des­cen­ded to let me take my turn. He was tol­er­ably un­gra­cious about it too. “I sup­pose you may as well carry the stuff,” he snapped, “see­ing that after all it’s your own.”

Per­son­ally, when we got to the fonda, I had as good a din­ner as was pro­cur­able, and a bottle of that old Canary wine, and turned into bed after a fi­nal pipe. Cop­pinger dined also, but I have reason to be­lieve he did not sleep much. At any rate I found him still por­ing over the find next morn­ing, and look­ing very heavy-eyed, but brim­ming with en­thu­si­asm.

“Do you know,” he said, “that you’ve blundered upon the most valu­able his­tor­ical ma­nu­script that the mod­ern world has ever yet seen? Of course, with your clumsy way of get­ting it out, you’ve done an in­fin­ity of dam­age. For in­stance, those top sheets you shelled away and spoiled, con­tained prob­ably an ab­so­lutely unique ac­count of the an­cient civil­isa­tion of Yu­catan.”

“Where’s that, any­way?”

“In the middle of the Gulf of Mex­ico. It’s all ru­ins today, but once it was a very pros­per­ous colony of the At­lanteans.”

“Never heard of them. Oh yes, I have though. They were the people Hero­dotus wrote about, didn’t he? But I thought they were myth­ical.”

“They were very real, and so was At­lantis, the con­tin­ent where they lived, which lay just north of the Canar­ies here.”

“What’s that cro­codile sort of thing with wings drawn in the mar­gin?”

“Some sort of beast that lived in those by­gone days. The pages are full of them. That’s a cave-ti­ger. And that’s some sort of co­lossal bat. Thank good­ness he had the sense to il­lus­trate fully, the man who wrote this, or we should never have been able to re­con­struct the tale, or at any rate we could not have un­der­stood half of it. Whole spe­cies have died out since this was writ­ten, just as a whole con­tin­ent has been swept away and three civil­isa­tions quenched. The worst of it is, it was writ­ten by a highly-edu­cated man who some­what nat­ur­ally writes a very bad fist. I’ve hammered at it all the night through, and have only man­aged to make out a few sen­tences here and there”—he rubbed his hands ap­pre­ci­at­ively. “It will take me a year’s hard work to trans­late this prop­erly.”

“Every man to his taste. I’m afraid my in­terest in the thing wouldn’t last as long as that. But how did it get there? Did your an­cient Egyp­tian come to Grand Canary for the good of his lungs, and write it be­cause he felt dull up in that cave?”

“I made a mis­take there. The au­thor was not an Egyp­tian. It was the sim­il­ar­ity of the in­scribed char­ac­ter which misled me. The book was writ­ten by one Deu­calion, who seems to have been a priest or gen­eral—or per­haps both—and he was an At­lantean. How it got there, I don’t know yet. Prob­ably that was told in the last few pages, which a cer­tain van­dal smashed up with his pock­etknife, in get­ting them away from the place where they were stowed.”

“That’s right, ab­use me. Deu­calion you say? There was a Deu­calion in the Greek myth­o­logy. He was one of the two who es­caped from the Flood: their Noah, in fact.”

“The swamp­ing of the con­tin­ent of At­lantis might very well cor­res­pond to the Flood.”

“Is there a Pyrrha then? She was Deu­calion’s wife.”

“I haven’t come across her yet. But there’s a Phorenice, who may be the same. She seems to have been the reign­ing Em­press, as far as I can make out at present.”

I looked with in­terest at il­lus­tra­tions in the mar­gin. They were quite un­der­stand­able, al­though the per­spect­ive was all wrong. “Weird beasts they seem to have had knock­ing about the coun­try in those days. Whack­ing big size too, if one may judge. By Jove, that’ll be a cave-ti­ger try­ing to puff down a mam­moth. I shouldn’t care to have lived in those days.”

“Prob­ably they had some way of fight­ing the creatures. However, that will show it­self as I get along with the trans­la­tion.” He looked at his watch—“I sup­pose I ought to be ashamed of my­self, but I haven’t been to bed. Are you go­ing out?”

“I shall drive back to Las Pal­mas. I prom­ised a man to have a round at golf this af­ter­noon.”

“Very well, see you at din­ner. I hope they’ve sent back my dress shirts from the wash. O, lord! I am sleepy.”

I left him go­ing up to bed, and went out­side and ordered a car­riage to take me down, and there I may say we par­ted for a con­sid­er­able time. A cable was wait­ing for me in the hotel at Las Pal­mas to go home for busi­ness forth­with, and there was a Liver­pool boat in the har­bour which I just man­aged to catch as she was steam­ing out. It was a close thing, and the boat­men made a small for­tune out of my hurry.

Now Cop­pinger was only an hotel ac­quaint­ance, and as I was up to the eyes in work when I got back to Eng­land, I’m afraid I didn’t think very much more about him at the time. One doesn’t with people one just meets cas­u­ally abroad like that. And it must have been at least a year later that I saw by a para­graph in one of the pa­pers, that he had given the lump of sheets to the Brit­ish Mu­seum, and that the es­tim­ated worth of them was ten thou­sand pounds at the low­est valu­ation.

Well, this was a bit of rev­el­a­tion, and as he had so re­peatedly im­pressed on me that the things were mine by right of dis­cov­ery, I wrote rather a poin­ted note to him men­tion­ing that he seemed to have been mak­ing rather free with my prop­erty. Promptly came back a stil­ted let­ter be­gin­ning, “Doc­tor Cop­pinger re­grets” and so on, and with it the Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the wax-upon-talc MSS. He “quite ad­mit­ted” my claim, and “trus­ted that the profits of pub­lic­a­tion would be a suf­fi­cient re­im­burse­ment for any dam­age re­ceived.”

Now I had no idea that he would take me un­pleas­antly like this, and wrote back a pretty warm reply to that ef­fect; but the only an­swer I got to this was through a firm of so­li­cit­ors, who stated that all fur­ther com­mu­nic­a­tions with Dr. Cop­pinger must be made through them.

I will say here pub­licly that I re­gret the line he has taken over the mat­ter; but as the af­fair has gone so far, I am dis­posed to fol­low out his pro­pos­i­tion. Ac­cord­ingly the old his­tory is here prin­ted; the credit (and the re­spons­ib­il­ity) of the trans­la­tion rests with Dr. Cop­pinger; and whatever rev­enue ac­crues from read­ers, goes to the finder of the ori­ginal talc-upon-wax sheets, my­self.

If there is a fur­ther al­ter­a­tion in this ar­range­ment, it will be an­nounced pub­licly at a later date. But at present this ap­pears to be most un­likely.

The Lost Continent The Story of Atlantis

I My Recall

The pub­lic of­fi­cial re­cep­tion was over. The sen­tence had been read, the name of Phorenice, the Em­press, ad­ored, and the new Viceroy in­stalled with all that vast and pon­der­ous ce­re­mo­nial which had gained its pomp and majesty from the ages. Formally, I had de­livered up the reins of my gov­ern­ment; form­ally, Tatho had seated him­self on the snake-throne, and had put over his neck the chain of gems which sym­bol­ised the su­preme of­fice; and then, whilst the drums and the trum­pets made their pro­clam­a­tion of clam­our, he had risen to his feet, for his first state pro­gress round that gil­ded coun­cil cham­ber as Viceroy of the Province of Yu­catan.

With fol­ded arms and bended head, I fol­lowed him between the glit­ter­ing lines of sol­diers, and the bril­liant throng of courtiers, and chiefs, and states­men. The roof-beams quivered to the cries of “Long Live Tatho!” “Flour­ish the Em­press!” which came forth as in duty bound, and the new ruler ac­know­ledged the wel­come with stately in­clin­a­tions of the head. In turn he went to the three lesser thrones of the lesser gov­ernors—in the East, the North, and the South, and re­ceived homage from each as the ritual was; and I, the man whom his com­ing had de­posed, fol­lowed with the pre­scribed meek­ness in his train.

It was a hard task, but we who hold the higher of­fices learn to carry be­fore the people a pas­sion­less face. Once, twenty years be­fore, these same fine obeis­ances had been made to me; now the Gods had seen fit to make for­tune change. But as I walked bent and humbly on be­hind the heels of Tatho, though etiquette for­bade noisy sa­luta­tions to my­self, it could not in­hibit kindly glances, and these came from every sol­dier, every courtier, and every chief who stood there in that gil­ded hall, and they fell upon me very grate­fully. It is not of­ten the fallen meet such tender looks.

The form goes, handed down from im­me­morial cus­tom, that on these great ce­re­mo­nial days of chan­ging a ruler, those of the people be­ing present may bring for­ward pe­ti­tions and re­quests; may make ac­cus­a­tions against their re­tir­ing head with sure im­munity from his ven­geance; or may state their own private the­or­ies for the bet­ter gov­ern­ment of the State in the fu­ture. I think it may be pardoned to my van­ity if I re­cord that not a voice was raised against me, or against any of the items of my twenty years of rule. Nor did any speak out for al­ter­a­tions in the fu­ture. Yes, even though we made the cir­cuit for the three pre­scribed times, all present showed their ap­proval in gen­er­ous si­lence.

Then, one be­hind the other, the new Viceroy and the old, we marched with formal step over golden tiles of that coun­cil hall be­neath the pyr­amid, and the great of­ficers of state left their sta­tions and joined in our train; and at the farther wall we came to the door of those private cham­bers which an hour ago had been mine own.

Ah, well! I had no home now in any of those won­drous cit­ies of Yu­catan, and I could not help feel­ing a bit­ter­ness, though in sooth I should have been thank­ful enough to re­turn to the Contin­ent of At­lantis with my head still in its proper sta­tion.

Tatho gave his formal sum­mons of “Open ye to the Viceroy,” which the ritual com­mands, and the slaves within sent the massive stone valves of the door gap­ing wide. Tatho entered, I at his heels; the oth­ers hal­ted, send­ing va­le­dic­tions from the threshold; and the valves of the door clanged on the lock be­hind us. We passed on to the cham­ber bey­ond, and then, when for the first time we were alone to­gether, and the forced etiquette of courts was be­hind us, the new Viceroy turned with meekly fol­ded arms, and bowed low be­fore me.

“Deu­calion,” he said, “be­lieve me that I have not sought this of­fice. It was thrust upon me. Had I not ac­cep­ted, my head would have paid for­feit, and an­other man—your en­emy—would have been sent out as vice­roy in your place. The Em­press does not per­mit that her will shall ever be ques­tioned.”

“My friend,” I made an­swer, “my brother in all but blood, there is no man liv­ing in all At­lantis or her ter­rit­or­ies to whom I had liefer hand over my gov­ern­ment. For twenty years now have I ruled this coun­try of Yu­catan, and Mex­ico bey­ond, first un­der the old King, and then as min­is­ter to this new Em­press. I know my colony like a book. I am in­tim­ate with all her won­der­ful cit­ies, with their palaces, their pyr­am­ids, and their people. I have hunted the beasts and the sav­ages in the forests. I have built roads, and made the rivers so that they will carry ship­ping. I have fostered the arts and crafts like a mer­chant; I have dis­coursed, three times each day, the cult of the Gods with mine own lips. Through evil years and through good have I ruled here, striv­ing only for the prosper­ity of the land and the strength­en­ing of At­lantis, and I have grown to love the peoples like a father. To you I be­queath them, Tatho, with tender sup­plic­a­tions for their in­terests.”

“It is not I that can carry on Deu­calion’s work with Deu­calion’s power, but rest con­tent, my friend, that I shall do my humble best to fol­low ex­actly on in your foot­steps. Be­lieve me, I came out to this gov­ern­ment with a thou­sand re­grets, but I would have died sooner than take your place had I known how vig­or­ously the sup­plant­ing would trouble you.”

“We are alone here,” I said, “away from the form­al­it­ies of formal as­sem­blies, and a man may give vent to his nat­ural self without fear of tar­nish­ing a ce­re­mony. Your com­ing was some­thing of the sudden­est. Till an hour ago, when you de­man­ded audi­ence, I had thought to rule on longer; and even now I do not know for what cause I am de­posed.”

“The pro­clam­a­tion said: ‘We re­lieve our well-be­loved Deu­calion of his present ser­vice, be­cause we have great need of his powers at home in our king­dom of At­lantis.’ ”

“A mere form­al­ity.”

Tatho looked un­eas­ily round the hangings of the cham­ber, and drew me with him to its centre, and lowered his voice.

“I do not think so,” he whispered. “I be­lieve she has need of you. There are troub­lous times on hand, and Phorenice wants the ablest men in the king­dom ready to her call.”

“You may speak openly,” I said, “and without fear of eaves­drop­pers. We are in the heart of the pyr­amid here, built in every way by a man’s length of solid stone. My­self, I over­saw the lay­ing of every course. And be­sides, here in Yu­catan, we have not the niceties of your old world dip­lomacy, and do not listen, be­cause we count it shame to do so.”

Tatho shrugged his shoulders. “I ac­ted only ac­cord­ing to mine edu­ca­tion. At home, a loose tongue makes a loose head, and there are those whose trade it is to carry tales. Still, what I say is this: The throne shakes, and Phorenice sees the need of sturdy props. So she has sent this pro­clam­a­tion.”

“But why come to me? It is twenty years since I sailed to this colony, and from that day I have not re­turned to At­lantis once. I know little of the old coun­try’s polit­ics. What small par­cel of news drifts out to us across the ocean, reads with slender in­terest here. Yu­catan is an­other world, my dear Tatho, as you in the course of your gov­ern­ment will learn, with new in­terests, new people, new everything. To us here, At­lantis is only a fig­ment, a shadow, far away across the wa­ters. It is for this new world of Yu­catan that I have striven through all these years.”

“If Deu­calion has small time to spare from his gov­ern­ment for brood­ing over his fath­er­land, At­lantis, at least, has found leis­ure to ad­mire the deeds of her bril­liant son. Why, sir, over yon­der at home, your name car­ries ma­gic with it. When you and I were lads to­gether, it was the cus­tom in the col­leges to teach that the men of the past were the greatest this world has ever seen; but today this teach­ing is changed. It is Deu­calion who is held up as the model and ex­ample. Moth­ers name their sons Deu­calion, as the most valu­able birth-gift they can make. Deu­calion is a house­hold word. Indeed, there is only one name that is near to it in fa­mili­ar­ity.”

“You trouble me,” I said, frown­ing. “I have tried to do my duty for its own sake, and for the coun­try’s sake, not for the pat­tings and fond­lings of the vul­gar. And be­sides, if there are names to be in every­one’s mouth, they should be the names of the Gods.”

Tatho shrugged his shoulders. “The Gods? They oc­cupy us very little these lat­ter years. With our mod­ern sci­ence, we have grown past the tether of the older Gods, and no new one has ap­peared. No, my Lord Deu­calion, if it were merely the Gods who were your com­pet­it­ors on men’s lips, your name would be a thou­sand times the bet­ter known.”

“Of mere hu­man names,” I said, “the name of this new Em­press should come first in At­lantis, our lord the old King be­ing now dead.”

“She cer­tainly would have it so,” replied Tatho, and there was some­thing in his tone which made me see that more was meant be­hind the words. I drew him to one of the marble seats, and bent my­self fa­mil­iarly to­wards him. “I am speak­ing,” I said, “not to the new Viceroy of Yu­catan, but to my old friend Tatho, a mem­ber of the Priests’ Clan, like my­self, with whom I worked side by side in a score of the smal­ler home gov­ern­ments, in ham­lets, in vil­lages, in smal­ler towns, in greater towns, as we gained ex­per­i­ence in war and know­ledge in the art of rul­ing people, and so te­di­ously won our pro­mo­tion. I am speak­ing in Tatho’s private abode, that was mine own not two hours since, and I would have an an­swer with that plain­ness which we al­ways then used to one an­other.”

The new Viceroy sighed whim­sic­ally. “I al­most for­get how to speak in plain words now,” he said. “We have grown so pol­ished in these lat­ter days, that mere bald truth would be hissed as in­del­ic­ate. But for the memory of those early years, when we ex­pen­ded as much law and thought over the own­er­ship of a hay-byre as we should now over the fate of a re­bel­li­ous city, I will try and speak plain to you even now, Deu­calion. Tell me, old friend, what is it?”

“What of this new Em­press?”

He frowned. “I might have guessed your sub­ject,” he said.

“Then speak upon it. Tell me of all the changes that have been made. What has this Phorenice done to make her throne un­stable in At­lantis?”

Tatho frowned still. “If I did not know you to be as hon­est as our Lord the Sun, your ques­tions would carry mis­chief with them. Phorenice has a short way with those who are dar­ing enough to dis­cuss her policies for other pur­pose than po­litely to praise them.”

“You can leave me ig­nor­ant if you wish,” I said with a touch of chill. This Tatho seemed to be dif­fer­ent from the Tatho I had known at home, Tatho my work­mate, Tatho who had read with me in the Col­lege of Priests, who had run with me in many a furi­ous charge, who had la­boured with me so heav­ily that the peoples un­der us might prosper. But he was quick enough to see my change of tone.

“You force me back to my old self,” he said with a half smile, “though it is hard enough to for­get the cau­tion one has learned dur­ing the last twenty years, even when speak­ing with you. Still, whatever may have happened to the rest of us, it is clear to see that you at least have not changed, and, old friend, I am ready to trust you with my life if you ask it. In fact, you do ask me that very thing when you tell me to speak all I know of Phorenice.”

I nod­ded. This was more like the old times, when there was full con­fid­ence between us. “The Gods will it now that I re­turn to At­lantis,” I said, “and what hap­pens after that the Gods alone know. But it would be of ser­vice to me if I could land on her shores with some know­ledge of this Phorenice, for at present I am as ig­nor­ant con­cern­ing her as some sav­age from Europe or mid-Africa.”

“What would you have me tell?”

“Tell all. I know only that she, a wo­man, reigns, whereby the an­cient law of the land, a man should rule; that she is not even of the Priestly Clan from which the law says all rulers must be drawn; and that, from what you say, she has caused the throne to tot­ter. The throne was as firm as the ever­last­ing hills in the old King’s day, Tatho.”

“His­tory has moved with pace since then, and Phorenice has spurred it. You know her ori­gin?”

“I know only the ex­act little I have told you.”

“She was a swine­herd’s daugh­ter from the moun­tains, though this is never even whispered now, as she has de­clared her­self to be a daugh­ter of the Gods, with a mi­ra­cu­lous birth and up­bring­ing. As she has de­creed it a sac­ri­lege to ques­tion this par­ent­age, and has ordered to be burnt all those that seem to re­col­lect her more earthly ori­gin, the fable passes cur­rent for truth. You see the faith I put in you, Deu­calion, by telling you what you wish to learn.”

“There has al­ways been trust between us.”

“I know; but this habit of sus­pi­cion is hard to cast off, even with you. However, let me put your good faith between me and the tor­ture fur­ther. Zae­mon, you re­mem­ber, was gov­ernor of the swine­herd’s province, and Zae­mon’s wife saw Phorenice and took her away to ad­opt and bring up as her own. It is said that the swine­herd and his wo­man ob­jec­ted; per­haps they did; any­way, I know they died; and Phorenice was taught the arts and graces, and brought up as a daugh­ter of the Priestly Clan.”

“But still she was an ad­op­ted daugh­ter only,” I ob­jec­ted.

“The omis­sion of the ‘ad­op­ted’ was her will at an early age,” said Tatho dryly, “and she learnt early to have her wishes car­ried into fact. It was no­tori­ous that be­fore she had grown to fif­teen years she ruled not only the wo­men of the house­hold, but Zae­mon also, and the province that was bey­ond Zae­mon.”

“Zae­mon was learned,” I said, “and a de­vout fol­lower of the Gods, and searcher into the higher mys­ter­ies; but, as a ruler, he was al­ways a flabby fel­low.”

“I do not say that op­por­tun­it­ies have not come use­fully in Phorenice’s way, but she has genius as well. For her to have raised her­self at all from what she was, was re­mark­able. Not one wo­man out of a thou­sand, placed as she was, would have grown to be aught higher than a mere wife of some sturdy coun­try­man, who was suf­fi­ciently simple to care noth­ing for ped­i­gree. But look at Phorenice: it was her whim to take ex­er­cise as a man-at-arms and prac­tise with all the utensils of war; and then, be­fore any­one quite knows how or why it happened, a re­bel­lion had broken out in the province, and here was she, a slip of a girl, lead­ing Zae­mon’s troops.”

“Zae­mon, when I knew him, was a mere de­ri­sion in the field.”

“Hear me on. Phorenice put down the re­bel­lion in mas­terly fash­ion, and gave the conquered a choice between sword and ser­vice. They fell into her ranks at once, and were faith­ful to her from that mo­ment. I tell you, Deu­calion, there is a mar­vel­lous fas­cin­a­tion about the wo­man.”

“Her present his­tor­ian seems to have felt it.”

“Of course I have. Every­one who sees her comes un­der her spell. And frankly, I am in love with her also, and look upon my com­ing here as de­test­able ex­ile. Every­one near to Phorenice, high and low, loves her just the same, even though they know it may be her whim to send them to ex­e­cu­tion next minute.”

Per­haps I let my scorn of this ap­pear.

“You feel con­tempt for our weak­ness? You were al­ways a strong man, Deu­calion.”

“At any rate you see me still un­mar­ried. I have found no time to pal­ter with the frip­per­ies of wo­men.”

“Ah, but these col­on­ists here are crude and un­fas­cin­at­ing. Wait till you see the ladies of the court, my as­cetic.”

“It comes to my mind,” I said dryly, “that I lived in At­lantis be­fore I came out here, and at that time I used to see as much of court life as most men. Yet then, also, I felt no in­duce­ment to marry.”

Tatho chuckled. “At­lantis has changed so that you would hardly know the coun­try today. A new era has come over everything, es­pe­cially over the other sex. Well do I re­mem­ber the wo­men of the old King’s time, how mon­strous un­comely they were, how little they knew how to walk or carry them­selves, how pain­fully bar­baric was their no­tion of dress. I dare swear that your ladies here in Yu­catan are not so pro­vin­cial today as ours were then. But you should see them now at home. They are de­li­cious. And above all in charm is the Em­press. Oh, Deu­calion, you shall see Phorenice in all her glor­i­ous beauty and her mag­ni­fi­cence one of these fine days soon, and be­lieve me you will go down on your knees and re­pent.”

“I may see, and (be­cause you say so) I may al­ter my life’s ways. The Gods make all things pos­sible. But for the present I re­main as I am, cel­ib­ate, and not wish­ful to be oth­er­wise; and so in the mean­time I would hear the con­tinu­ance of your his­tory.”

“It is one long story of suc­cess. She de­posed Zae­mon from his gov­ern­ment in name as well as in fact, and the news was spread, and the Priestly Clan rose in its wrath. The two neigh­bour­ing gov­ernors were bid­den join forces, take her cap­tive, and bring her for ex­e­cu­tion. Poor men! They tried to obey their or­ders; they at­tacked her surely enough, but in battle she could laugh at them. She killed both, and made some slaughter amongst their troops; and to those that re­mained alive and be­came her pris­on­ers, she made her usual of­fer—the sword or ser­vice. Nat­ur­ally they were not long over mak­ing their choice: to these com­mon people one ruler is much the same as an­other: and so again her army was re­in­forced.

“Three times were bod­ies of sol­diery sent against her, and three times was she vic­tori­ous. The last was a fi­nal ef­fort. Be­fore, it had been cus­tom­ary to des­pise this ad­ven­turess who had sprung up so sud­denly. But then the priests began to real­ise their peril; to see that the throne it­self was in danger; and to know that if she were to be crushed, they would have to put forth their ut­most. Every man who could carry arms was pressed into the ser­vice. Every known art of war was ordered to be put into em­ploy­ment. It was the largest army, and the best equipped army that At­lantis then had ever raised, and the Priestly Clan saw fit to put in su­preme com­mand their gen­eral, Tatho.”

“You!” I cried.

“Even my­self, Deu­calion. And mark you, I fought my ut­most. I was not her creature then; and when I set out (be­cause they wanted to spur me to the ut­ter­most) the High Coun­cil of the priests poin­ted out my pro­spects. The King we had known so long, was ail­ing and wear­ily old; he was so wrapped up in the study of the mys­ter­ies, and the joy of closely know­ing them, that earthly mat­ters had grown naus­eous to him; and at any time he might de­cide to die. The Priestly Clan uses its own dis­cre­tion in the elec­tion of a new king, but it takes note of pop­u­lar sen­ti­ment; and a gen­eral who at the crit­ical time could come home vic­tori­ous from a great cam­paign, which moreover would re­lease a har­assed people from the con­stant ap­plic­a­tion of arms, would be the idol of the mo­ment. These things were poin­ted out to me sol­emnly and in the full coun­cil.”

“What! They prom­ised you the throne?”

“Even that. So you see I set out with a high stake be­fore me. Phorenice I had never seen, and I swore to take her alive, and give her to be the sport of my sol­diery. I had a fine con­fid­ence in my own strategy then, Deu­calion. But the old Gods, in whom I trus­ted then, re­mained old, taught me no new thing. I drilled and ex­er­cised my army ac­cord­ing to the forms you and I learnt to­gether, old com­rade, and in many a tough fight found to serve well; I armed them with the choicest weapons we knew of then, with sling and mace, with bow and spear, with axe and knife, with sword and the throw­ing fire; their bod­ies I covered with metal plates; even their bel­lies I cared for, with droves of cattle driven in the rear of the fight­ing troops.

“But when the en­counter came, they might have been men of straw for all the harm they did. Out of her own brain Phorenice had made fire-tubes that cast a dart which would kill bey­ond two bow­shots, and the fash­ion in which she handled her troops dazzled me. They threatened us on one flank, they har­assed us on the other. It was not war as we had been ac­cus­tomed to. It was a newer and more deadly game, and I had to watch my splen­did army eaten away as waves eat a sandhill. Never once did I get a chance of for­cing close ac­tion. These new tac­tics that had come from Phorenice’s in­ven­tion, were bey­ond my art to meet or un­der­stand. We were eight to her one, and our close-packed num­bers only made us so much the more easy for slaughter. A panic came, and those who could fled. My­self, I had no wish to go back and earn the axe that waits for the un­suc­cess­ful gen­eral. I tried to die there fight­ing where I stood. But death would not come. It was a fine melee, Deu­calion, that last one.”

“And so she took you?”

“I stood with three oth­ers back to back, with a ring of dead round us, and a ring of the en­emy hem­ming us in. We taunted them to come on. But at hand-to-hand cour­tes­ies we had shown we could hold our own, and so they were call­ing for fire-tubes with which they could strike us down in safety from a dis­tance. Then up came Phorenice. ‘What is this to-do?’ says she. ‘We seek to kill Lord Tatho, who led against you,’ say they. ‘So that is Tatho?’ says she. ‘A fine fig­ure of a man in­deed, and a pretty fighter seem­ingly, after the old man­ner. Doubt­less he is one who would ac­quire the newer method. See now Tatho,’ says she, ‘it is my cus­tom to of­fer those I van­quish either the sword (which, be­lieve me, was never nearer your neck than now) or ser­vice un­der my ban­ner. Will you make a choice?’

“ ‘Wo­man,’ I said, ‘fairest that ever I saw, finest gen­eral the world has ever borne, you tempt me sorely by your qual­it­ies, but there is a tra­di­tion in our Clan, that we should be true to the salt we eat. I am the King’s man still, and so I can take no ser­vice from you.’

“ ‘The King is dead,’ says she. ‘A run­ner has just brought the tid­ings, mean­ing them to have fallen into your hands. And I am the Em­press.’

“ ‘Who made you Em­press?’ I asked.

“ ‘The same most cap­able hand that has given me this battle,’ says she. ‘It is a cap­able hand, as you have seen: it can be a kind hand also, as you may learn if you choose. With the King dead, Tatho is a mas­ter­less man now. Is Tatho in want of a mis­tress?’

“ ‘Such a glor­i­ous mis­tress as you,’ I said, ‘Yes.’ And from that mo­ment, Deu­calion, I have been her slave. Oh, you may frown; you may get up from this seat and walk away if you will. But I ask you this: keep back your worst judg­ment of me, old friend, till after you have seen Phorenice her­self in the warm and lovely flesh. Then your own ears and your own senses will be my ad­voc­ates, to win me back your old es­teem.”

II Back to Atlantis

The words of Tatho were no sleep­ing draught for me that night. I began to think that I had made some­what a mis­take in wrap­ping my­self up so en­tirely in my gov­ern­ment of Yu­catan, and not con­triv­ing to keep more in touch with events that were passing at home in At­lantis. For many years past it had been easy to see that the mar­iner folk who did traffic across the seas spoke with re­straint, and that only what news the Em­press pleased was al­lowed to ooze out bey­ond her bor­ders. But, as I say, I was fully oc­cu­pied with my work in the colony, and had no curi­os­ity to pull away a veil in­ten­tion­ally placed. Besides, it has al­ways been against my prin­ciples to put to the tor­ture men who had re­ceived or­ders for si­lence from their su­per­i­ors, merely that they shall break these or­ders for my private con­veni­ence.

However, the iron dis­cip­line of our Priestly Clan left me no choice of pro­ced­ure. As was cus­tom­ary, I had been de­prived of my of­fice at a mo­ment’s no­tice. From that time on, all pa­pers and au­thor­ity be­longed to my suc­cessor, and, al­though by cour­tesy I might be per­mit­ted to re­main as a guest in the pyr­amid that had so re­cently been mine, to see an­other sun­rise, it was clearly en­joined that I must leave the ter­rit­ory then at the top­most of my speed and hasten to re­port in At­lantis.

Tatho, to give him credit, was anxious to fur­ther my in­terests to the ut­most in his power. He was by my side again be­fore the dawn, put­ting all his re­sources at my dis­posal.

I had little enough to ask him. “A ship to take me home,” I said, “and I shall be your debtor.”

The re­quest seemed to sur­prise him. “That you may cer­tainly have if you wish it. But my ships are foul with the long pas­sage, and are in need of a ca­reen. If you take them, you will make a slow voy­age of it to At­lantis. Why do you not take your own navy? The ships are in har­bour now, for I saw them there when we came in. Brave ships they are too.”

“But not mine. That navy be­longs to Yu­catan.”

“Well, Deu­calion, you are Yu­catan; or, rather, you were yes­ter­day, and have been these twenty years.”

I saw what he meant, and the idea did not please me. I answered stiffly enough that the ships were owned by private mer­chants, or be­longed to the State, and I could not claim so much as a ten-slave gal­ley.

Tatho shrugged his shoulders. “I sup­pose you know your own policies best,” he said, “though to me it seems but risky for a man who has at­tained to a po­s­i­tion like yours and mine not to have provided him­self with a stout navy of his own. One never knows when a re­call may be sent, and, through lack of these pre­cau­tions, a life’s earn­ings may very well be lost in a dozen hours.”

“I have no fear for mine,” I said coldly.

“Of course not, be­cause you know me to be your friend. But had an­other man been ap­poin­ted to this vice­roy­alty, you might have been sadly shorn, Deu­calion. It is not many fel­lows who can res­ist a snug hoard ready and wait­ing in the very cof­fers they have come to line.”

“My Lord Tatho,” I said, “it is clear to me that you and I have grown to be of dif­fer­ent tastes. All of the hoard that I have made for my­self in this colony, few men would covet. I have the poor clothes you see me in this mo­ment, and a box of drugs such as I have found use­ful to the stom­ach. I pos­sess also three slaves, two of them scribes and the third a sturdy sav­age from Europe, who cooks my victual and fills for me the bath. For my main­ten­ance dur­ing my years of ser­vice, here, I have bled the State of a sol­dier’s ra­tion and noth­ing bey­ond; and if in my name any man has mulcted a creature in Yu­catan of so much as an ounce of bronze, I re­quest you as a last ser­vice to have that man hanged for me as a liar and a thief.”

Tatho looked at me curi­ously. “I do not know whether I ad­mire you most or whether I pity. I do not know whether to be as­ton­ished or to des­pise. We had heard of much of your up­right­ness over yon­der in At­lantis, of your stern­ness and your justice, but I swear by the old Gods that no soul guessed you car­ried your fancy so far as this. Why, man, money is power. With money and the re­sources money can buy, noth­ing could stop a fel­low like you; whilst without it you may be tripped up and trod­den down ir­re­voc­ably at the first puny re­verse.”

“The Gods will choose my fate.”

“Poss­ibly; but for mine, I prefer to nour­ish it my­self. I tell you with frank­ness that I have not come here to fol­low in the pat­tern you have made for a vice­roy­alty. I shall gov­ern Yu­catan wisely and well to the best of my abil­ity; but I shall gov­ern it also for the good of Tatho, the vice­roy. I have brought with me here my navy of eight ships and a per­sonal body­guard. There is my wife also, and her wo­men and her slaves. All these must be provided for. And why in­deed should it be oth­er­wise? If a people is to be gov­erned, it should be their priv­ilege to pay hand­somely for their prince.”

“We shall not agree on this. You have the power now, and can em­ploy it as you choose. If I thought it would be of any use, I should like to sup­plic­ate you most humbly to deal with le­ni­ence when you come to tax these people who are un­der you. They have grown very dear to me.”

“I have dis­gus­ted you with me, and I am grieved for it. But even to re­tain your good opin­ion, Deu­calion—which I value more than that of any man liv­ing—I can­not do here as you have done. It would be im­possible, even if I wished it. You must not judge all other men by your own strong stand­ard: a Tatho is by no means a co­los­sus like a Deu­calion. And be­sides, I have a wife and chil­dren, and they must be provided for, even if I neg­lect my­self.”

“Ah, there,” I said, “it does seem that I pos­sess the ad­vant­age. I have no wife, to clog me.”

He caught up my word quickly. “It seems to me you have noth­ing that makes life worth liv­ing. You have neither wife, chil­dren, riches, cooks, ret­inue, dresses, nor any­thing else in pro­por­tion to your sta­tion. You will par­don my say­ing it, old com­rade, but you are plaguey ig­nor­ant about some mat­ters. For ex­ample, you do not know how to dine. Dur­ing every day of a very weary voy­age, I have prom­ised my­self when sit­ting be­fore the mea­gre sea victual, that presently the ab­stin­ence would be more than re­paid by Deu­calion’s wel­com­ing feast. Oh, I tell you that feast was one of the vivid­est things that ever came be­fore my eyes. And then when we get to the ac­tu­al­ity, what was it? Why, a coun­try farmer every day sits down to more del­ic­ate fare. You told me how it was pre­pared. Well, your sav­age from Europe may be lusty, and per­chance is faith­ful, but he is a devil-pos­sessed cook. Gods! I have lived bet­ter on a cam­paign.

“I know this is a colony here, without any of the home re­fine­ments; but if in the days to come, the deer of the forest, the fish of the stream, and the other re­sources of the place are not put to bet­ter use than here­to­fore, I shall see it my duty as ruler to fry some of the kit­chen staff alive in grease so as to en­cour­age bet­ter cook­ery. Gods! Deu­calion, have you for­got­ten what it is to have a pal­ate? And have you no es­teem for your own dig­nity? Man, look at your clothes. You are garbed like a herds­man, and you have not a gaud or a jewel to brighten you.”

“I eat,” I said coldly, “when my hun­ger bids me, and I carry this one robe upon my per­son till it is worn out and needs re­place­ment. The gross­ness of ex­cess­ive ban­quet­ing, and the ef­fem­in­acy of many clothes are at­tain­ments that never met my fancy. But I think we have talked here over long, and there seems little chance of our find­ing agree­ment. You have changed, Tatho, with the years, and per­haps I have changed also. These al­ter­a­tions creep im­per­cept­ibly into one’s be­ing as time ad­vances. Let us part now, and, for­get­ting these present dif­fer­ences, re­mem­ber only our friend­ship of twenty years agone. That for me, at any rate, has al­ways had a pleas­ant sa­vour when called up into the memory.”

Tatho bowed his head. “So be it,” he said.

“And I would still charge my­self upon your bounty for that ship. Dawn can­not be far off now, and it is not de­cent that the man who has ruled here so long, should walk in day­light through the streets on the morn­ing after his dis­missal.”

“So be it,” said Tatho. “You shall have my poor navy. I could have wished that you had asked me some­thing greater.”

“Not the navy, Tatho; one small ship. Be­lieve me, more is wasted.”

“Now, there,” said Tatho, “I shall act the tyr­ant. I am vice­roy here now, and will have my way in this. You may go na­ked of all pos­ses­sions: that I can­not help. But de­part for At­lantis un­at­ten­ded, that you shall not.”

And so, in fine, as the choice was set bey­ond me, it was in the Bear, Tatho’s own private ship, with all the rest of his navy sail­ing in es­cort, that I did fi­nally make my transit.

But the start was not im­me­di­ate. The ves­sels lay moored against the stone quays of the in­ner har­bour, gut­ted of their stores, and with crews ex­hausted, and it would have been sui­cide to have forced them out then and there to again take the seas.

So the cour­tes­ies were ful­filled by the craft whereon I abode haul­ing out into the en­trance basin, and an­chor­ing there in the swells of the fair­way; and forth­with she and her con­sorts took in wood and wa­ter, cured meat and fish ashore, and re­fit­ted in all need­ful ways, with all speed at­tain­able.

For my­self there came then, as the first time dur­ing twenty busy years, a breath­ing space from work. I had no fur­ther con­nec­tion with the coun­try of my la­bours; in­deed, of­fi­cially, I had left it already. Into the work­ing of the ship it was con­trary to rule that I should make any in­spec­tion or in­terest, since all sea mat­ters were the ex­clus­ive prop­erty of the Mar­iners’ Guild, se­cured to them by royal pat­ent, and most jeal­ously guarded.

So there re­mained to me in my day, hours to gaze (if I would) upon the quays, the har­bours, the palaces, and the pyr­am­ids of the splen­did city be­fore me which I had seen grow stone by stone from its found­a­tions; or to roam my eye over the pas­tures and the grain lands bey­ond the walls, and to look long­ingly at the dense forests be­hind, from which field by field we had so te­di­ously ripped our ter­rit­ory.

Would Tatho con­tinue the work so health­ily be­gun? I trus­ted so, even in spite of his selfish words. And at all hours, dur­ing the ra­di­ance of our Lord the Sun, or un­der the stars of night, I was free to pur­sue that study of the higher mys­ter­ies, on which we of the Priests’ Clan are trained to set our minds, without aid of book or in­stru­ment, of im­age or temple.

The re­fit­ting of the navy was gone about with speed. Never, it is said, had ships been re­pro­vi­sioned and caulked, and re­manned with greater speed for the over-ocean voy­age. Indeed, it was barely over a month from the day that they brought up in the har­bour, they put out bey­ond the walls, and began their voy­age east­ward over the hills and dale of the ocean.

Row­ing-slaves from Europe for this long pas­sage of sea are not taken now, ow­ing to the dif­fi­culty in pro­vi­sion­ing them, for mod­ern hu­man­ity for­bids the prac­tice of let­ting them eat one an­other ac­cord­ing to the home cus­tom of their con­tin­ent; sails alone are but an in­dif­fer­ent stand by; but mod­ern sci­ence has shown how to ex­tract force from the Sun, when He is free from cloud, and this (in a man­ner kept secret by mar­iners) is made to draw sea­wa­ter at the fore­part of the ves­sel, and eject it with such force at the stern that she is ap­pre­ciably driven for­ward, even with the wind ad­verse.

In an­other mat­ter also has nav­ig­a­tion vastly im­proved. It is not ne­ces­sary now, as formerly, to trust wholly to a starry night (when bey­ond sight of land) to find dir­ec­tion. A little im­age has been made, and is stood bal­anced in the fore­part of every ves­sel, with an arm out­stretched, point­ing con­stantly to the dir­ec­tion where the South­ern Cross lies in the Heavens. So, by set­ting an angle, can a just course be cor­rectly steered. Other in­stru­ments have they also for find­ing a true po­s­i­tion on the ocean wastes, for the newer mar­iner, when he is at sea, puts little trust in the Gods, and con­fides migh­tily in his own thews and wits.

Still, it is amus­ing to see these tarry fel­lows, even in this mod­ern day, take their last farewell of the har­bour town. The ship is stowed, and all ready for sea, and they wash and put on all their bravery of at­tire. Ashore they go, their faces long with piety, and seek some ob­scure temple whose God has little fla­vour with shore folk, and here they make sac­ri­fice with clam­our and lav­ish out­lay. And, fi­nally, there fol­lows a feast in hon­our of the God, and they ar­rive back on board, and put to sea for the most part drunken, and all heavy and evil-hu­moured with glut­tony and their other ex­cesses.

The voy­age was very dif­fer­ent to my pre­vi­ous seago­ing. There was no creep­ing timor­ously along in touch with the coasts. We stood straight across the open gulf in the dir­ec­tion of home, came up with the band of the Carib Is­lands, and worked con­fid­ently through them, as though they had been sign­posts to mark the sea high­way; and stopped only twice to re­plen­ish with wood, wa­ter, and fruit. These com­mod­it­ies, too, the sav­ages brought us freely, so great was their sub­jec­tion, and in neither place did we have even the semb­lance of a fight. It was a great cer­ti­fic­ate of the grow­ing power of At­lantis and her finest over­sea colony.

Then boldly on we went across the vast ocean bey­ond, with never a sac­ri­fice to im­plore the Gods that they should help our dir­ec­tion. One might feel cen­sure to­wards these rugged mar­iners for their im­pi­ety, but one could not help an ad­mir­a­tion for their lusty skill and con­fid­ence.

The dangers of the des­ol­ate sea are dealt out as the Gods will, and man can only take them as they come. Storms we en­countered, and the mar­iners fought them with stub­born en­dur­ance; twice a blaz­ing stone from Heaven hissed into the sea be­side us, though without in­jur­ing any of our ships; and, as was un­avoid­able, the great beasts of the sea hunted us with their ac­cus­tomed sav­agery. But only once did we suf­fer ma­ter­ial loss from these last, and that was when three of the greater sea liz­ards at­tacked the Bear, the ship whereon I trav­elled, at one and the same time.

The hour of their on­set was dur­ing the blaz­ing mid­day heat, and the Sun be­ing at the full of His power, our ma­chines were get­ting full force from Him. The ves­sel was trav­el­ling for­ward faster than a man on dry land could walk. But for the power es­cape she might as well have been stand­ing still when the beasts sighted her. There were three of them, as I have said, and we saw them come up over the curve of the ho­ri­zon, beat­ing the sea into foam with their flap­pers, and wav­ing their great necks like masts as they swam. Our navy was spread out in a long line of ships, and in olden days each of the beasts would have se­lec­ted a sep­ar­ate prey, and pro­ceeded for it; but, like man, these beasts have learned the ne­ces­sit­ies of war­fare, and they hunt in pack now and do not sep­ar­ate their forces.

It was plain they were mak­ing for our ship, and Tob, the cap­tain, would have had me go into the after-castle, and there be se­cure from their ma­raud­ing. He was re­spons­ible to the Lord Tatho, he said, for my safe con­duct; it was cer­tain that the beasts would con­trive to seize some of the ship’s com­pany be­fore they were sa­ti­ated; and if the hap came to the Lord Deu­calion, he (the cap­tain) would have to give him­self vol­un­tar­ily to the beasts then, to es­cape a very pain­ful death at Tatho’s hands later on.

However, my mind was set. A man can never have too much ex­per­i­ence in fight­ing en­emies, whether hu­man or bes­tial, and the at­tack of these creatures was new to me, and I was fain to learn its method. So I gave the cap­tain a let­ter to Tatho, say­ing how the mat­ter lay (and for which, it may be men­tioned, the rude fel­low seemed little enough grate­ful), and stayed in my chair un­der the awn­ing.

The beasts surged up to us with champ­ing jaws, and all the ship­men stood armed on their de­fence. They came up along­side, two fe­males (the smal­ler) on the flank of the ship, the gi­ant male by him­self on the other. Their great heads swooped about, as high as the yards that held the sails, and the reek from them gave one phys­ical sick­ness.

The ship­men faced the mon­sters with a sturdy cour­age. Ar­rows were use­less against the smooth, bull-like hides. Even the throw­ing fire could not so much as singe them; noth­ing but twenty axe blows de­livered on an at­tack­ing head to­gether could beat it back, and even these suc­ceeded only through sheer weight of metal, and did not make so much as the scratch of a wound.

Dur­ing all time beasts have dis­puted with man the mas­tery of the earth, and it is only in At­lantis and Egypt and Yu­catan that man has dared to hold his own, and fight them with a mind made strong by many pre­vi­ous vic­tor­ies. In Europe and mid-Africa the greater beasts hold full domin­ion, and man ad­mits his puny num­ber and force, and lives in earth cran­nies and the higher tree­tops, as a fu­git­ive con­fessed. And upon the great oceans, the beasts are lords, un­checked.

Still here, upon this des­ol­ate sea, al­though the gi­ant liz­ards were new to me, it was a pleas­ure to pit my know­ledge of war against their brute strength and cour­age. Ever since the first men did their busi­ness upon the great wa­ters, they ful­filled their in­stincts in fight­ing the beasts with des­per­a­tion. Hid­ing cow­ard-like in a hold was use­less, for if this en­emy could not find men above decks to glut them, they would break a ship with their paddles, and so all would be slain. And so it was re­cog­nised that the fight should go for­ward as des­per­ately as might be, and that it could only end when the beasts had got their prey and had gone away sat­is­fied.

It was in a one-sided con­flict after this fash­ion then, that I found my­self, and felt the joy once more to have my thews in ac­tion. But after my axe had got in some dozen lusty blows, which, for all the harm they did, might have been de­livered against some city wall, or, in­deed, against the ark of the Mys­ter­ies it­self, I sought about me till I found a lance, and with that made very dif­fer­ent play.

The eyes of these liz­ards are small, and set deep in a bony socket, but I judged them to be vul­ner­able, and it was upon the eyes of the beast that I made my at­tack. The decks were slip­pery with the hor­rid slime of them. The crew surged about in their bat­tling, and, moreover, con­stantly offered them­selves as a ram­part be­fore me by reason of Tob, the cap­tain’s threats. But I gave a few shrewd progues with the lance to show that I did not choose my will to be over­rid­den, and presently was given room for man­oeuvre.

Delib­er­ately I placed my­self in the sight of one of the liz­ards, and offered my body to its at­tack. The chal­lenge was ac­cep­ted. It swooped like a drop­ping stone, and I swerved and drove in the lance at its oozy eye.

I thanked the Gods then that I had been trained with the lance till cer­tain aim was a mat­ter of in­stinct with me. The blade went true to its mark and stuck there, and the shaft broke in my hand. The beast drew off, blinded and bel­low­ing, and beat­ing the sea with its paddles. In a great catar­act of foam I saw it bend its great long neck, and rub its head (with the spear still fixed) against its back, thereby en­dur­ing new ag­on­ies, but without dis­lodging the weapon. And then presently, find­ing this of no avail, it set off for the place from which it came with ex­traordin­ary quick­ness, and rap­idly grew smal­ler against the ho­ri­zon.

The male and the other fe­male liz­ard had also left us, but not in sim­ilar plight. Tob, the cap­tain, see­ing my re­solve to take haz­ards, de­lib­er­ately thrust a ship­man into the jaws of each of the oth­ers, so that they might be sated and get them gone. It was clear that Tob dreaded very much for his own skin if I came by harm, and I thought with a warm­ing heart of the threats that Tatho must have used in his kind anxi­ety for my safety. It is pleas­ant when one’s old friends do not omit to pay these little at­ten­tions.

III A Rival Navy

Now, when we came up with the coasts of At­lantis, though Tob, with the aid of his mod­ern in­stru­ments, had made his land­fall with most mar­vel­lous skill and near­ness, there still re­mained some ten days’ more jour­ney in which we had to re­trace our course, till we came to that arm of the sea up which lies the great city of At­lantis, the cap­ital.

The sight of the land, and the breath of earth and herb­age which came off from it with the breezes, were, I be­lieve, un­der the Gods, the means of sav­ing the lives of all of us. For, as is ne­ces­sary with long cross-ocean voy­ages, many of our ships’ com­pan­ies had died, and still more were sick with scurvy through the un­nat­ural toss­ing, or (as some have it) through the salt, un­nat­ural food in­sep­ar­able from ship­board. But these last, the sight and the smells of land heartened up in ex­traordin­ary fash­ion, and from be­ing help­less logs, un­able to move even un­der blows of the scourge, they be­came act­ive again, able to help in the ship­work, and lusty (when the time came) to fight for their lives and their ves­sels.

From the mo­ment that I was de­posed in Yu­catan, des­pite Tatho’s as­sur­ances, there had been doubts in my mind as to what nature would be my re­cep­tion in At­lantis. But I had faced this event of the fu­ture without con­cern: it was in the hands of the Gods. The Em­press Phorenice might be su­preme on earth; she might cause my head to be lopped from its proper shoulders the mo­ment I set foot ashore; but my Lord the Sun was above Phorenice, and if my head fell, it would be be­cause He saw best that it should be so. On which ac­count, there­fore, I had not troubled my­self about the mat­ter dur­ing the voy­age, but had fol­lowed out my calm study of the higher mys­ter­ies with an un­loaded mind.

But when our navy had re­traced suf­fi­ciently the course that had been over­run, and came up with the two vast head­lands which marked the en­trance to the in­land wa­ters, there, a bare two days from the At­lantis cap­ital, we met with an­other navy which was, bey­ond doubt, wait­ing to give us a re­cep­tion. The ships were rid­ing at an­chor in a bay which lent them shel­ter, but they had scouts on the high land above, who cried the alarm of our ap­proach, and when we roun­ded the head­land, they were stand­ing out to dis­pute our pas­sage.

Of us there were now but five ships, the rest hav­ing been lost in storms, or fallen be­hind be­cause all their crews were dead from the scurvy; and of the strangers there were three fine ships, and three gal­leys of many oars apiece. They were clean and bright and black; our ships were storm-ragged and weather­worn, and had bot­toms that were foul with trail­ing ocean weed. Our ships hung out the col­ours and signs of Tatho and Deu­calion openly and without shame, so that all who looked might know their ori­gin and er­rand; but the other navy came on without ban­ner or anti­ent, as though they were some low creatures feel­ing shame for their birth.

Clear it seemed also that they would not let us pass without a fight, and in this there was noth­ing un­com­mon; for no law car­ries out over the seas, and a brother in one ship feels quite free to harry his brother in an­other ves­sel if he meets him out of earshot of the beach—more es­pe­cially if that other brother be com­ing home laden from foray or trad­ing tour. So Tob, with sys­tem and method, got our ves­sel into fight­ing trim, and the other four cap­tains did the like with theirs, and drew close in to us to form a com­pact squad­ron. They had no wish to smell slavery, now that the voy­age had come so near to its end.

Our Lord the Sun shone bril­liantly, giv­ing full speed to the ma­chines, as though He was fully will­ing for the af­fair to pro­ceed, and the two navies ap­proached one an­other with quick­ness, the three gal­leys hold­ing back to stay in line with their con­sorts. But when some bare hun­dred ship-lengths sep­ar­ated us, the other navy hal­ted, and one of the gal­leys, draw­ing ahead, flew green branches from her masts, seek­ing for a par­ley.

The course was un­usual, but we, in our sea-battered state, were no navy to in­vite a fight un­ne­ces­sar­ily. So in hoarse sea-bawls word was passed, and we too hal­ted, and Tob hois­ted a withered stick (which had to do duty for green­ery), to show that we were ready for talk, and would re­spect the per­son of an am­bas­sador.

The gal­ley drew on, swung round, and backed till its stern rasped on our shield rail, and one of her people clambered up and jumped down upon our decks. He was a dand­ily rigged-out fel­low, young and lusty, and all healthy from the land and land victual, and he looked round him with a sneer at our sea-tattered­ness, and with a fine self-con­fid­ence. Then, see­ing Tob, he nod­ded as one meets an ac­quaint­ance. “Old pot-mate,” he said, “your wo­man waits for you up by the quay-side in At­lantis yon­der, with four young­sters at her heels. I saw her not half a month ago.”

“You didn’t come out here to tell me home news,” said Tob; “that I’ll be sworn. I’ve drunk enough pots with you, Dason, to know your pleas­ant­ries thor­oughly.”

“I wanted to point out to you that your home is still there, with your wife and chil­dren ready to wel­come you.”

“I am not a man that ever for­gets it,” said Tob grimly; “and be­cause I’ve got them al­ways at the back of my mind, I’ve sailed this ship over the top of more than one pir­ate, when, if I’d been a single man, I might have been e’en con­tent to take the hap of slavery.”

“Oh, I know you’re a des­per­ate enough fel­low,” said Dason, “and I’m free to con­fess that if it does come to blows we are like to lose a few men be­fore we get you and your cripples here, and your crazy ships com­fort­ably sunk. Our navy has its or­ders to carry out, and the cause of my em­bas­sage is this: we wish to see if you will act the sens­ible part and give us what we want, and so be per­mit­ted to go on your way home, with a skin that is un­slit and dry?”

“You have come to the wrong bird here for a pluck­ing,” said Tob with a heavy laugh. “We took no treas­ure or mer­chand­ise on board in Yu­catan. We stayed in har­bour long enough to cure our sea victual and fill with food and wa­ter, and no longer. We sail back as we sailed out, bar­ren ships. You will not be­lieve me, of course; I would not have be­lieved you had our places been changed; but you may go into the holds and search if you choose. You will find there noth­ing but a few poor sail­or­men half in pieces with the scurvy. No, you can steal noth­ing here but blows, Dason, and we will give you those with but little ask­ing.”

“I am glad to see that you state your cargo at such slender value,” said the en­voy, “for it is the cargo I must take back with me on the gal­ley, if you are to earn your safe con­duct to home.”

Tob knit his brows. “You had bet­ter speak more plain,” he said. “I am a com­mon sailor, and do not un­der­stand fancy talk.”

“It is clear to see,” said Dason, “that you have been set to bring Deu­calion back to At­lantis as a prop for Phorenice. Well, we oth­ers find Phorenice hard enough to fight against without fur­ther re­in­force­ments, and so we want Deu­calion in our own cus­tody to deal with after our own fash­ion.”

“And if I do the miser, and deny you this piece of my freight?”

The spruce en­voy looked round at the splintered ship, and the battered navy be­side her. “Why, then, Tob, we shall send you all to the fishes in very short time, and in­stead of Deu­calion stand­ing be­fore the Gods alone, he will go down with a fine ragged com­pany limp­ing at his heels.”

“I doubt it,” said Tob, “but we shall see. As for let­ting you have my Lord Deu­calion, that is out of the ques­tion. For see here, pot-mate Dason; in the first place, if I went to At­lantis without Deu­calion, my other lord, Tatho, would come back one of these days, and in his hands I should die by the slow­est of slow inches; in the second, I have seen my Lord Deu­calion kill a great sea liz­ard, and he showed him­self such a proper man that day that I would not give him up against his will, even to Tatho him­self; and in the third place, you owe me for your share in our last wine-bout ashore, and I’ll see you with the nether Gods be­fore I give you aught till you’ve settled that score.”

“Well, Tob, I hope you’ll drown easy. As for that wife of yours, I’ve al­ways had a fancy for her my­self, and I shall know how to find a use for the wo­man.”

“I’ll draw your neck for that, you son of a European,” said Tob; “and if you do not clear off this deck I’ll draw it here. Go,” he cried, “you father of mon­key chil­dren! Get away, and let me fight you fairly, or by my hon­our I’ll stamp the in­wards out of you, and make your silly crew wear them as neck­laces.”

Upon which Dason went to his gal­ley.

Promptly Tob set go­ing the ma­chine on our own Bear, and bawled his or­ders right and left to the other ships. The crew might be weak with scurvy, but they were quick to obey. In­stantly the five ves­sels were all star­ted, and be­cause our Lord the Sun was shin­ing brightly, got soon to the full of their pace. The whole of our small navy con­verged, singling out one ship of their op­pon­ents, and she, not be­ing ready for so swift an at­tack, got flur­ried, and en­deav­oured to turn and run for room, in­stead of try­ing to meet us bows on. As a con­sequence, the whole of our five ships hit her to­gether on the broad­side, tear­ing her plank­ing with their un­der­wa­ter beaks, and sink­ing her be­fore we had backed clear from the en­gage.

But if we thus brought the en­emy’s num­ber down to five, and so equal to our own, the ad­vant­age did not re­main with us for long. The three nimble gal­leys formed into line: their boat­swains’ whips cracked as the slaves bent to their oars, and presently one of our own ships was gored and sunk, the men on her be­ing killed in the wa­ter without hope of res­cue.

And then com­menced a tight-locked melee that would have warmed the heart of the greatest war­rior alive. The ships and the gal­leys were forced to­gether and lay sav­agely grind­ing one an­other upon the swells, as though they had been sen­tient an­im­als. The men on board them shot their ar­rows, slashed with axes, thrust and hacked with swords, and hurled the throw­ing fire. But in every way the fight con­verged upon the Bear. It was on her that the en­emy spent the fiercest of their spite; it was to the Bear, that the other crews of Tatho’s navy ral­lied as their own ves­sels caught fire, or were sunk or taken.

Battle is an old ac­quaint­ance with us of the Priestly Clan, and for those of us who have had to carve out ter­rit­or­ies for the new colon­ies, it comes with enough fre­quency to cloy even the most chiv­al­rous ap­pet­ite. So I can speak here as a man of ex­per­i­ence. Up till that time, for half a lifespan, I had heard men shout “Deu­calion” as a battle­cry, and in my day had seen some lusty en­coun­ters. But this sea-fight sur­prised even me in its sav­age fierce­ness. The bleak, un­stable ele­ment which sur­roun­ded us; the sway­ing decks on which we fought; the throw­ing fire, which burnt flesh and wood alike with its hor­rid flame; the great glut­ton­ous man-eat­ing birds that hovered in the sky over­head; the man-eat­ing fish that swarmed up from the seas around, gnaw­ing and quar­rel­ling over those that fell into the wa­ters, all went to make up a cir­cum­stance fit to daunt the bravest men-at-arms ever gathered for an army.

But these tarry ship­men faced it all with an in­dom­it­able cour­age, and never a cry of quail­ing. Life on the seas is so hard, and (from the beasts that haunt the great wa­ters) so full of sav­age dangers, that Death has lost half his ter­rors to them through sheer fa­mili­ar­ity. They were fel­lows who from pure lust for a fray would fight to a fin­ish amongst them­selves in the tav­erns ashore; and so here, in this des­per­ate sea-battle, the pas­sion for killing burned in them, as a fire stone from Heaven rages in a forest; and they took even their death-wounds laugh­ing.

On our side the battle-cry was “Tob!” and the name of this ob­scure ship-cap­tain seemed to carry a con­fid­ence with it for our own crews that many a well-known com­mander might have en­vied. The en­emy had a dozen ral­ly­ing cries, and these con­fused them. But as their other ship-com­mand­ers one by one were killed, and Dason re­mained, act­ive with mis­chief, “Dason!” be­came the shout which was thrown back at us in re­sponse to our “Tob!”

However, I will not load my page with farther long ac­count of this ob­scure sea-fight, whose only glory was its fe­ro­city. One by one all the ships of either side were sunk or lay with all their people killed, till fi­nally only Dason’s gal­ley and our own Bear were left. For the mo­ment we were be­ing mastered. We had a score of men re­main­ing out of all those that manned the navy when it sailed from Yu­catan, and the en­emy had boarded us and made the decks of the Bear the field of battle. But they had been over busy with the throw­ing fire, and presently, as we raged at one an­other, the smoke and the flame from the sturdy ves­sel her­self let us very plainly know that she was past sal­va­tion.

But Tob was noth­ing daun­ted. “They may stay here and fry if they choose,” he shouted with his great bois­ter­ous laugh, “but for ourselves the gal­ley is good enough now. Keep a guard on Deu­calion, and come with me, ship­mates!”

“Tob!” our fel­lows shouted in their ec­stasy of fight­ing mad­ness, and I too could not for­bear send­ing out a “Tob!” for my battle-cry. It was a change for me not to be leader, but it was a lux­ury for once to fight in the wake of this Tob, des­pite his un­couth­ness of mien and plan. There was no stop­ping this new rush, though pro­gress still was slow. Tob with his bloody axe cut the road in front, and we oth­ers, with the lust of battle filling us to the chin, raged like fur­ies in his wake. Gods! but it was a fight.

Ten of us won to the gal­ley, with the flames and the smoke from the poor Bear spurt­ing at our heels. We turned and stabbed madly at all who tried to fol­low, and hacked through the grapples that held the ves­sels to their em­brace. The sea-swells spurned the Bear away.

The slaves chained to the row­ing-gal­ley’s benches had in­terest neither one way nor the other, and looked on the con­test with dull con­cern, save when some stray mis­sile found a bil­let amongst them. But a hand­ful of the fight­ing men had scrambled des­per­ately on board the gal­ley after us, pre­fer­ring any fate to a fiery death on the Bear, and these had to be dealt with promptly. Three, with their fight­ing fury still red-hot in them, had most waste­fully to be killed out of mis­chief’s way; five, who had pitched their weapons into the sea, were chained to oar looms, in place of slaves who were dead; and there re­mained only Dason to have a fate ap­por­tioned.

The fight had cooled out of him, and he had thrown his arms to the sea, and stood sul­lenly ready for what might be­fall; and to him Tob went up with an ex­ult­ing face.

“Ho, pot-mate Dason,” cried he, “you made a lot of talk an hour ago about that wo­man of mine, who lives with her brats on the quay-side in At­lantis yon­der. Now, I’ll give you a pleas­ant choice; either I’ll take you along home, and tell her what you said be­fore the whole ship’s com­pany (that are for the most part dead now, poor souls!), and I’ll leave her to per­form on your car­case as she sees fit by way of pay­ment; or, as the other choice, I’ll deal with you here now my­self.”

“I thank you for the chance,” said Dason, and knelt and offered his neck to the axe. So Tob cut off his head, stick­ing it on the gal­ley’s beak as an ad­vert­ise­ment of what had been done. The body he threw over the side, and one of the great man-eat­ing birds that hovered near, picked it up and flew away with it to its nest amongst the crags. And so we were free to get a meal of the fruits and the fresh meats which the gal­ley offered, whilst the oar-slaves sent the gal­ley rush­ing on­wards to­wards the cap­ital.

There was a wine­skin in the after-castle, and I filled a horn and poured some out at Tob’s feet in sa­luta­tion. “My man,” I said, “you have shown me a fight.”

“Thanks,” said he, “and I know you are a judge. ’Twas pretty whilst it las­ted; and, see­ing that my lads were, for the most, scurvy-rot­ten, I will say they fought with credit. I have lost my Lord Tatho’s navy, but I think Phorenice will see me righted there. If those that are against her took so much trouble to kill my Lord Deu­calion be­fore he could come to her aid, I can fancy she will not be nig­gard in her joy when I put Deu­calion safe, if some­what den­ted and blood-be­spattered, on the quay.”

“The Gods know,” I said, for it is never my cus­tom to dis­cuss policies with my in­feri­ors, even though etiquette be for the mo­ment loosened, as ours was then by the thrill of battle. “The Gods will de­cide what is best for you, Tob, even as they have de­cided that it is best that I should go on to At­lantis.”

The sailor held a horn filled from the wine­skin in his hand, and I think was minded to pour a liba­tion at my feet, even as I had done at his. But he changed his mind, and emp­tied it down his throat in­stead. “It is thirsty work, this fight­ing,” he said, “and that drink comes very use­ful.”

I put my hand on his blood-smeared arm. “Tob,” I said, “whether I step into power again, or whether I go to the block to­mor­row, is an­other mat­ter which the Gods alone know, but hear me tell you now, that if a chance is given me of show­ing my grat­it­ude, I shall not for­get the way you have served me in this voy­age, and the way you have fought this day.”

Tob filled an­other brim­ming horn from the wine­skin and splashed it at my feet. “That’s good enough surety for me,” he said, “that my wo­man and brats never want from this day on­ward. The Lord Deu­calion for the block, in­deed!”

IV The Welcome of Phorenice

Now I can say it with all truth that, till the rival navy met us in the mouth of the gulf, I had thought little enough of my im­port­ance as a re­cruit for the Em­press. But the lay­ing in wait for us of those ships, and the wild fe­ro­city with which they fought so that I might fall into their hands, were omens which the blind­est could not fail to read. It was clear that I was ex­pec­ted to play a lusty part in the for­tunes of the na­tion.

But if our com­ing had been watched for by en­emies it seemed that Phorenice also had her scouts; and these saw us from the moun­tains, and car­ried news to the cap­ital. The arm of the sea at the head of which the vast city of At­lantis stands, var­ies greatly in width. In places where the moun­tains have over-boiled, and sent their li­quid con­tents down to form hard stone be­low, the chan­nel has barely a river’s wide­ness, and then bey­ond, for the next half-day’s sail it will widen out into a lake, with the sides barely vis­ible. Moreover, its course is wind­ing, and so a run­ner who knows his way across the flats, and the swamps, and between the smoking hills which lie along the shore, and did not get over­come by fire-streams, or wa­ter, or wan­der­ing beasts, could carry news over­land from sea­coast to cap­ital far speedier than even the most shrewdly whipped of gal­leys could ferry it along the wa­ter.

Of course there were heavy risks that a lone trav­el­ler would not make a safe pas­sage by this land route, if he were bid­den to sac­ri­fice all pre­cau­tions to speed. But Phorenice was no nig­gard with her cour­i­ers. She sent a corps of twenty to the head­land that over­looks the sea-en­trance to the straits; they star­ted with the news, each on his own route; and it says much for their speed and clev­erness, that no fewer than seven of these agile fel­lows came through scath­less with their tid­ings, and of the oth­ers it was said that quite three were known to have sur­vived.

Still, about this we had no means of know­ing at the time, and pushed on in fancy that our com­ing was quite un­her­al­ded. The slaves on the gal­ley’s row-banks were for the most part sav­ages from Europe, and the smell of them was so of­fens­ive that the voy­age lost all its pleas­ures; and as, moreover, the wind car­ried with it an in­fin­ite abund­ance of small grit from some erupt­ing fire moun­tain, we were anxious to linger as little as pos­sible. Besides, if I may con­fess to such a thing without be­ing un­duly de­graded, al­though by my priestly train­ing I had been taught stoicism, and knew that all the fu­ture was in the hands of the Gods, I was frailly hu­man still to have a very vast curi­os­ity as to what would be the form of my own re­cep­tion at At­lantis. I could ima­gine my­self taken a formal pris­oner on land­ing, and set on a formal trial to an­swer for my cure of the colony of Yu­catan; I could ima­gine my­self step­ping ashore un­known and un­noticed, and after a due lapse, be­ing sent for by the Em­press to take up new du­ties; but the man­ner of my real wel­come was a thing I did not even guess at.

We came in sight of the peak of the sac­red moun­tain, with its glare of eternal fires which stand be­hind the city, one morn­ing with the day’s break, and the whips of the boat­swains cracked more vehe­mently, so that those of­fens­ive slaves should give the gal­ley a fi­nal spurt. The wind was ad­verse, and no sail could be spread, but un­der oars alone we made a pretty pace, and the sides of the sac­red moun­tain grew longer, and presently the peaks of the pyr­am­ids in the city, the towers of the higher build­ings, began to show them­selves as though they floated upon the gleam­ing wa­ter. It was twenty years since I had seen At­lantis last, and my heart glowed with the thought of tread­ing again upon her pav­ing-stones.

The splen­did city grew out of the sea as we ap­proached, and to every throb of the oars, the shores leaped nearer. I saw the temple where I had been ad­mit­ted first to man­hood; I saw the pyr­amid in whose heart I had been ini­ti­ated to the small mys­ter­ies; and then (as the lesser ob­jects be­came dis­cern­ible) I made out the house where a father and a mother had reared me, and my eyes be­came dim as the memor­ies rose.

We drew up out­side the white walls of the har­bour, as the law was, and the slaves panted and sobbed in quiet­ude over the oar-looms. For ves­sels thus sta­tioned there is, gen­er­ally, a suf­fi­ciency of wait­ing, for a port-cap­tain is apt to be so un­cer­tain of his own dig­nity, that he must e’en keep folks wait­ing to prove it to them. But here for us it might have been that the port-cap­tain’s boat was wait­ing. The sig­nal was soun­ded from the two castles at the har­bour’s en­trance, the chain which hung between them was dropped, and a ten-oared boat shot out from be­hind the walls as fast as oars could drive her. She raced up along­side and the ques­tions were put:

“That should be Dason’s gal­ley?”

“It was,” said Tob.

“Oh, I saw Dason’s head on your beak,” said the port-cap­tain. “You were Tatho’s cap­tain?”

“And am still. Tatho’s fleet was sent by Dason and his friends to the sea-floor, and so we took this stink­ing gal­ley to fin­ish the voy­age in, see­ing that it was the only craft left afloat.”

The port-cap­tain was rov­ing his eye over the group of us who stood on the af­ter­deck. “I fear me, cap­tain, that you’ll have but a dan­ger­ous re­cep­tion. I do not see my Lord Deu­calion. Or does he come with some other navy? Gods, cap­tain, if you have let him get killed whilst un­der your charge, the Em­press will have the skin torn slowly off you liv­ing.”

“What with Phorenice and Tatho both so curi­ous for his wel­fare,” said Tob, “my Lord Deu­calion seems but a dan­ger­ous pas­sen­ger. But I shall save my hide this voy­age.” He jerked at me with his thumb. “He’s there to put in a word for me him­self.”

The port-cap­tain stared for a mo­ment, as if un­be­liev­ing, and then, as though sat­is­fied, made obeis­ance like a fel­low well used to ce­re­mo­nial. “I trust my lord, in his in­fin­ite strength, will par­don my sin in not know­ing him by his noble­ness be­fore. But truth to tell, I had looked to see my lord more suit­ably ap­par­elled.”

“Pish,” I said; “if I choose to dress simply, I can­not ob­ject to be­ing mis­taken for a simple man. It is not my pleas­ure to ad­vert­ise my qual­ity by the gauds on my garb. If you think amends are due to me, I pray of your char­ity that this in­quis­i­tion may end.”

The fel­low was all bows and ob­sequious­ness. “I am the humblest of my lord’s ser­vants,” he said. “It will be my ex­ceed­ing hon­our to pi­lot my lord’s gal­ley into the berth ap­poin­ted in har­bour.”

The boat shot ahead, and our gal­ley-slaves swung into stroke again. Tob watched me with a dry smile as he stood dir­ect­ing the men at the helms.

“Well,” I said, hu­mour­ing his whim, “what is it?”

“I’m think­ing,” said Tob, “that my Lord Deu­calion will re­mem­ber me only as a very rude fel­low when he steps ashore amongst all this fine gen­til­ity.”

“You don’t think,” said I, “any­thing of the kind.”

“Then I must prove my re­fine­ment,” said Tob, “and not con­tra­dict.” He picked up my hand in his huge, hard fist, and pressed it. “By the Gods, Deu­calion, you may be a great prince, but I’ve only known you as a man. You’re the finest fighter of beasts and men that walks this world today, and I love you for it. That spear-stroke of yours on the liz­ard is a thing the sing­ers in the tav­erns shall make chaunts about.”

We drew rap­idly into the har­bour, the sol­diers in the en­trance castle blow­ing their trum­pets in wel­come as we passed between them. The cap­tain of the port had run up my ban­ner to the masthead of his boat, hav­ing been provided with one ap­par­ently for this pur­pose of an­nounce­ment, and from the quays, across the vast basin of the har­bour, there presently came to us the noises of mu­si­cians, and the pale glow of wel­com­ing fires, dan­cing un­der the sun­light. I was al­most awed to think that an Em­press of At­lantis had come to such straits as to feel an in­terest like this in any mere re­turn­ing sub­ject.

It was clear that noth­ing was to be done by halves. The port-cap­tain’s boat led, and we had no choice but to fol­low. Our gal­ley was run up along­side the royal quay and moored to its posts and rings of gold, all of which are sac­red to the reign­ing house.

“If Dason could only have fore­seen this hon­our,” said Tob, with grisly jest, “I’m sure he’d have laid in a silken warp to make fast on the bol­lards in­stead of mere ple­beian hemp. I’m sure there’d be a frown on Dason’s head this minute, if the sun hadn’t scorched it stiff. My Lord Deu­calion, will you pick your way with nice­ness over this com­mon ship and tread on the gen­teel car­pet they’ve spread for you on the quay yon­der?”

The port-cap­tain heard Tob’s rude banter and looked up with a face of hor­ror, and I re­membered, with a small sigh, that co­lo­nial free­dom would have no place here in At­lantis. Once more I must pre­pare my­self for all the dig­nity of rank, and make ready to tread the form­al­it­ies of vast and gor­geous ce­re­mo­nial.

But, be these things how they may, a self-re­spect­ing man must pre­serve his in­di­vidu­al­ity also, and though I con­sen­ted to enter a pa­vil­ion of crim­son cloth, spe­cially erec­ted to shel­ter me till the Em­press should deign to ar­rive, there my com­plais­ance ended. Again the mat­ter of clothes was harped upon. The three gor­geously ca­par­isoned cham­ber­lains, who had in­duc­ted me to the shel­ter, laid be­fore me changes of raiment be­decked with every ima­gin­able kind of frip­pery, and would have me trans­form my­self into a pop­in­jay in fash­ion like their own.

Curtly enough, I re­fused to al­ter my garb, and when one of them stam­mer­ingly re­ferred to the Em­press’s tastes I asked him with plain­ness if he had got any def­in­ite com­mands on this paltry mat­ter from her migh­ti­ness.

Of course, he had to con­fess that there were none.

Upon which I re­tor­ted that Phorenice had com­manded Deu­calion, the man, to at­tend be­fore her, and had sent no word of her pleas­ure as to his outer cas­ing.

“This dress,” I said, “suits my tem­per well. It shields my poor body from the heat and the wind, and, moreover, it is clean. It seems to me, sirs,” I ad­ded, “that your in­ter­fer­ing sa­vours some­what of an im­per­tin­ence.”

With one ac­cord the cham­ber­lains drew their swords and pushed the hilts to­wards me.

“It would be a fa­vour,” said their spokes­man, “if the great Lord Deu­calion would take his ven­geance now, in­stead of de­liv­er­ing us to the tor­ment­ors here­after.”

“Poof,” I said, “the mat­ter is for­got­ten. You make too much of a little.”

Never­the­less, their ac­tion gave me some en­light­en­ment. They were per­fectly in earn­est in of­fer­ing me the swords, and I re­cog­nised that this was a dif­fer­ent At­lantis that I had come home to, where a man had dread of the tor­ture for a mere dif­fer­ence con­cern­ing the cut of a coat.

There was a bath in the pa­vil­ion, and in that I re­galed my­self gladly, though there was some paltry scent ad­ded to the wa­ter that took away half its re­fresh­ing power; and then I set my­self to wait with all out­ward com­pos­ure and pla­cid­ity. The cham­ber­lains were too well-bred to break into my calm, and I did not con­des­cend to small talk. So there we re­mained, the four of us, I sit­ting, they stand­ing, with our Lord the Sun smit­ing heav­ily on the scar­let roof of the pa­vil­ion, whilst the mu­sic blared, and the wel­com­ing fires dis­persed their odours from the great paved square without, which faced upon the quay.

It has been said that the great should al­ways col­lect dig­nity by keep­ing those of lesser de­gree wait­ing their pleas­ure, though for my­self I must say I have al­ways thought the stratagem paltry and be­neath me. Phorenice also seemed of this opin­ion, for (as she her­self told me later) at the mo­ment that Tob’s gal­ley was re­por­ted as hav­ing its flank against the marble of the royal quay, at that pre­cise mo­ment did she start out from the palace. The gor­geous pro­ces­sion was already mar­shalled, be­decked, and wait­ing only for its chiefest or­na­ment, and as soon as she had moun­ted to her steed, trum­pets gave the or­der, and the ad­vance began.

Sit­ting in the door­way of the pa­vil­ion, I saw the sol­diery who formed the head of this vast con­course emerge from the great broad street where it left the houses. They marched straight across to give me the sa­lute, and then ranged them­selves on the farther side of the square. Then came the Mar­iners’ Guild, then more sol­diers, all mak­ing obeis­ance in their turn, and passing on to make room for oth­ers. Fol­low­ing were the mer­chants, the tan­ners, the spear-makers and all the other ac­know­ledged Guilds, de­lib­er­ately at­tired (so it seemed to me) that they might make a pa­geant; and whilst most walked on foot, there were some who proudly rode on beasts which they had tamed into ren­der­ing them this menial ser­vice.

But presently came the two won­ders of all that dazzling spec­tacle. From out of the ec­lipse of the houses there swung into the open no less a beast than a huge bull mam­moth. The sight had suf­fi­cient sur­prise in it al­most to make me start. Many a time dur­ing my life had I led hunts to kill the mam­moth, when a herd of them had raided some vil­lage or corn­land un­der my charge. I had seen the huge brutes in the wild ground, shaggy, hor­rid, mon­strous; more fierce than even the cave-ti­ger or the cave-bear; most dan­ger­ous beast of all that fight with man for domin­ion of the earth, save only for a few of the greater liz­ards. And here was this creature, a gi­ant even amongst mam­moths, yet tame as any well-whipped slave, and bear­ing upon its back a great half-castle of gold, stamped with the out­stretched hand, and be­decked with sil­ver snakes. Its mur­der­ous tusks were gil­ded, its hairy neck was gar­landed with flowers, and it trod on in the pro­ces­sion as though as­sist­ing at such pa­geantry was the be­gin­ning and end of its ex­ist­ence. Its tame­ness seemed a fit­ting sym­bol of the mas­ter­ful strength of this new ruler of At­lantis.

Sim­ul­tan­eously with the mam­moth, there came into sight that other and greater won­der, the mam­moth’s mis­tress, the Em­press Phorenice. The beast took my eye at the first, from its very un­couth huge­ness, from its show of sav­age power re­strained; but the lady who sat in the golden half-castle on its lofty back quickly drew away my gaze, and held it im­mov­able from then on­wards with an in­fin­ite at­trac­tion.

I stood to my feet when the people first shouted at Phorenice’s ap­proach, and re­mained in the porch­way of my scar­let pa­vil­ion till her vast steed had hal­ted in the centre of the square, and then I ad­vanced across the pave­ment to­wards her.

“On your knees, my lord,” said one of the cham­ber­lains be­hind me, in a scared whis­per.

“At least with bent head,” urged an­other.

But I had my own no­tions of what is due to one’s own self-re­spect in these mat­ters, and I marched across the bare open space with head erect, giv­ing the Em­press gaze for gaze. She was clearly sum­ming me up. I was frankly do­ing the like by her. Gods! but those few short seconds made me see a wo­man such as I never ima­gined could have lived.

I know I have placed it on re­cord earlier in this writ­ing that, dur­ing all the days of a long of­fi­cial life, wo­men have had no in­flu­ence over me. But I have been quick to see that they of­ten had a strong sway­ing power over the policies of oth­ers, and as a con­sequence I have made it my busi­ness to study them even as I have stud­ied men. But this wo­man who sat un­der the sac­red snakes in her golden half-castle on the mam­moth’s back, fairly baffled me. Of her thoughts I could read no single syl­lable. I could see a body slight, supple, and beau­ti­fully moul­ded; in fig­ure rather small. Her face was a most per­fect book of clev­erness, yet she was fair, too, bey­ond be­lief, with hair of a lovely rud­di­ness, cut short in the new fash­ion, and bunch­ing on her shoulders. And eyes! Gods! who could plumb the depths of Phorenice’s eyes, or find in mere tint a trace of their heaven-made col­our?

It was plain, also, that she in her turn was search­ing me down to my very soul, and it seemed that her scru­tiny was not without its sat­is­fac­tion. She moved her head in little nods as I drew near, and when I did the re­quis­ite obeis­ance per­mit­ted to my rank, she bade me in a voice loud and clear enough for all at hand to hear, never to put fore­head on the ground again on her be­half so long as she ruled in At­lantis.

“For oth­ers,” she said, “it is fit­ting that they should do so, once, twice, or sev­eral times, ac­cord­ing to their rank and sta­tion, for I am Em­press, and they are all so far be­neath me; but you are Deu­calion, my lord, and though till today I knew you only from pic­tures drawn with tongues, I have seen you now, and have judged for my­self. And so I make this de­cree: Deu­calion is above all other men in At­lantis, and if there is one who does not render him obed­i­ence, that man is en­emy also of Phorenice, and shall feel her an­ger.”

She made a sign, and a stair was brought, and then she called to me, and I moun­ted and sat be­side her in the golden half-castle un­der the can­opy of royal snakes. The girl who stood be­hind in at­tend­ance fanned us both with per­fumed feath­ers, and at a word from Phorenice the mam­moth was turned, bear­ing us back to­wards the royal pyr­amid by the way through which it had come. At the same time also all the other ma­chinery of splend­our was put in mo­tion. The sol­diers and the gaud­ily be­decked civil traders fell into pro­ces­sion be­fore and be­hind, and I noted that a body of troops, heav­ily armed, marched on each of the mam­moth’s flanks.

Phorenice turned to me with a smile. “You piqued me,” she said, “at first.”

“Your Majesty over­whelms me with so much no­tice.”

“You looked at my steed be­fore you looked at me. A wo­man finds it hard to for­give a slight like that.”

“I en­vied you the greatest of your con­quests, and do still. I have fought mam­moths my­self, and at times have killed, but I never dared even to think of tak­ing one alive and bring­ing it into tame­ness.”

“You speak boldly,” she said, still smil­ing, “and yet you can turn a pretty com­pli­ment. Faugh! Deu­calion, the way these people fawn on me gives me a nausea. I am not of the same clay as they are, I know; but just be­cause I am the daugh­ter of Gods they must needs feed me on the pap of in­sin­cer­ity.”

So Tatho was right, and the swine­herd was for­got­ten. Well, if she chose to keep up the fic­tion she had made, it was not my part to con­tra­dict her. Rightly or wrongly I was her ser­vant.

“I have been pin­ing this long enough for a stronger meat than they can give,” she went on, “and at last I have sent for you. I have been at some pains to pro­cure my tongue-pic­tures of you, Deu­calion, and though you do not know me yet, I may say I knew you with all thor­ough­ness even be­fore we met. I can ad­mire a man with a mind great enough to forego the silly gauds of clothes, or the ex­cesses of feasts, or the pam­per­ings of wo­men.” She looked down at her own silks and her glit­ter­ing jew­els. “We wo­men like to carry col­ours upon our per­sons, but that is a dif­fer­ent mat­ter. And so I sent for you here to be my min­is­ter, and bear with me the bur­den of rul­ing.”

“There should be bet­ter men in broad At­lantis.”

“There are not, my lord, and I who know them all by heart tell you so. They are all en­am­oured of my poor per­son; they weary me with their empty phrases and their im­por­tun­it­ies; and, though they are al­ways brim­ming with their cries of ser­vice, their own ad­vance­ment and the filling of their own treas­ur­ies ever comes first with them. So I have sent for you, Deu­calion, the one strong man in all the world. You at least will not sigh to be my lover?”

I saw her watch­ing for my an­swer from the corner of her eyes. “The Em­press,” I said, “is my mis­tress, and I will be an hon­est min­is­ter to her. With Phorenice, the wo­man, it is likely that I shall have little enough to do. Besides, I am not the sort that sports with this toy they call love.”

“And yet you are a per­son­able man enough,” she said rather thought­fully. “But that still fur­ther proves your strength, Deu­calion. You at least will not lose your head through weak in­fatu­ation for my poor looks and graces.”—She turned to the girl who stood be­hind us.—“Ylga, fan not so vi­ol­ently.”

Our talk broke off then for the mo­ment, and I had time to look about me. We were passing through the chief street in the fairest, the most won­der­ful city this world has ever seen. I had left it a score of years be­fore, and was curi­ous to note its in­crease.

In pub­lic build­ings the city had cer­tainly made growth; there were new temples, new pyr­am­ids, new palaces, and statu­ary every­where. Its great­ness and mag­ni­fi­cence im­pressed me more strongly even than usual, re­turn­ing to it as I did from such a dis­tance of time and space, for, though the many cit­ies of Yu­catan might each of them be princely, this great cap­ital was a place not to be com­pared with any of them. It was im­per­ial and gor­geous bey­ond de­script­ive words.

Yet most of all was I struck by the poverty and squalor which stood in such close touch with all this mag­ni­fi­cence. In the throngs that lined the streets there were gaunt bod­ies and hungry faces every­where. Here and there stood one, a man or a wo­man, as na­ked as a sav­age in Europe, and yet dull to shame. Even the trader, with trumpery gauds on his coat, aping the pre­vail­ing fash­ion for dis­play, had a scared, un­easy look to his face, as though he had for­got­ten the mere name of safety, and hid a frantic heart with his taw­dry out­ward vaunt­ings of prosper­ity.

Phorenice read the dir­ec­tion of my looks.

“The sea­son,” she said, “has been un­healthy of re­cent months. These lower people will not build fine houses to ad­orn my city, and be­cause they choose to live on in their squalid, un­sightly ken­nels, there have been calen­tures and other sick­nesses amongst them, which make them dis­in­clined for work. And then, too, for the mo­ment, earn­ing is not easy. Indeed, you may say trade is nearly stopped this last half-year, since the rebels have been ham­mer­ing so lust­ily at my city gates.”

I was fairly startled out of my de­corum.

“Rebels!” I cried. “Who are ham­mer­ing at the gates of At­lantis? Is the city in a state of siege?”

“Of their con­des­cen­sion,” said Phorenice lightly, “they are giv­ing us hol­i­day today, and so, hap­pily, my wel­come to you comes un­dis­turbed. If they were fight­ing, your ears would have told you of it. To give them their due, they are noisy enough in all their ef­forts. My spies say they are mak­ing ready new en­gines for use against the walls, which you may sally out to­mor­row and break if it gives you amuse­ment. But for today, Deu­calion, I have you, and you have me, and there is peace round us, and some pret­ti­ness of dis­play. If you ask for more I will give it you.”

“I did not know of this re­bel­lion,” I said, “but as Your Majesty has made me your min­is­ter, it is well that I should know all about its scope at once. This is a mat­ter we should be ser­i­ous upon.”

“And do you think I can­not take it ser­i­ously also?” she re­tor­ted. “Ylga,” she said to the girl that stood be­hind, “set loose my dress at the shoulder.”

And when the at­tend­ant had un­linked the jew­elled clasp (as it seemed to me with a very ill grace), she her­self stripped down the fab­ric, bar­ing the pure skin be­neath, and show­ing me just be­low the curve of the left breast a band­age of blood­stained linen.

“There is a guar­an­tee of my ser­i­ous­ness yes­ter­day, at any rate,” she said, look­ing at me side­long. “The ar­row struck on a rib and that saved me. If it had struck between, Deu­calion would have been stand­ing be­side my fu­neral pyre today in­stead of rid­ing on this pretty steed of mine which he ad­mires so much. Your eye seems to feast it­self most on the mam­moth, Deu­calion. Ah, poor me. I am not one of your shaggy creatures, and so it seems I shall never be able to catch your re­gard. Ylga,” she said to the girl be­hind, “you may link my dress up again with its clasp. My Lord Deu­calion has seen wounds be­fore, and there is noth­ing else here to in­terest him.”

V Zaemon’s Curse

It ap­peared that for the present at any rate I was to have my res­id­ence in the royal pyr­amid. The glit­ter­ing caval­cade drew up in the great paved square which lies be­fore the build­ing, and massed it­self in groups. The mam­moth was hal­ted be­fore the door­way, and when a stair had been brought, the trum­pets soun­ded, and we three who had rid­den in the golden half-castle un­der the can­opy of snakes, des­cen­ded to the ground.

It was plain that we were go­ing from be­neath the open sky to the apart­ments which lay in­side the vast stone mazes of the pyr­amid, and without think­ing, the in­stinct of cus­tom and rev­er­ence that had be­come part of my nature caused me to turn to where the tower­ing rocks of the Sacred Moun­tain frowned above the city, and make the usual obeis­ance, and of­fer up in si­lence the pre­scribed prayer. I say I did this thing un­think­ing, and as a mat­ter of com­mon cus­tom, but when I rose to my feet, I could have sworn I heard a tit­ter of laughter from some­where in that fanci­fully be­decked crowd of on­look­ers.

I glanced in the dir­ec­tion of the scoffers, frown­ingly enough, and then I turned to Phorenice to de­mand their prompt pun­ish­ment for the dis­respect. But here was a strange thing. I had looked to see her in the act and art­icle of rising from an obeis­ance; but there she was, stand­ing erect, and had clearly never touched her fore­head to the ground. Moreover, she was re­gard­ing me with a queer look which I could not fathom.

But whatever was in her mind, she had no plan to bawl about it then be­fore the people col­lec­ted in the square. She said to me, “Come,” and, turn­ing to the door­way, cried for en­trance, giv­ing the secret word ap­poin­ted for the day. The pon­der­ous stone blocks, which barred the porch, swung back on their hinges, and with stately tread she passed out of the hot sun­shine into the cool gloom bey­ond, with the fan-girl fol­low­ing dec­or­ously at her heels. With a heav­i­ness be­gin­ning to grow at my heart, I too went in­side the pyr­amid, and the stone doors, with a sul­len thud, closed be­hind us.

We did not go far just then. Phorenice hal­ted in the hall of wait­ing. How well I re­membered the place, with the pic­tures of kings on its red walls, and the burn­ing foun­tain of earth-breath which blazed from a jet of bronze in the middle of the floor­ing and gave it light. The old King that was gone had come this far of his com­plais­ance when he bade me farewell as I set out twenty years be­fore for my vice­roy­alty in Yu­catan. But the air of the hall was dif­fer­ent to what it had been in those old days. Then it was pure and sweet. Now it was heavy with some scent, and I found it lan­guid and op­press­ive.

“My min­is­ter,” said the Em­press, “I ac­quit you of in­ten­tional in­sult; but I think the co­lo­nial air has made you a very simple man. Such an obeis­ance as you showed to that moun­tain not a minute since has not been made since I was sent to reign over this king­dom.”

“Your Majesty,” I said, “I am a mem­ber of the Priests’ Clan and was brought up in their ten­ets. I have been taught, be­fore en­ter­ing a house, to thank the Gods, and more es­pe­cially our Lord the Sun, for the good air that He and They have provided. It has been my fate more than once to be chased by streams of fire and stink­ing air amongst the moun­tains dur­ing one of their sud­den boils, and so I can say the pre­scribed prayer upon this mat­ter straight from my heart.”

“Cir­cum­stances have changed since you left At­lantis,” said Phorenice, “and when thanks are given now, they are not thrown at those old Gods.”

I saw her mean­ing, and al­most star­ted at the im­pi­ety of it. If this was to be the new rule of things, I would have no hand in it. Fate might deal with me as it chose. To serve truly a reign­ing mon­arch, that I was pre­pared for; but to pal­ter with sac­ri­lege, and ac­cept a swine­herd’s daugh­ter as a God, who should re­ceive pray­ers and obeis­ances, re­vol­ted my man­hood. So I in­vited a crisis.

“Phorenice,” I said, “I have been a priest from my child­hood up, rever­ing the Gods, and grow­ing in­tim­ate with their mys­ter­ies. Till I find for my­self that those old things are false, I must stand by that al­le­gi­ance, and if there is a cost for this faith­ful­ness I must pay it.”

She looked at me with a slow smile. “You are a strong man, Deu­calion,” she said.

I bowed.

“I have heard oth­ers as stub­born,” she said, “but they were con­ver­ted.” She shook out the ruddy bunches of her hair, and stood so that the light of the burn­ing earth-breath might fall on the love­li­ness of her face and form. “I have found it as easy to con­vert the stub­born as to burn them. Indeed, there has been little talk of burn­ing. They have all rushed to con­ver­sion, whether I would or no. But it seems that my poor looks and tongue are want­ing in charm today.”

“Phorenice is Em­press,” I said stolidly, “and I am her ser­vant. To­mor­row, if she gives me leave, I will clear away this rabble which clam­ours out­side the walls. I must be­gin to prove my uses.”

“I am told you are a pretty fighter,” said she. “Well, I hold some small skill in arms my­self, and have a con­ceit that I am some­thing of a judge. To­mor­row we will take a taste of battle to­gether. But today I must carry through the hon­our­able re­cep­tion I have planned for you, Deu­calion. The feast will be set ready soon, and you will wish to make ready for the feast. There are cham­bers here se­lec­ted for your use, and stored with what is need­ful. Ylga will show you their places.”

We waited, the fan-girl and I, till Phorenice had passed out of the glow of the light-jet, and had left the hall of wait­ing through a door­way amongst the shad­ows of its farther angle, and then (the girl tak­ing a lamp and lead­ing) we also threaded our way through the nar­row mazes of the pyr­amid.

Every­where the air was full of per­fumes, and every­where the pas­sages turned and twis­ted and doubled through the solid stone of the pyr­amid, so that strangers might have spent hours—yes, or days—in search be­fore they came to the cham­ber they de­sired. There was a fine cun­ning­ness about those for­got­ten build­ers who set up this royal pyr­amid. They had no mind that kings should fall by the hand of vul­gar as­sas­sins who might come in sud­denly from out­side. And it is said also that the king of the time, to make doubly sure, killed all that had built the pyr­amid, or seen even the lay of its in­ner stones.

But the fan-girl led the way with the lamp swinging in her hand, as one ac­cus­tomed to the mazes. Here she doubled, there she turned, and here she stopped in the middle of a blank wall to push a stone, which swung to let us pass. And once she pressed at the corner of a flag­stone on the floor, which reared up to the thrust of her foot, and showed us a stair steep and nar­row. That we des­cen­ded, com­ing to the foot of an in­clined way which led us up­ward again; and so by de­grees we came unto the cham­ber which had been given for my use.

“There is raiment in all these chests which stand by the walls,” said the girl, “and jew­els and gauds in that bronze cof­fer. They are Phorenice’s first presents, she bid me say, and but a small earn­est of what is to come. My Lord Deu­calion can drop his sim­pli­city now, and fig him­self out in finery to suit the fash­ion.”

“Girl,” I said sharply, “be more dec­or­ous with your tongue, and spare me such small ad­vice.”

“If my Lord Deu­calion thinks this a rude­ness, he can give a word to Phorenice, and I shall be whipped. If he asks it, I can be stripped and scourged be­fore him. The Em­press will do much for Deu­calion just now.”

“Girl,” I said, “you are nearer to that whip­ping than you think for.”

“I have got a name,” she re­tor­ted, look­ing at me sul­lenly from un­der her black brows. “They call me Ylga. You might have heard that as we rode here on the mam­moth, had you not been so wrapped up in Phorenice.”

I gazed at her curi­ously. “You have never seen me be­fore,” I said, “and the first words you ut­ter are those that might well bring trouble to your­self. There is some ob­ject in all this.”

She went and pushed to the massive stone that swung in the door­way of the cham­ber. Then she put her little jew­elled fin­gers on my gar­ment and drew me care­fully away from the air­shaft into the farther corner. “I am the daugh­ter of Zae­mon,” she said, “whom you knew.”

“You bring me some mes­sage from him?”

“How could I? He lives in the priests’ dwell­ings on the Moun­tain you did obeis­ance to. I have not put eyes on him these two years. But when I saw you first step out from that red pa­vil­ion they had pitched at the har­bour side, I—I felt a pity for you, Deu­calion. I re­membered you were my father’s, Zae­mon’s, friend, and I knew what Phorenice had in store. She has been plot­ting it all these two months.”

“I can­not hear words against the Em­press.”

“And yet—”

“What?”

She stamped her san­dal upon the stone of the floor. “You must be a very blind man, Deu­calion, or a very dar­ing one. But I shall not in­ter­fere fur­ther; at least not now. Still, I shall watch, and if at any time you seem to want a friend I will try and serve you.”

“I thank you for your friend­ship.”

“You seem to take it lightly enough. Why, sir, even now I do not be­lieve you know my power, any more than you guess my motive. You may be first man in this king­dom, but let me tell you I rank as second lady. And re­mem­ber, wo­men stand high in At­lantis now. Be­lieve me, my friend­ship is a com­mod­ity that has been sought with fre­quence and in­dustry.”

“And as I say, I am grate­ful for it. You seem to think little enough of my grat­it­ude, Ylga; but, credit me, I never have be­stowed it on a wo­man be­fore, and so you should treas­ure it for its rar­ity.”

“Well,” she said, “my lord, there is an edu­ca­tion be­fore you.” She left me then, show­ing me how to call slaves when I wished for their help, and for a full minute I stood won­der­ing at the words I had spoken to her. Who was the daugh­ter of Zae­mon that she should in­duce me to change the habit of a life­time?

The slaves came at my bid­ding, and showed them­selves anxious to deck me with a thou­sand fool­ish­nesses in the mat­ter of robes and gauds, and (what seemed to be the mod­ern fash­ion of their class) hold­ing out the vir­tues of a score of per­fumes and un­guents. Their man­ner ir­rit­ated me. Clean I was already, and shaved; my hair was trim, and my robe was un­soiled; and, con­sid­er­ing these press­ing at­ten­tions of theirs some­thing of an im­per­tin­ence, I set them to beat one an­other as a pun­ish­ment, prom­ising that if they did not do it with thor­ough­ness, I would hand them on to the brander to be marked with stripes which would en­dure. It is strange, but a com­mon menial can of­ten sur­pass even a re­bel­li­ous gen­eral in power of ruff­ling one.

I had seen many strange sights that day, and un­der­gone many new sen­sa­tions; but of all the things which came to my no­tice, Phorenice’s man­ner of sum­mon­ing the guests to her feast sur­prised me most. Nay, it did more; it shocked me pro­foundly; and I can­not say whether amazement at her pro­fan­ity, or won­der at her power, was for the mo­ment strongest in my breast. I sat in my cham­ber await­ing the sum­mons, when gradu­ally, grow­ing out of noth­ing, a sound fell upon my ear which in­creased in volume with in­fin­itely small gradu­ations, till at last it be­came a clanging din which hurt the ear with its fierce­ness; and then (I guessed what was com­ing) the whole massive fab­ric of the pyr­amid trembled and groaned and shook, as though it had been merely a child’s wooden toy brushed about by a strong man’s san­dal.

It was the portent served out yearly by the chiefs of the Priests’ Clan on the Sacred Moun­tain, when they bade all the world take count of their sins. It was the sac­red re­minder that from roar­ing, ra­ging fire, and from the agony of mon­strous earth tremors, man had been born, and that by these same agen­cies he would even­tu­ally be swal­lowed up—he and the sins within his breast. And here the Em­press was pros­ti­tut­ing its solem­nit­ies into a mere call to glut­tony, and sign for rib­ald laughter and sen­su­ous dis­play.

But how had she ac­quired the au­thor­ity to do this thing? Who was she that she should tamper with those dimly un­der­stood powers, the forces that dwell within the li­quid heart of our mother earth? Had there been treach­ery? Had some mem­ber of the Priests’ Clan for­got­ten his sac­red vows, and babbled to this wo­man mat­ters con­cern­ing the holy mys­ter­ies? Or had Phorenice dis­covered a key to these mys­ter­ies with her own agile brain?

If that last was the case, I could con­tinue to serve her with si­lent con­science. Though she might be none of my mak­ing, at least she was Em­press, and it was my duty to give her obed­i­ence. But if she had sub­orned some weaker mem­ber of the Clan on the Sacred Mount, that would be a dif­fer­ent mat­ter. For be it re­membered that it was one of the ele­ments of our con­sti­tu­tion to pre­serve our secrets and mys­ter­ies in­vi­ol­ate, and to pur­sue with un­dy­ing hatred both the man who had dared to be­tray them, and the un­happy re­cip­i­ent of his con­fid­ence.

It was with very un­de­cided feel­ings, then, that I obeyed the sum­mons of the earth-shak­ing, and bade the slaves lead me through the wind­ings of the pyr­amid to the great ban­quet­ing-hall. The scene there was dazzling. The majestic cham­ber with its mar­vel­lous carvings was filled with a com­pany decked out with all the gauds and col­ours that fancy could con­ceive. Little recked they of the sol­emn portent which had summoned them to the meal, of the death and misery that stalked openly through the city wards without, of the rebels which lay in leaguer bey­ond the walls, of the neg­lected Gods and their clan of priests on the Sacred Moun­tain. They were all glut­ton­ous for the pas­sions of the mo­ment; it was their fash­ion and con­ceit to look at noth­ing bey­ond.

Flam­ing jets of earth-breath lit the great hall to the bright­ness of mid­day; and when I stepped out upon the pave­ment, trum­pets blared, so that all might know of my com­ing. But there was no roar of wel­come. “Deu­calion,” they lisped with min­cing voices, bow­ing them­selves ri­dicu­lously to the ground so that all their or­na­ments and silks might jangle and swish. Indeed, when Phorenice her­self ap­peared, and all sent up their cries and made law­ful obeis­ance, there was the same ar­ti­fi­ci­al­ity in the wel­come. They meant well enough, it is true; but this was the new fash­ion. Hearti­ness had come to be ac­coun­ted a bar­bar­ism by this new cul­ture.

A pair of pos­tur­ing, smirk­ing cham­ber­lains took me in charge, and ushered me with their flimsy golden wands to the dais at the farther end. It ap­peared that I was to sit on Phorenice’s di­van, and eat my meat out of her dish.

“There is no stint to the hon­our the Em­press puts upon me,” I said, as I knelt down and took my seat.

She gave me one of her queer, side­long looks. “Deu­calion may have more be­side, if he asks for it pret­tily. He may have what all the other men in the known world have sighed for, and what none of them will ever get. But I have given enough of my own ac­cord; he must ask me warmly for those fur­ther fa­vours.”

“I ask,” I said, “first, that I may sweep the bound­ar­ies clear of this rabble which is clam­our­ing against the city walls.”

“Pah,” she said, and frowned. “Have you ap­pet­ite only for the sterner pleas­ures of life? My good Deu­calion, they must have been rus­tic folk in that colony of yours. Well, you shall give me news now of the tooth­some­ness of this feast.”

Dishes and gob­lets were placed be­fore us, and we began to eat, though I had little enough ap­pet­ite for victual so broken and so highly spiced. But if this finick­ing cook­ery and these lus­cious wines did not ap­peal to me, the other diners in that gor­geous hall ap­pre­ci­ated it all to the full. They sat about in groups on the pave­ment be­neath the light-jets like a tangle of rain­bows for col­our, and ac­cord­ing to the new cus­tom they went into rap­tures and ec­stas­ies over their en­joy­ment. Wo­men and men both, they lingered over each tit­il­la­tion of the pal­ate as though it were a caress of the Gods.

Phorenice, with her quick, bright eyes, looked on, and oc­ca­sion­ally flung one or an­other a few words between her talk with me, and now and again called some fa­voured creature up to re­ceive a scrap of vi­and from the royal dish. This the hon­oured one would eat with ex­tra­vag­ant ges­ture, or (as happened twice) would put it away in the folds of his clothes as a treas­ure too dear to be pro­faned by hu­man lips.

To me, this flat­tery ap­peared gross and dis­gust­ful, but Phorenice, through use, per­haps, seemed to take it as merely her due. There was, one had to sup­pose, a weak­ness in her some­where, though truly to the out­ward see­ing none was ap­par­ent. Her face was strong enough, and it was subtle also, and, moreover, it was won­drous comely. All the courtiers in the ban­quet­ing-hall raved about Phorenice’s face and the other beau­ties of her body and limbs, and though not given to ap­pre­ci­ation in these mat­ters, I could not but see that here at least they had a ground­work for their ad­mir­a­tion, for surely the Gods have never fa­voured mor­tal wo­man more highly. Yet lovely though she might be, for my­self I pre­ferred to look upon Ylga, the girl, who, be­cause of her rank, was priv­ileged to sit on the di­van be­hind us as im­me­di­ate at­tend­ant. There was an hon­esty in Ylga’s face which Phorenice’s lacked.

They did not eat to nu­trify their bod­ies, these feasters in the ban­quet­ing-hall of the royal pyr­amid, but they all ate to cloy them­selves, and they strut­ted forth new us­ages with every plat­ter and bowl that the slaves brought. To me some of their man­ners were closely touch­ing on dis­respect. At the halfway of the meal, a gor­geous pop­in­jay—he was a gov­ernor of an out-province driven into the cap­ital by a re­bel­lion in his own lands—this gor­geous fop, I say, walked up between the groups of feasters with flushed face and un­steady gait, and did obeis­ance be­fore the di­van. “Most astound­ing Em­press,” cried he, “fairest among the God­desses, Queen reg­nant of my ad­or­ing heart, hail!”

Phorenice with a smile stretched him out her cup. I looked to see him pour re­spect­ful liba­tion, but no such thing. He set the drink to his lips and drained it to the fi­nal drop. “May all your troubles,” he cried, “pass from you as eas­ily, and leave as pleas­ant a fla­vour.”

The Em­press turned to me with one of her quick looks. “You do not like this new habit?”

To which I replied bluntly enough that to pour out li­quor at a per­son’s feet had grown through cus­tom to be a mark of re­spect, but that drink­ing it seemed to me mere self-in­dul­gence, which might be prac­tised any­where.

“You still keep to the old aus­tere teach­ings,” she said. “Our newer code bids us en­joy life first, and or­der other things so as not to meddle with our more im­me­di­ate pleas­ure.”

And so the feast went on, the guests prac­tising their glut­ton­ies and their ab­surdit­ies, and the guards stand­ing to their arms round the cir­cuit of the walls as mo­tion­less and as stern as the statues carven in the white stone bey­ond them. But a term was put to the orgy with some­thing of sud­den­ness. There was a stir at the farther door­way of the ban­quet­ing-hall, and a clash, as two of the guards joined their spears across the en­trance. But the man they tried to stop—or per­haps it was to pin—passed them un­harmed, and walked up over the pave­ment between the lights, and the groups of feasters. All looked round at him; a few threw him rib­ald words; but none ven­tured to stop his pro­gress. A few, wo­men chiefly, I could see, shuddered as he passed them by, as though a wintry chill had come over them; and in the end he walked up and stood in front of Phorenice’s di­van, and gazed fix­edly on her, but without mak­ing obeis­ance.

He was a frail old man, with white hair tum­bling on his shoulders, and ragged white beard. The mud of way­far­ing hung in clots on his feet and legs. His wizened body was bare save for a single cloth wound about his shoulders and his loins, and he car­ried in his hand a wand with the sym­bol of our Lord the Sun glow­ing at its tip. That wand went to show his caste, but in no other way could I re­cog­nize him.

I took him for one of those as­cet­ics of the Priests’ Clan, who had forsworn the steady nur­tured life of the Sacred Moun­tain, and who lived out in the dan­ger­ous lands amongst the burn­ing hills, where there is daily peril from fall­ing rocks, from fire streams, from evil va­pours, from sud­den fis­sur­ing of the ground, and from other move­ments of those un­stable ter­rit­or­ies, and from the greater liz­ards and other mon­strous beasts which haunt them. These keep con­stant in the memory the might of the Holy Gods, and the in­sec­ur­ity of this frail earth on which we have our rest­ing-place, and so the so­journ­ers there be­come chastened in the spirit, and gain power over mys­ter­ies which even the most stu­di­ous and learned of other men can never hope to at­tain.

A si­lence filled the room when the old man came to his halt, and Phorenice was the first to break it. “Those two guards,” she said, in her clear, car­ry­ing voice, “who held the door, are not equal to their work. I can­not have im­per­fect ser­vants; re­move them.”

The sol­diers next in the rank lif­ted their spears and drove them home, and the two fel­lows who had ad­mit­ted the old man fell to the ground. One shrieked once, the other gave no sound: they were clever thrusts both.

The old man found his voice, thin, and high, and broken. “Another crime ad­ded to your tally, Phorenice. Not half your army could have hindered my en­trance had I wished to come, and let me tell you that I am here to bring you your last warn­ing. The Gods have shown you much fa­vour; they gave you merit by which you could rise above your fel­lows, till at last only the throne stood above you. It was seen good by those on the Sacred Moun­tain to let you have this last am­bi­tion, and sit on this throne that has as long and hon­our­ably been filled by the an­cient kings of At­lantis.”

The Em­press sat back on the di­van smil­ing. “I seemed to get these things as I chose, and in spite of your friends’ teeth. I may owe to you, old man, a small par­cel of thanks, though that I offered to re­pay; but for my lords the priests, their per­mis­sion was of small enough value when it came. I would have you re­mem­ber that I was as firm on the throne of At­lantis as this pyr­amid stands upon its base when your worn-out priests came up to give their tot­ter­ing be­ne­dic­tion.”

The old man waved aside her in­ter­rup­tion. “Hear me out,” he said. “I am here with no trivial mes­sage. There is noth­ing paltry about the threat I can throw at you, Phorenice. With your fire-tubes, your hand­ling of troops, and your other fiendish clev­ernesses, you may not be easy to over­throw by mere hu­man means, though, for­sooth, these poor rebels who yap against your city walls have con­trived to hold their ground for long enough now. It may be that you are be­com­ing en­er­vated; I do not know. It may be that you are too wrapped up in your feast­ings, your dress­ings, your pomps, and your de­baucher­ies, to find leis­ure to turn to the art of war. It may be that the man’s spirit has gone out from your arm and brain, and you are a wo­man once more—weak, and pleas­ure-lov­ing; again I do not know.

“But this must hap­pen: You must undo the evil you have done; you must give bread to the people who are starving, even if you take it from these glut­tons in this hall; you must re­store At­lantis to the state in which it was en­trus­ted to you: or else you must be re­moved. It can­not be per­mit­ted that the coun­try should sink back into the law­less­ness and bar­bar­ism from which its an­cient kings have digged it. You hear, Phorenice. Now give me true an­swer.”

“Speak him fair. Oh! For the sake of your for­tune, speak him fair,” came Ylga’s voice in a hur­ried whis­per from be­hind us. But the Em­press took no no­tice of it. She leaned for­ward on the cush­ions of the di­van with a knit brow.

“Do you dare to threaten me, old man, know­ing what I am?”

“I know your ori­gin,” he said gravely, “as well as you know it your­self. As for my dar­ing, that is a small mat­ter. He need be but a timid man who dares to say words that the High Gods put on his lips.”

“I shall rule this king­dom as I choose. I shall brook in­ter­fer­ence from no creature on this earth, or be­neath it, or in the sky above. The Gods have chosen me to be Their re­gent in At­lantis, and They do not de­pose me through such creatures as you. Go away, old man, and play the fan­atic in an­other court. It is well that I have an an­cient kind­li­ness for you, or you would not leave this place un­harmed.”

“Now, in­deed, you are lost,” I heard Ylga mur­mur from be­hind, and the old man in front of us did not move a step. In­stead, he lif­ted up the Sym­bol of our Lord the Sun, and launched his curse. “Your blas­phemy gives the reply I asked for. Hear me now make de­clar­a­tion of war on be­half of Those against whom you have thrown your in­sults. You shall be over­thrown and sent to the nether Gods. At whatever cost the land shall be purged of you and yours, and all the evil that has been done to it whilst you have sul­lied the throne of its an­cient kings. You will not amend, neither will you yield tamely. You vaunt that you sit as firm on your throne as this pyr­amid re­poses on its base. See how little you know of what the fu­ture car­ries. I say to you that, whilst you are yet Em­press, you shall see this royal pyr­amid which you have pol­luted with your de­baucher­ies torn tier from tier, and stone from stone, and scattered as feath­ers spread be­fore a wind.”

“You may wreck the pyr­amid,” said Phorenice con­temp­tu­ously. “I my­self have some know­ledge of the earth forces, as I have shown this night. But though you crumble every stone above us now and grind it into grit and dust, I shall still be Em­press. What force can you crazy priests bring against me that I can­not throw back and des­troy?”

“We have a weapon that was forged in no mor­tal smithy,” shrilled the old man, “whereof the key is now lodged in the Ark of the Mys­ter­ies. But that weapon can be used only as a last re­source. The nature of it even is too aw­ful to be told in words. Our other powers will be launched against you first, and for this poor coun­try’s sake I pray that they may cause you to wince. Yet rest as­sured, Phorenice, that we shall not step aside once we have put a hand to this mat­ter. We shall carry it through, even though the cost be a uni­ver­sal burn­ing and de­struc­tion. For know this, daugh­ter of the swine­herd, it is agreed amongst the most High Gods that you are too full of sin to con­tinue un­checked.”

“Speak him fairly,” Ylga urged from be­hind. “He has a power at which you can­not even guess.”

The Em­press made to rise, but Ylga clung to her skirt. “For the sake of your fame,” she urged, “for the sake of your life, do not defy him.” But Phorenice struck her fiercely aside, and faced the old man in a tu­mult of pas­sion. “You dare call me a blas­phemer, who blas­pheme your­self? You dare cast slurs upon my birth, who am come dir­ect from the most high Heaven? Old man, your crazi­ness pro­tects you in part, but not in all. You shall be whipped. Do you hear me? I say, whipped. The lean flesh shall be scourged from your scraggy bones, and you shall tot­ter away from this place as a red and bleed­ing ex­ample for those who would dare tra­duce their Em­press. Here, some of you, I say, take that man, and let him be whipped where he stands.”

Her cry went out clearly enough. But not a soul amongst those glit­ter­ing feasters stirred in his place. Not a sol­dier amongst the guards stepped from his rank. The place was hung in a ter­rible si­lence. It seemed as though no one within the hall dared so much as to draw a breath. All felt that the very air was big with fate.

Phorenice, with her head crouched for­ward, looked from one group to an­other. Her face was work­ing. “Have I no true ser­vants,” she asked, “amongst all you pretty lip-serv­ers?”

Still no one moved. They stood, or sat, or crouched like people fas­cin­ated. For my­self, with the first words he had uttered, I had re­cog­nized the old man by his voice. It was Zae­mon, the weak gov­ernor who had given the Em­press her first step to­wards power; that earn­est searcher into the mys­ter­ies, who knew more of their powers, and more about the hid­den forces, than any other dweller on the Sacred Moun­tain, even at that time when I left for my colony. And now, dur­ing his strange her­mit life, how much more might he not have learned? I was torn by war­ring du­ties. I owed much to the Priests’ Clan, by reason of my oath and mem­ber­ship; it seemed I owed no less to Phorenice. And, again, was Zae­mon the truly ac­cred­ited en­voy of the high coun­cil of the priests of the Sacred Moun­tain? And was the Em­press of a truth de­posed by the High Gods above, or was she still Em­press, and still the com­mander of my duty? I could not tell, and so I sat in my seat await­ing what the event would sow.

Phorenice’s fury was grow­ing. “Do I stand alone here?” she cried. “Have I pampered you creatures out of all touch with grat­it­ude? It seems that at last I want a new chief to my guards. Ho! Who will be chief of the guards of the Em­press?”

There was a shift­ing of eyes, a hes­it­a­tion. Then a great burly form strode up from the farther end of the hall, and a per­cept­ible shud­der went up from all the oth­ers as they watched him.

“So, Tarca, you prefer to take the risks, and re­main chief of the guard your­self?” she said with an angry scoff. “Truly there did not seem to be many thrust­ing for­ward to strip you of the of­fice. I shall have a fine sort­ing up of places in pay­ment for this night’s work. But for the present, Tarca, do your duty.”

The man came up, ob­vi­ously timor­ous. He was a solidly made fel­low, but not al­to­gether un­mar­tial, and though but little of his cheek showed above his dec­or­ated beard, I could see that he paled as he came near to the priest. “My lord,” he said quietly, “I must ask you to come with me.”

“Stand aside,” said the old man, thrust­ing out the Sym­bol in front of him. I could see his eyes gather on the sol­dier and his brows knit with a strain of will.

Tarca saw this too, and I thought he would have fallen, but with an ef­fort he kept his man­hood, and dog­gedly re­peated his sum­mons. “I must obey the com­mand of my mis­tress, and I would have you re­mem­ber, my lord, that I am but a ser­vant. You must come with me to the whip.”

“I warn you!” cried the old man. “Stand from out of my path, you!”

It must have been with the cour­age of des­per­a­tion that the sol­dier dared to use force. But the hand he stretched out dropped limply back to his side the mo­ment it touched the old man’s bare shoulder, as though it had been struck by some shock. He seemed al­most to have ex­pec­ted some such re­pulse; yet when he picked up that hand with the other, and looked at it, and saw its white­ness, he let out of him a yell like a wounded beast. “Oh, Gods!” he cried. “Not that. Spare me!”

But Zae­mon was glower­ing at him still. A twitch­ing seized the man’s face, and he put up his sound hand to it and plucked at his beard, which was curled and plaited after the new fash­ion of the day. A wo­man stand­ing near screamed as the half of the beard came off in his fin­gers. Beneath was sil­ver white­ness over half his face. Zae­mon had smit­ten him with a sud­den lep­rosy that was past cure.

Yet the pun­ish­ment was not ended even then. Other twitch­ings took him on other parts of the body, and he tore off his ar­mour and his fop­pish clothes, and al­ways where the bare flesh showed, there had the hor­rid plague writ­ten its white mark; and in the end, be­ing able to en­dure no more, the man fell to the pave­ment and lay there writh­ing.

Zae­mon said no fur­ther word. He lif­ted the Sym­bol be­fore him, set his eyes on the farther door of the ban­quet­ing-hall and walked for it dir­ectly, all those in his path shrink­ing away from him with open shud­ders. And through the valves of the door he passed out of our sight, still word­less, still un­checked.

I glanced up at Phorenice. The love­li­ness of her face was drawn and hag­gard. It was the first great re­verse, this, she had met with in all her life, and the shock of it, and the vis­ion of what might fol­low after, dazed her. Alas, if she could only have guessed at a tenth of the ter­rors which the fu­ture had in its womb, At­lantis might have been saved even then.

VI The Biters of the City Walls

Here then was the man­ner of my re­cep­tion back in the cap­ital of At­lantis, and some first glimpse at her new policies. I freely con­fess to my own in­ac­tion and limp­ness; but it was all de­lib­er­ate. The old ties of duty seemed lost, or at least merged in one an­other. Be­fore­time, to serve the king was to serve the Clan of the Priests, from which he had been chosen, and whose head he con­sti­tuted. But Phorenice was self-made, and ap­peared to be a rule unto her­self; if Zae­mon was to be trus­ted, he was the mouth­piece of the Priests, and their Clan had set her at de­fi­ance; and how was a mere hon­est man to choose on the in­stant between the two?

But cold ar­gu­ment told me that gov­ern­ments were set up for the good of the coun­try at large, and I said to my­self that there would be my choice. I must find out which rule prom­ised best of At­lantis, and do my poor best to prop it into full power. And here at once there opened up an­other path in the maze: I had heard some con­sid­er­able talk of rebels; of an­other fac­tion of At­lanteans who, whatever their faults might be, were at any rate strong enough to be­lea­guer the cap­ital; and be­fore com­ing to any fi­nal de­cision, it would be as well to take their claims in bal­ance with the rest. So on the night of that very same day on which I had just re­planted my foot on the old coun­try’s shores, I set out to glean for my­self tid­ings on the mat­ter.

No one in­side the royal pyr­amid gain­said me. The ban­quet had ended ab­ruptly with the ter­rible scene that I have set down above on these tab­lets, for with Tarca writh­ing on the floor, and thrust­ing out the grue­some scars of his lep­rosy, even the most glut­ton­ous had little enough ap­pet­ite for fur­ther gor­ging. Phorenice glowered on the feasters for a while longer in si­lent fury, but say­ing no fur­ther word; and then her eyes turned on me, though softened some­what.

“You may be an hon­est man, Deu­calion,” she said, at length, “but you are a mon­strous cold one. I won­der when you will thaw?” And here she smiled. “I think it will be soon. But for now I bid you farewell. In the morn­ing we will take this coun­try by the shoulders, and see it in some new or­der.”

She left the ban­quet­ing-hall then, Ylga fol­low­ing; and tak­ing pre­ced­ence of my rank, I went out next, whilst all oth­ers stood and made sa­luta­tion. But I hal­ted by Tarca first, and put my hand on his un­clean flesh. “You are an un­for­tu­nate man,” I said, “but I can ad­mire a brave sol­dier. If re­lief can be gained for your plague, I will use in­terest to pro­cure it for you.”

The man’s thanks came in a mumble from his wrecked mouth, and some of those near shuddered in af­fected dis­gust. I turned on them with a black brow: “Your char­ity, my lords, seems of as small ac­count as your cour­age. You af­fected a fine dis­be­lief of Zae­mon’s say­ings, and a sim­per­ing con­tempt for his priest­hood, but when it comes to lay­ing a hand on him, you show a dis­cre­tion which, in the old days, we should have called by an ugly name. I had rather be Tarca, with all his un­clean­ness, than any of you now as you stand.”

With which leave-tak­ing I waited coldly till they gave me my due sa­luta­tion, and then walked out of the ban­quet­ing-hall without of­fer­ing a soul an­other glance. I took my way to the grand gate of the pyr­amid, called for the of­ficer of the guard, and de­man­ded exit. The man was ob­sequious enough, but he opened with some de­mur.

“My lord’s at­tend­ants have not yet come up?”

“I have none.”

“My lord knows the state of the streets?”

“I did twenty years back. I shall be able to pick my way.”

“My lord must re­mem­ber that the city is be­lea­guered,” the fel­low per­sisted. “The people are hungry. They prowl in bands after night­fall, and—I make no ques­tion that my lord would con­quer in a fight against whatever odds, but—”

“Quite right. I covet no street scuffle to­night. Lend me, I pray you, a suf­fi­ciency of men. You will know best what are needed. For me, I am ac­cus­tomed to a city with quiet streets.”

A score of sturdy fel­lows were de­tailed off for my es­cort, and with them in a double file on either hand, I marched out from the close per­fumed air of the pyr­amid into the cool moon­light of the city. It was my pur­pose to make a tour of the walls and to find out some­what of the dis­pos­i­tion of these rebels.

But the Gods saw fit to give me an­other edu­ca­tion first. The city, as I saw it dur­ing that night walk, was no longer the old cap­ital that I had known, the just ac­cre­tion of the ages, the due ad­mix­ture of com­fort and splend­our. The splend­our was there, vastly in­creased. Whole wards had been swept away to make space for new palaces, and new pyr­am­ids of the wealthy, and I could not but have an ad­mir­a­tion for the skill and the brain which made pos­sible such splen­did monu­ments.

And, in­deed, gaz­ing at them there un­der the sil­ver of the moon­light, I could al­most un­der­stand the emo­tions of the Europeans and other bar­bar­ous sav­ages which cause them to wor­ship all such great build­ings as Gods, since they deem them too won­der­ful and majestic to be set up by hu­man hands un­aided.

Still, if it was easy to ad­mire, it was simple also to see plain ad­vert­ise­ment of the cost at which these great works had been reared. From each grant of ground, where one of these stately piles earned sil­ver un­der the moon, a hun­dred fam­il­ies had been evicted and left to har­bour as they pleased in the open; and, as a con­sequence, now every niche had its quota of sleep­ers, and every shadow its squad of fierce wild creatures, ready to rush out and rob or slay all way­farers of less force than their own.

My­self, I am no pam­perer of the com­mon people. I say that, if a man be left to hun­ger and shiver, he will work to gain him food and raiment; and if not, why then he can die, and the State is well rid of a worth­less fel­low. But here be­side us, as we marched through many wards, were marks of blind op­pres­sion; starved dead bod­ies, with the bones start­ing through the lean skin, sprawled in the gut­ter; and in­deed it was plain that, save for the fa­voured few, the people of the great cap­ital were un­der a most heavy op­pres­sion.

But at this, though I might re­gret it ab­om­in­ably, I could make no strong com­plaint. By the an­cient law of the land all the people, great and small, were the ser­vants of the king, to be put without ques­tion to what pur­poses he chose; and Phorenice stood in the place of the king. So I tried to think no treason, but with a sigh passed on, keep­ing my eyes above the miser­ies and the squal­ors of the road­way, and send­ing out my thoughts to the stars which hung in the purple night above, and to the High Gods which dwelt amongst them, seek­ing, if it might be, for guid­ance for my fu­ture policies. And so in time the wind­ings of the streets brought us to the walls, and, cours­ing be­side these and giv­ing fit­ting an­swer to the sentries who beat their drums as we passed, we came in time to that great gate which was a charge to the cap­tain of the gar­rison.

Here it was plain there was some spe­cial com­mo­tion. A noise of laughter went up into the still night air, and with it now and again the snarl and roar of a great beast, and now and again the shriek of a hurt man. But whatever might be afoot, it was not a scene to come upon sud­denly. The en­trance gates of our great cap­ital were de­signed by their an­cient build­ers to be no less strong than the walls them­selves. Four pairs of valves were there, each a mon­strous block of stone two man-heights square, and a man-height thick, and the wall was doubled to re­ceive them, en­clos­ing an open cir­cus between its two parts. The four gates them­selves were set one at the in­ner, one at the outer side of each of these walls, and a hid­den ma­chinery so con­nec­ted them, that of each set one could not open till the other was closed; and as for for­cing them without war en­gines, one might as fool­ishly try to push down the royal pyr­amid with the bare hand.

My es­cort made out­cry with the horn which hung from the wall in­vit­ing such a sum­mons, and a warder came to an ar­row-slit, and did in­spec­tion of our per­sons and busi­ness. His sur­vey was ac­cord­ing to the an­cient form of words, which is long, and this was made still more te­di­ous by the noise from within, which ever and again drowned all speech between us en­tirely.

But at last the form­al­it­ies had been duly com­plied with, and he shot back the massive bars and bolts of stone, and threw ajar one mon­strous stone valve of the door. Into the cham­ber within—a cham­ber made from the thick­ness of the wall between the two doors—I and my fel­lows crowded, and then the warder with his ma­chines pulled to the valve which had been opened, and came to me again through the press of my es­cort, bow­ing low to the ground.

“I have no vail to give you,” I said ab­ruptly. “Get on with your duty. Open me that other door.”

“With re­spect, my lord, it would be bet­ter that I should first an­nounce my lord’s pres­ence. There is a bait­ing go­ing for­ward in the cir­cus, and the ti­gers are as yet mere sav­ages, and no re­specters of per­sons.”

“The what?”

“The ti­gers, if my lord will per­mit them the name. They are bait­ing a batch of pris­on­ers with the two great beasts which the Em­press (whose name be ad­ored) has sent here to aid us keep the gate. But if my lord will, there are the ward rooms lead­ing off this pas­sage, and the gal­ler­ies which run out from them com­mand­ing the cir­cus, and from there my lord can see the sport un­dis­turbed.”

Now, the mere lust for killing ex­cites only dis­gust in me, but I sus­pec­ted the or­ders of the Em­press in this mat­ter, and had a curi­os­ity to see her scheme. So I stepped into the warder’s lodge, and on into the gal­ler­ies which com­manded the cir­cus with their ar­row-slits. The old build­ers of the place had in­ten­ded these for a second line of de­fence, for, sup­pos­ing the outer doors all forced, an en­emy could be speedily shot down in the cir­cus, without be­ing able to give a blow in re­turn, and so would only march into a deathtrap. But as a gaz­ing-place on a spec­tacle they were no less use­ful.

The cir­cus was bright lit by the moon­light, and the air which came in to me from it was ac­rid with the reek of blood. There was no sport in what was go­ing for­ward: as I said, it was mere killing, and the sight dis­gus­ted me. I am no prude about this mat­ter. Give a pris­oner his weapons, put him in a pit with beasts of reas­on­able strength, and let him fight to a fin­ish if you choose, and I can look on there and ap­plaud the strokes. The war pris­oner, be­ing a pris­oner, has earned death by nat­ural law, and prefers to get his last stroke in hot blood than to be knocked down by the heads­man’s axe. And it is any brave man’s lux­ury either to help or watch a lusty fight. But this bait­ing in the cir­cus between the gates was no fair battle like that.

To be­gin with, the beasts were no fair ant­ag­on­ists for single men. In fact, twenty men armed might well have fled from them. When the warder said ti­gers, I sup­posed he meant the great cats of the woods. But here, in the cir­cus, I saw a pair of the most ter­rific of all the fur-bear­ing land beasts, the great ti­gers of the caves—huge mon­sters, of such pon­der­ous strength that in hun­ger they will of­ten­times drag down a mam­moth, if they can find him away from his herd.

How they had been brought cap­tive I could not tell. Hunter of beasts though I had been for all my days, I take no shame in say­ing that I al­ways ap­proached the slay­ing of a cave-ti­ger with stratagem and in­fin­ite cau­tion. To en­trap it alive and bring it to a city on a chain was bey­ond my most dar­ing schemes, and I have been ac­cred­ited with more new things than one. But here it was in fact, and I saw in these cap­tive beasts a new cer­ti­fic­ate for Phorenice’s genius.

The pur­pose of these two cave-ti­gers was plain: whilst they were in the cir­cus, and loose, no liv­ing be­ing could cross from one gate to the other. They were a new and sturdy ad­di­tion to the de­fences of the cap­ital. A col­lar of bronze was round the throat of each, and on the col­lar was a massive chain which led to the wall, where it could be payed out or hauled in by means of a wind­lass in one of the hid­den gal­ler­ies. So that at or­din­ary mo­ments the two huge beasts could be tethered, one close to either end of the cir­cus, as the lit­ter of bones and other messes showed, leav­ing free pas­sage­way between the two sets of doors.

But when I stood there by the ar­row-slit, look­ing down into the moon­light of the cir­cus, these chains were slackened (though men stood by the wind­lass of each), and the great striped brutes were prowl­ing about the cir­cus with the links clank­ing and chink­ing in their wake. Ly­ing stark on the pave­ment were the bod­ies of some eight men, dead and un­eaten; and though the cave-ti­gers stopped their prowl­ings now and again to nuzzle these, and beat them about with play­ful paw-blows, they made no pre­tence at com­men­cing a meal. It was clear that this cruel sport had grown com­mon to them, and they knew there were other vic­tims yet to be ad­ded to the tally.

Presently, sure enough, as I watched, a valve of the farther gate swung back an arm’s length, and a pris­oner, furi­ously res­ist­ing, was thrust out into the cir­cus. He fell on his face, and after one look around him he lay res­ol­utely still, with eyes on the ground pass­ively await­ing his fate. The pon­der­ous stone of the gate clapped to in its place; the cave-ti­gers turned in their prowl­ings; and a chat­ter of wagers ran to and fro amongst the watch­ers be­hind the ar­row-slits.

It seemed there were niceties of cruelty in this wretched game. There was a sharp clank as the wind­lasses were manned, and the teth­er­ing chains were drawn in by per­haps a score of links. One of the cave-ti­gers crouched, lashed its tail, and launched forth on a ter­rific spring. The chain tautened, the massive links sang to the strain, and the great beast gave a roar which shook the walls. It had missed the prone man by a hand’s breadth, and the watch­ers be­hind the ar­row-slits shrieked forth their de­light. The other ti­ger sprang also and missed, and again there were shouts of pleas­ure, which mingled with the bel­low­ing voices of the beasts. The man lay mo­tion­less in his form. One more cow­ardly, or one more brave, might have run from death, or faced it; but this poor pris­oner chose the middle course—he per­mit­ted death to come to him, and had enough of dog­ged­ness to wait for it without stir.

The great cave-ti­gers were used, it ap­peared, to this dis­gust­ing sport. There were no more wild springs, no more stub­bings at the end of the massive chains. They lay down on the pave­ment, and presently began to purr, rolling on to their sides and rub­bing them­selves lux­uri­ously. The pris­oner still lay mo­tion­less in his form.

By slow de­grees the mon­strous brutes each drew to the end of its chain and began to reach at the man with out­stretched fore­paw. The male could not touch him; the fe­male could just reach him with the far tip of a claw; and I saw a red scratch start up in the bare skin of his side at every stroke. But still the pris­oner would not stir. It seemed to me that they must slack out more links of one of the ti­gers’ chains, or let the vile play linger into mere te­di­ous­ness.

But I had more to learn yet. The male ti­ger, either taught by his own dev­il­ish­ness, or by those brutes that were his keep­ers, had still an­other ruse in store. He rose to his feet and turned round, back­ing against the chain. A yell of ap­plause from the hid­den men be­hind the ar­row-slits told that they knew what was in store; and then the mon­strous beast, stretched to the ut­most of its vast length, kicked sharply with one hind paw.

I heard the crunch of the pris­oner’s ribs as the pads struck him, and at that same mo­ment the poor wretch’s body was spurned away by the blow, as one might throw a fruit with the hand. But it did not travel far. It was clear that the she-ti­ger knew this man­oeuvre of her mate’s. She caught the man on his bound, nuzz­ling over him for a minute, and then toss­ing him high into the air, and leap­ing up to the full of her splen­did height after him.

Those other on­look­ers thought it mag­ni­fi­cent; their glee­ful shouts said as much. But for me, my gorge rose at the sight. Once the ti­gers had reached him, the man had been killed, it is true, without any un­ne­ces­sary linger­ing. Even a light blow from those ter­rific paws would slay the strongest man liv­ing. But to see the two cave-ti­gers toy­ing with the poor body was an in­sult to the pride of our race.

However, I was not there to preach the su­peri­or­ity of man to the beasts, and the in­de­cency and de­grad­a­tion of per­mit­ting man to be un­duly in­sul­ted. I had come to learn for my­self the new bal­ance of things in the king­dom of At­lantis, and so I stood at my place be­hind the ar­row-slit with a still face. And presently an­other scene in this ghastly play was en­acted.

The cave-ti­gers tired of their sport, and first one and then the other fell once more to prowl­ing over the littered pave­ments, with the heavy chains scrap­ing and chink­ing in their wake. They made no be­gin­ning to feast on the bod­ies provided for them. That would be for af­ter­wards. In the present, the fas­cin­a­tion of slaughter was big in them, and they had thought that it would be in­dulged fur­ther. It seemed that they knew their en­ter­tain­ers.

Again the wind­lass clanked, and the teth­er­ing chains drew the great beasts clear of the door­way; and again a valve of the farther door swung ajar, and an­other pris­oner was thrust strug­gling into the cir­cus. A sick­ness seized me when I saw that this was a wo­man, but still, in view of the ob­ject I had in hand, I made no in­ter­rup­tion.

It was not that I had never seen wo­men sent to death be­fore. A gen­eral, who has done his fight­ing, must in his day have killed wo­men equally with men; yes, and seen them earn their deathblow by lusty bat­tling. Yet there seemed some­thing so wan­ton in this cruel help­less sac­ri­fice of a wo­man pris­oner, that I had a struggle with my­self to avoid in­ter­fer­ence. Still it is ever the case that the in­di­vidual must be sac­ri­ficed to a policy, and so as I say, I watched on, out­wardly cold and im­pass­ive.

I watched too (I con­fess it freely) with a quick­en­ing heart. Here was no sul­len sub­missive vic­tim like the last. She may have been more cow­ardly (as some wo­men are), she may have been braver (as many wo­men have shown them­selves); but, at any rate, it was clear that she was go­ing to make a struggle for her life, and to do vi­cious dam­age, it might be, be­fore she yiel­ded it up. The watch­ers be­hind the ar­row-slits re­cog­nized this. Their wagers, and the hum of their ap­pre­ci­ation, swept loudly round the ring of the cir­cus.

They stripped their pris­on­ers, be­fore they thrust them out to this death, of all the clothes they might carry, for clothes have a value; and so the wo­man stood there bare-limbed in the moon­light.

She clapped her back to the great stone door by which she had entered, and faced fate with glow­ing eye. Gods! there have been times in early years when I could have plucked out sword and jumped down, and fought for her there for the sheer de­light of such a battle. But now policy re­strained me. The in­di­vidual might want a help­ing hand, but it was be­com­ing more and more clear that At­lantis wanted a min­is­ter also; and be­fore these great needs, the lesser ones per­force must per­ish. Still, be it noted that, if I did not jump down, no other man there that night had suf­fi­cient man­hood re­main­ing to ven­ture the op­por­tun­ity.

My heart glowed as I watched her. She picked a bone from the lit­ter on the pave­ment and beat off its head by blows against the wall. Then with her teeth she fash­ioned the point to still fur­ther sharp­ness. I could see her teeth glisten white in the moon­rays as she bit with them.

The huge cave-ti­gers, which stood as high as her head as they walked, came nearer to her in their prowl­ings, yet ob­vi­ously neg­lected her. This was part of their ac­cus­tomed scheme of tor­ment, and the wo­man knew it well. There was some­thing in­tol­er­able in their noise­less, cease­less pad­dings over the pave­ment. I could see the pris­oner’s breast heave as she watched them. A ter­ror such as that would have made many a vic­tim sick and help­less.

But this one was bolder than I had thought. She did not wait for a spring: she made the first at­tack her­self. When the she-ti­ger made its stroll to­wards her, and was in the act of turn­ing, she flung her­self into a sud­den leap, strik­ing vi­ciously at its eye with her sharpened bone. A roar from the on­look­ers ac­know­ledged the stroke. The cave-ti­ger’s eye re­mained un­darkened, but the puny weapon had dealt it a smart flesh wound, and with a great bel­low of sur­prise and pain it scampered away to gain space for a rush and a spring.

But the wo­man did not await its charge. With a shrill scream she sped for­ward, run­ning at the full of her speed across the moon­light dir­ectly to­wards that shad­owed part of the en­circ­ling wall within whose thick­ness I had my gaz­ing place; and then, throw­ing every ten­don of her body into the spring, made the greatest leap that surely any hu­man be­ing ever ac­com­plished, even when spurred on by the ut­most of ter­ror and des­per­a­tion. In an after day I meas­ured it, and though of a cer­tainty she must have ad­ded much to the tally by the sheer force of her run, which drove her cling­ing up the rough sur­face of the wall, it is a sure thing that in that splen­did leap her feet must have dangled a man-height and a half above the pave­ment.

I say it was prodi­gious, but then the spur was more than the or­din­ary, and the wo­man her­self was far out of the com­mon both in thews and in­tel­li­gence; and the end of the leap left her with five fin­gers lodged in the sill of the ar­row-slit from which I watched. Even then she must have slipped back if she had been left to her­self, for the sill sloped, and the stone was finely smooth; but I shot out my hand and gripped hers by the wrist, and in­stantly she clambered up with both knees on the sills, and her fin­gers twined round to grip my wrist in her turn.

And now you will sup­pose she gushed out pray­ers and prom­ises, think­ing only of safety and en­large­ment. There was noth­ing of this. With sav­age pant­ing word­less­ness she took fresh grip on the sharpened bone with her spare hand, and lunged with it des­per­ately through the ar­row-slit. With the hand that clutched mine she drew me to­wards her, so as to give the blows the surer chance, and so un­pre­pared was I for such an at­tack, and with such fierce sud­den­ness did she de­liver it, that the first blow was near giv­ing me my quietus. But I grappled with the poor frantic creature as gently as might be—the stone of the wall sep­ar­at­ing us al­ways—and stripped her of her weapon, and held her firmly cap­tive till she might calm her­self.

“That was an un­grate­ful blow,” I said. “But for my hand you’d have slipped and be the sport of a ti­ger’s paw this minute.”

“Oh, I must kill someone,” she panted, “be­fore I am killed my­self.”

“There will be time enough to think upon that some other day; but for now you are far enough off meet­ing fur­ther harm.”

“You are ly­ing to me. You will throw me to the beasts as soon as I loose my grip. I know your kind: you will not be robbed of your sport.”

“I will go so far as to prove my­self to you,” said I, and called out for the warder who had ten­ded the doors be­low. “Bid those ti­gers be tethered on a shorter chain,” I ordered, “and then go your­self out­side into the cir­cus, and help this lady del­ic­ately to the ground.”

The word was passed and these things were done; and I too came out into the cir­cus and joined the wo­man, who stood wait­ing un­der the moon­light. But the oth­ers who had seen these do­ings were by no means suited at the change of plan. One of the great stone valves of the farther door opened hur­riedly, and a man strode out, armed and flushed. “By all the Gods!” he shouted. “Who comes between me and my pas­time?”

I stepped quietly to the ad­vance. “I fear, sir,” I said, “that you must launch your an­ger against me. By ac­ci­dent I gave that wo­man sanc­tu­ary, and I had not heart to toss her back to your beasts.”

His fin­gers began to snap against his hilt.

“You have come to the wrong mar­ket here with your qualms. I am cap­tain here, and my word car­ries, sub­ject only to Phorenice’s nod. Do you hear that? Do you know too that I can have you tossed to those striped gate­keep­ers of mine for med­dling in here without an in­vit­a­tion?” He looked at me sharp enough, but saw plainly that I was a stranger. “But per­haps you carry a name, my man, which war­rants your im­per­tin­ence?”

“Deu­calion is my poor name,” I said, “but I can­not ex­pect you will know it. I am but newly landed here, sir, and when I left At­lantis some score of years back, a very dif­fer­ent man to you held guard over these gates.” He had his fore­head on my feet by this time. “I had it from the Em­press this night that she will to­mor­row make a new sort­ing of this king­dom’s dig­nit­ies. Per­haps there is some re­com­mend­a­tion you would wish me to lay be­fore her in re­turn for your cour­tes­ies?”

“My lord,” said the man, “if you wish it, I can have a turn with those cave-ti­gers my­self now, and you can look on from be­hind the walls and see them tear me.”

“Why tell me what is no news?”

“I wish to re­mind my lord of his power; I wish to beg of his clem­ency.”

“You showed your power to these poor pris­on­ers; but from what re­mains here to be seen, few of them have tasted much of your clem­ency.”

“The or­ders were,” said the cap­tain of the gate, as though he thought a word might be said here for his de­fence, “the or­ders were, my lord, that the ti­gers should be kept fierce and ac­cus­tomed to killing.”

“Then, if you have obeyed or­ders, let me be the last to chide you. But it is my pleas­ure that this wo­man be res­pited, and I wish now to ques­tion her.”

The man got to his feet again with ob­vi­ous re­lief, though still bow­ing low.

“Then if my lord will hon­our me by sit­ting in my room that over­looks the outer gate, the fa­vour will never be for­got­ten.”

“Show the way,” I said, and took the wo­man by the fin­gers, lead­ing her gently. At the two ends of the cir­cus the ti­gers prowled about on short chains, growl­ing and mut­ter­ing.

We passed through the door into the thick­ness of the outer wall, and the cap­tain of the gate led us into his private cham­ber, a snug enough box over­look­ing the plain bey­ond the city. He lit a torch from his lamp and thrust it into a bracket on the wall, and bow­ing deeply and walk­ing back­wards, left us alone, clos­ing the door in place be­hind him. He was an in­dus­tri­ous fel­low, this cap­tain, to judge from the spoil with which his cham­ber was packed. There could have come very few traders in through that gate be­low without his levy­ing a private trib­ute; and so, judging that most of his goods had been un­law­fully come by, I had little qualm at mak­ing a se­lec­tion. It was not de­cent that the wo­man, be­ing an At­lantean, should go bereft of the dig­nity of clothes, as though she were a mere sav­age from Europe; and so I sought about amongst the cap­tain’s spoil for gar­ments that would be be­fit­ting.

But, as I busied my­self in this search for raiment, rum­ma­ging amongst the heaps and bales, with a hand and eye little skilled in such busi­ness, I heard a sound be­hind which caused me to turn my head, and there was the wo­man with a dag­ger she had picked from the floor, in the act of draw­ing it from the sheath.

She caught my eye and drew the weapon clear, but see­ing that I made no ad­vance to­wards her, or move to pro­tect my­self, waited where she was, and presently was took with a shud­der­ing.

“Your designs seem some­what of a riddle,” I said. “At first you wished to kill me from motives which you ex­plained, and which I quite un­der­stood. It lay in my power next to con­fer some small be­ne­fit upon you, in con­sequence of which you are here, and not—shall we say?—yon­der in the cir­cus. Why you should de­sire now to kill the only man here who can set you com­pletely free, and bey­ond these walls, is a thing it would grat­ify me much to learn. I say noth­ing of the trifle of in­grat­it­ude. Grat­it­ude and in­grat­it­ude are of little weight here. There is some far greater in your mind.”

She pressed a hand hard against her breasts. “You are Deu­calion,” she gasped; “I heard you say it.”

“I am Deu­calion. So far, I have known no reason to feel shame for my name.”

“And I come of those,” she cried, with a rising voice, “who bite against this city, be­cause they have found their fate too in­tol­er­able with the land as it is ordered now. We heard of your com­ing from Yu­catan. It was we who sent the fleet to take you at the en­trance to the Gulf.”

“Your fleet gave us a pretty fight.”

“Oh, I know, I know. We had our watch­ers on the high land who brought us the tid­ings. We had an omen even be­fore that. Where we lay with our army be­fore the walls here, we saw great birds car­ry­ing off the slain to the moun­tains. But where the fleet failed, I saw a chance where I, a wo­man, might—”

“Where you might suc­ceed?” I sat me down on a pile of the cap­tain’s stuffs. It seemed as if here at last that I should find a solu­tion for many things. “You carry a name?” I asked.

“They call me Nais.”

“Ah,” I said, and signed to her to take the clothes that I had sought out. She was curi­ously like, so both my eyes and hear­ing said, to Ylga, the fan-girl of Phorenice, but as she had told me of no par­ent­age I asked for none then. Still her talk alone let me know that she was bred of none of the com­mon people, and I made up my mind to­wards def­in­ite un­der­stand­ing. “Nais,” I said, “you wish to kill me. At the same time I have no doubt you wish to live on your­self, if only to get credit from your people for what you have done. So here I will make a con­tract with you. Prove to me that my death is for At­lantis’ good, and I swear by our Lord the Sun to go out with you bey­ond the walls, where you can stab me and then get you gone. Or the—”

“I will not be your slave.”

“I do not ask you for ser­vice. Or else, I wished to say, I shall live so long as the High Gods wish, and do my poor best for this coun­try. And for you—I shall set you free to do your best also. So now, I pray you, speak.”

VII The Biters of the Walls (Further Account)

“You will set me free,” she said, re­gard­ing me from un­der her brows, “without any fur­ther ex­ac­tions or treaty?”

“I will set you free ex­actly on those terms,” I answered, “un­less in­deed we here de­cide that it is bet­ter for At­lantis that I should die, in which case the free­dom will be of your own tak­ing.”

“My lord plays a bold game.”

“Tut, tut,” I said.

“But I shall not hes­it­ate to take the full of my bond, un­less my the­or­ies are most clearly dis­proved to me.”

“Tut,” I said, “you wo­men, how you can play out the time need­lessly. Show me suf­fi­cient cause, and you shall kill me where and how you please. Come, be­gin the ac­cus­a­tion.”

“You are a tyr­ant.”

“At least I have not paraded my tyr­an­nies in At­lantis these twenty years. Why, Nais, I did but land yes­ter­day.”

“You will not deny you came back from Yu­catan for a pur­pose.”

“I came back be­cause I was sent for. The Em­press gives no reas­ons for her re­calls. She states her will; and we who serve her obey without ques­tion.”

“Pah, I know that old dogma.”

“If you dis­credit my poor hon­esty at the out­set like this, I fear we shall not get far with our un­rav­el­ling.”

“My lord must be in­deed simple,” said this strange wo­man scorn­fully, “if he is ig­nor­ant of what all At­lantis knows.”

“Then simple you must write me down. Over yon­der in Yu­catan we were too well wrapped up in our own pa­ro­chial needs and policies to have leis­ure to pon­der much over the slim news which drif­ted out to us from At­lantis—and, in truth, little enough came. By ex­ample, Phorenice (whose of­fice be ad­ored) is a great per­son­age here at home; but over there in the colony we barely knew so much as her name. Here, since I have been ashore, I have seen many new won­ders; I have been car­ried by a rid­ing mam­moth; I have sat at a ban­quet; but in what new policies there are afoot, I have yet to be schooled.”

“Then, if truly you do not know it, let me re­peat to you the com­mon tale. Phorenice has tired of her un­mated life.”

“Stay there. I will hear no word against the Em­press.”

“Pah, my lord, your scruples are most dec­or­ous. But I did no more than re­peat what the Em­press had made pub­lic by pro­clam­a­tion. She is minded to take to her­self a hus­band, and noth­ing short of the best is good enough for Phorenice. One after an­other has been put up in turn as fa­vour­ite—and been found want­ing. Oh, I tell you, we here in At­lantis have watched her court­ship with jump­ing hearts. First it was this one here, then it was that one there; now it was this gen­eral just re­turned from a vic­tory, and a day later he had been packed back to his camp, to give place to some dash­ing gov­ernor who had squeezed in­creased rev­en­ues from his province. But every ship that came from the West said that there was a stronger man than any of these in Yu­catan, and at last the Em­press changed the word­ing of her vow. ‘I’ll have Deu­calion for my hus­band,’ said she, ‘and then we will see who can stand against my wishes.’ ”

“The Em­press (whose name be ad­ored) can do as she pleases in such mat­ters,” I said guardedly; “but that is be­side the ar­gu­ment. I am here to know how it would be bet­ter for At­lantis that I should die?”

“You know you are the strongest man in the king­dom.”

“It pleases you to say so.”

“And Phorenice is the strongest wo­man.”

“That is bey­ond doubt.”

“Why, then, if the Em­press takes you in mar­riage, we shall be un­der a double tyranny. And her rule alone is more cruelly heavy than we can bear already.”

“I pass no cri­ti­cism on Phorenice’s rule. I have not seen it. But I crave your mercy, Nais, on the new­comer into this king­dom. I am strong, say you, and there­fore I am a tyr­ant, say you. Now to me this se­quence is faulty.”

“Who should a strong man use strength for, if not for him­self? And if for him­self, why that spells tyranny. You will get all your heart’s de­sires, my lord, and you will for­get that many a thou­sand of the com­mon people will have to pay for them.”

“And this is all your ac­cus­a­tion?”

“It seems to be black enough. I am one that has a com­pas­sion for my fel­low-men, my lord, and be­cause of that com­pas­sion you see me what I am today. There was a time, not long passed, when I slept as soft and ate as dainty as any in At­lantis.”

I smiled. “Your speech told me that much from the first.”

“Then I would I had cast the speech off, too, if that is also a liv­ery of the tyr­ant’s class. But I tell you I saw all the op­pres­sion my­self from the op­pressor’s side. I was high in Phorenice’s fa­vour then.”

“That, too, is easy of cre­dence. Ylga is the fan-girl to the Em­press now, and second lady in the king­dom, and those who have seen Ylga could make an easy guess at the par­ent­age of Nais.”

“We were the daugh­ters of one birth; but I do not count with either Zae­mon or Ylga now. Ylga is the creature of Phorenice, and Phorenice would have all the people of At­lantis slaves and in chains, so that she might crush them the easier. And as for Zae­mon, he is no friend of Phorenice’s; he fights with brain and soul to drag the old au­thor­ity to those on the Sacred Moun­tain; and that, if it come down on us again, would only be the ex­change of one form of slavery for an­other.”

“It seems to me you bite at all au­thor­ity.”

“In fact,” she said simply, “I do. I have seen too much of it.”

“And so you think a rule of no-rule would be best for the coun­try?”

“You have put it plainly in words for me. That is my creed today. That is the creed of all those yon­der, who sit in the camp and be­siege this city. And we num­ber on our side, now, all in At­lantis save those in the city and a hand­ful on the priests’ Moun­tain.”

I shook my head. “A creed of des­per­a­tion, if you like, Nais, but, be­lieve me, a silly creed. Since man was born out of the quak­ings and the fevers of this earth, and picked his way amongst the cooler-places, he has been de­pend­ent al­ways on his fel­low-men. And where two are con­greg­ated to­gether, one must be chief, and or­der how mat­ters are to be gov­erned—at least, I speak of men who have a wish to be higher than the beasts. Have you ever set foot in Europe?”

“No.”

“I have. Years back I sailed there, gath­er­ing slaves. What did I see? A coun­try without rule or or­der. Tyrants they were, to be sure, but they were the beasts. The men and the wo­men were the rudest sav­ages, know­ing noth­ing of the arts, dress­ing in skins and un­clean­ness, har­bour­ing in caves and the tree­tops. The beasts roamed about where they would, and hunted them un­checked.”

“Still, they fought you for their liberty?”

“Never once. They knew how dis­astrous was their mas­ter­less free­dom. Even to their dull, sav­age brains it was a sure thing that no slavery could be worse; and to that state you, and your friends, and your the­or­ies, will re­duce At­lantis, if you get the up­per hand. But, then, to ar­gue in a circle, you will never get it. For to con­quer, you must set up lead­ers, and once you have set them up, you will never pull them down again.”

“Aye,” she said with a sigh, “there is truth in that last.”

The torch had filled the cap­tain’s room with a res­in­ous smoke, but the flame was grow­ing pale. Dawn was com­ing in greyly through a slender ar­row-slit, and with it ever and again the glow from some moun­tain out of sight, which was shoot­ing forth spas­modic bursts of fire. With it also were mut­ter­ings of dis­tant fall­ing rocks, and sul­len trem­blings, which had en­dured all the night through, and I judged that earth was in one of her quak­ing moods, and would prob­ably dur­ing the forth­com­ing day of­fer us some chasten­ing dis­com­forts.

On this ac­count, per­haps, my senses were stilled to cer­tain evid­ences which would oth­er­wise have given me a sus­pi­cion; and also, there is no deny­ing that my gen­eral wake­ful­ness was sapped by an­other mat­ter. This wo­man, Nais, in­ter­ested me vastly out of the com­mon; the mere pres­ence of her seemed to warm the or­gans of my in­terior; and whilst she was there, all my thoughts and senses were present in the room of the cap­tain of the gate in which we sat.

But of a sud­den the floor of the cham­ber rocked and fell away be­neath me, and in a tu­mult of dust, and lit­ter, and bales of the cap­tain’s plun­der, I fell down (still seated on the flag­stone) into a pit which had been digged be­neath it. With the vi­ol­ence of the des­cent, and the flut­ter of all these art­icles about my head, I was in no con­di­tion for im­me­di­ate ac­tion; and whilst I was still half-stunned by the shock, and long be­fore I could get my eyes into ser­vice again, I had been seized, and bound, and half-strangled with a noose of hide. Voices were raised that I should be des­patched at once out of the way; but one in au­thor­ity cried out that, killing me at leis­ure, and as a pris­oner, prom­ised more gen­teel sport; and so I was thrust down on the floor, whilst a whole army of men trod in over me to the at­tack.

What had happened was clear to me now, though I was power­less to do any­thing in hindrance. The rebels with more craft than any­one had cred­ited to them, had driven a gal­ley from their camp un­der the ground, in­tend­ing so to make an en­trance into the heart of the city. In their clumsy ig­nor­ance, and hav­ing no one of suf­fi­cient tal­ent in men­sur­a­tion, they had bungled sadly both in dir­ec­tion and length, and so had ended their bur­row un­der this cham­ber of the cap­tain of the gate. The great flag­stone in its fall had, it ap­peared, crushed four of them to death, but these were little no­ticed or lamen­ted. Life was to them a bauble of the slenderest price, and a horde of oth­ers pressed through the open­ing, lust­ing for the fight, and reck­ing noth­ing of their risks and per­ils.

Half-choked by the foul air of the gal­ley, and trod­den on by this great pro­ces­sion of feet, it was little enough I could do to help my im­me­di­ate self much less the more dis­tant city. But when the chief mass of the at­tack­ers had passed through, and there came only here and there one eager to take his share at storm­ing the gate, a couple of fel­lows plucked me up out of the mud on the floor, and began drag­ging me down through the stink­ing dark­ness of the gal­ley to­wards the pit that gave it en­trance.

Twenty times we were jostled by oth­ers hasten­ing to the at­tack, either from hun­ger for fight, or from ap­pet­ite for what they could steal. But we came to the open at last, and half-suf­foc­ated though I was, I con­trived to do obeis­ance, and say aloud the pre­scribed prayer to the most High Gods in grat­it­ude for the fresh, sweet air which They had provided.

Our Lord the Sun was on the verge of rising for His day, and all things were plainly shown. Be­fore me were the mon­strous walls of the cap­ital, with the heads of its pyr­am­ids and higher build­ings show­ing above them. And on the walls, the sentries walked calmly their ap­poin­ted paces, or took shel­ter against ar­rows in the case­mates provided for them.

The din of fight­ing within the gate rose high into the air, and the heavy roar­ing of the cave-ti­gers told that they too were tak­ing their share of the melee. But the massive stone­work of the walls hid all the ac­tual en­gage­ment from our view, and which party was get­ting the up­per hand we could not even guess. But the sounds told how tight a fight was be­ing hammered out in those nar­row bound­ar­ies, and my veins tingled to be once more back at the old trade, and to be do­ing my share.

But there was no chiv­alry about the fel­lows who held me by my bonds. They thrust me into a small temple near by, which once had been a fane in much fa­vour with trav­el­lers, who wished to show grat­it­ude for the safe jour­ney to the cap­ital, but which now was robbed and ruined, and they swung to the stone en­trance gate and barred it, leav­ing me to com­mune with my­self. Presently, they told me, I should be put to death by tor­ments. Well, this seemed to be the new cus­tom of At­lantis, and I should have to en­dure it as best I could. The High Gods, it ap­peared, had no fur­ther use for my ser­vices in At­lantis, and I was not in the mood then to bite very much at their de­cision. What I had seen of the coun­try since my re­turn had not en­am­oured me very much with its new con­di­tions.

The little temple in which I was gaoled had been robbed and de­spoiled of all its fur­nish­ments. But the light-slits, where at cer­tain hours of the day the rays of our Lord the Sun had fallen upon the im­age of the God, be­fore this had been taken away, gave me vant­age places from which I could see over the camp of these rebel be­siegers, and a dreary pro­spect it was. The people seemed to have shucked off the cul­ture of cen­tur­ies in as many months, and to have gone back for the most part to sheer bru­tish­ness. The ma­jor­ity har­boured on the bare ground. Few owned shel­ter, and these were merely bowers of mud and branches.

They fought and quar­relled amongst them­selves for food, eat­ing their meat raw, and their grain (when they had it) un­ground. Many who passed my vis­ion I saw were even gnaw­ing the soft in­side of tree bark.

The dead lay where they fell. The sick and the wounded found no hand to tend them. Great man-eat­ing birds hovered about the camp or skulked about, heavy with gor­ging, amongst the hov­els, and no one had pub­lic spirit enough to give them battle. The stink of the place rose up to heaven as a foul in­cense in­vit­ing a pes­ti­lence. There was no or­der, no trace of strong com­mand any­where. With three hun­dred well-dis­cip­lined troops it seemed to me that I could have sent those poor des­per­ate hordes fly­ing in panic to the forest.

However, there was no very lengthy space of time gran­ted me for think­ing out the policy of this mat­ter to any great depth. The at­tack on the gate had been de­livered with sud­den­ness; the re­pulse was not slow. Of what des­per­ate fight­ing took place in the gal­ler­ies, and in the cir­cus between the two sets of gates, the de­tail will never be told in full.

At the first alarm the great cave-ti­gers were set loose, and these raged im­par­tially against keeper and foe. Of those that went in through the tun­nel, not one in ten re­turned, and there were few of these but what car­ried a bloody wound. Some, with the rul­ing pas­sion still strong in them, bore back plun­der; one trailed along with him the head of the cap­tain of the gate; and amongst them they dragged out two of the ward­ers who were wounded, and whom re­venge had urged them to take as pris­on­ers.

Over these two last a hub­bub now arose, that seemed likely to boil over into blows. Every voice shouted out for them what he thought the most re­puls­ive fate. Some were for burn­ing, some for skin­ning, some for im­pal­ing, some for other things: my flesh crept as I heard their raven­ous yells. Those that had been to the trouble of mak­ing them cap­tive were still breath­less from the fight, and were read­ily thrust aside; and it seemed to me that the poor wretches would be hustled into death be­fore any def­in­ite fate was agreed upon, which all would pass as suf­fi­ciently ter­rific. Never had I seen such a dis­orderly tu­mult, never such a lead­er­less mob. But, as al­ways has happened, and al­ways will, the stronger men by dint of louder voices and more vig­or­ous shoulders got their plans agreed to at last, and the oth­ers per­force had to give way.

A band of them set off run­ning, and presently re­turned at snails’ pace, drag­ging with them (with many squeals from un­greased wheels) one of those huge war en­gines with which be­siegers are wont to throw great stones and other mis­siles into the cit­ies they sit down against. They ran it up just bey­ond bow­shot of the walls, and clamped it firmly down with stakes and ropes to the earth. Then set­ting their lean arms to the wind­lasses, they drew back the great tree which formed the spring till its teth­er­ing place reached the ground, and in the cradle at its head they placed one of the pris­on­ers, bound help­lessly, so that he could not throw him­self over the side.

Then the rude, sav­age, skin-clad mob stood back, and one who had ap­poin­ted him­self en­gin­eer knocked back the catch that held the great spring in place.

With a whir and a twang the elastic wood flung up­wards, and the bound man was shot away from its tip with the speed of a light­ning flash. He sang through the air, spin­ning over and over with in­con­ceiv­able rapid­ity, and the great crowd of rebels held their breath in si­lence as they watched. He passed high above the city wall, a tiny man­ni­kin in the dis­tance now, and then the tra­ject­ory of his flight began to lower. The spike of a new-built pyr­amid lay in the path of his ter­rific flight, and he struck it with a thud whose sound floated out to us af­ter­wards, and then he toppled down out of our sight, leav­ing a red stain on the white­ness of the stone as he fell.

With a roar the crowd ac­know­ledged the suc­cess of their device, and bel­lowed out in­sults to Phorenice, and in­sults to the Gods: a poor frantic crowd they showed them­selves. And then with raven­ing shouts, they fell upon the other cap­tive warder, bind­ing him also into a com­pact help­less mis­sile, and mean­while get­ting the en­gine in gear again for an­other shot.

But for my part I saw noth­ing of this dis­gust­ing scene. I heard the bolt grate stealth­ily against the door of the little temple in which I was im­prisoned, and was minded to give these bru­tish rebels some­what of a sur­prise. I had rid my­self of my bonds hand­ily enough; I had rubbed my limbs to that per­fect sup­ple­ness which is al­ways de­sir­able be­fore a fight; and I had planned to rush out so soon as the door was swung, and kill those that came first with fist blows on the brow and chin.

They had not sus­pec­ted my name, it was clear, for my stature and garb were noth­ing out of the or­din­ary; but if my bod­ily strength and fight­ing power had been suf­fi­cient to raise me to a vice­roy­alty like that of Yu­catan, and let me en­dure alive in that gov­ern­ment through­out twenty hard-bat­tling years, why, it was likely that this rabble of sav­ages would see some­thing that was new and ad­mir­able in the prac­tice of arms be­fore the crude weight of their num­bers could drag me down. Nay, I did not even des­pair of win­ning free al­to­gether. I must find me a weapon from those that came up to battle, with which I could write worthy sig­na­tures, and I must at­tempt no stand­ing fights. Gods! but what a glow the pro­spect did send through me as I stood there wait­ing.

A vainer man, writ­ing his­tory, might have said that al­ways, be­fore everything else, he held in mind the greater in­terests be­fore the less. But for me—I prefer to be hon­est, and own my­self hu­man. In my glee at that forth­com­ing fight—which prom­ised to be the greatest and most furi­ous I had known in all a long life of bat­tling—I will con­fess that At­lantis and her dif­fer­ing policies were clean for­got. I should go out an un­known man from the little cell of a temple, I should do my work, and then, whether I took free­dom with me, or whether I came down at last my­self on a pile of slain, these people would guess without be­ing told the name, that here was Deu­calion. Gods! what a fight we would have made!

But the door did not open wide to give me space for my first rush. It creaked grat­ingly out­wards on its pivots, and a slim hand and a white arm slipped in­side, beck­on­ing me to quiet­ude. Here was some wo­man. The door creaked wider, and she came in­side.

“Nais,” I said.

“Si­lence, or they will hear you, and re­mem­ber. At present those who brought you here are killed, and un­less by chance someone blun­ders into this robbed shrine, you will not be found.”

“Then, if that is so, let me go out and walk amongst these people as one of them­selves.”

She shook her head.

“But, Nais, I am not known here. I am merely a man in very plain and mud-stained robe. I should be in no ways re­mark­able.”

A smile twitched her face. “My lord,” she said, “wears no beard; and his is the only clean chin in the camp.”

I joined in her laugh. “A pest on my want of fop­pish­ness then. But I am for­get­ting some­what. It comes to my mind that we still have un­fin­ished that small dis­cus­sion of ours con­cern­ing the length of my poor life. Have you de­cided to cut it off from risk of fur­ther mis­chief, or do you pro­pose to give me fur­ther span?”

She turned to me with a look of sharp dis­tress. “My lord,” she said, “I would have you for­get that silly talk of mine. This last two hours I thought you were dead in real truth.”

“And you were not re­lieved?”

“I felt that the only man was gone out of the world—I mean, my lord, the only man who can save At­lantis.”

“Your words give me a con­fid­ence. Then you would have me go back and be­come hus­band to Phorenice?”

“If there is no other way.”

“I warn you I shall do that, if she still so de­sires it, and if it seems to me that that course will be best. This is no hour for private lik­ings or dis­lik­ings.”

“I know it,” she said, “I feel it. I have no heart now, save only for At­lantis. I have schooled my­self once more to that.”

“And at present I am in this lone little box of a temple. A minute ago, be­fore you came, I had prom­ised my­self a pretty enough fight to sig­nal­ise my chan­ging of abode.”

“There must be noth­ing of that. I will not have these poor people slaughtered un­ne­ces­sar­ily. Nor do I wish to see my lord ex­posed to a hope­less risk. This poor place, such as it is, has been given to me as an abode, and, if my lord can re­main dec­or­ously till night­fall in a maiden’s cham­ber, he may at least be sure of quiet­ude. I am a per­son,” she ad­ded simply, “that in this camp has some re­spect. When dark­ness comes, I will take my lord down to the sea and a boat, and so he may come with ease to the har­bour and the wa­ter­gate.”