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The Lost Continent

by C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne · English · Gutenberg #285 · 539,675 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Lost Continent

Author: C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne


        
Release date: July 9, 2008 [eBook #285]
                Most recently updated: November 8, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/285

Credits: Produced by Judith Boss, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST CONTINENT ***




Produced by Judith Boss





THE LOST CONTINENT

C. J. Cutliffe Hyne



CONTENTS

          PREFATORY: THE LEGATEES OF DEUCALION
           1  MY RECALL
           2  BACK TO ATLANTIS
           3  A RIVAL NAVY
           4  THE WELCOME OF PHORENICE
           5  ZAEMON’S CURSE
           6  THE BITERS OF THE CITY WALLS
           7  THE BITERS OF THE WALLS
              (FURTHER ACCOUNT)
           8  THE PREACHER FROM THE MOUNTAINS
           9  PHORENICE, GODDESS
          10  A WOOING
          11  AN AFFAIR WITH THE BARBAROUS FISHERS
          12  THE DRUG OF OUR LADY THE MOON
          13  THE BURYING ALIVE OF NAIS
          14  AGAIN THE GODS MAKE CHANGE
          15  ZAEMON’S SUMMONS
          16  SIEGE OF THE SACRED MOUNTAIN
          17  NAIS THE REGAINED
          18  STORM OF THE SACRED MOUNTAIN
          19  DESTRUCTION OF THE ATLANTIS
          20  ON THE BOSOM OF THE DEEP






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 dumb-bell 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 thorough-going 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 pocket-knife.

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 to-day, 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.




1. 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 to-day 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 every one’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 any one 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. Every one 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. Every one 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 to-day. 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 to-day 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.”




2. 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 vice-royalty, 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 vice-royalty. 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 sea-water 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 sea-going. 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 over-sea
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 tree-tops, 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.




3. 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 weather-worn, 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 life-span, 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 wine-skin 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 wine-skin 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 to-morrow, 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 wine-skin 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!”




4. 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 after-deck. “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
to-day, 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 to-day 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 to-day, 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 to-morrow and break if it gives you amusement. But for to-day,
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 to-day 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.”




5. 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 vice-royalty 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 to-day.”

“Phorenice is Empress,” I said stolidly, “and I am her servant.
To-morrow, 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.
To-morrow we will take a taste of battle together. But to-day 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.




6. 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 re-planted 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 to-night. 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 death-trap. 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 passage-way 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 out-stretched 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 death-blow 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 some one,” 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
gate-keepers 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 to-morrow 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.”




7. 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
to-day. 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 to-day. 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 tree-tops. 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 any one 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 vice-royalty 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 some one 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.”




8. THE PREACHER FROM THE MOUNTAINS


It was long enough since I had found leisure for a parcel of sleep,
and so during the larger part of that day I am free to confess that I
slumbered soundly, Nais watching me. Night fell, and still we remained
within the privacy of the temple. It was our plan that I should stay
there till the camp slept, and so I should have more chance of reaching
the sea without disturbance.

The night came down wet, with a drizzle of rain, and through the slits
in the temple walls we could see the many fires in the camp well cared
for, the men and women in skins and rags toasting before them, with
steam rising as the heat fought with their wetness. Folk seated in
discomfort like this are proverbially alert and cruel in the temper, and
Nais frowned as she looked on the inclemency of the weather.

“A fine night,” she said, “and I would have sent my lord back to the
city without a soul here being the wiser; but in this chill, people
sleep sourly. We must wait till the hour drugs them sounder.”

And so we waited, sitting there together on that pavement so long
unkissed by worshippers, and it was little enough we said aloud. But
there can be good companionship without sentences of talk.

But as the hours drew on, the night began to grow less quiet. From the
distance some one began to blow on a horn or a shell, sending forth a
harsh raucous note incessantly. The sound came nearer, as we could tell
from its growing loudness, and the voices of those by the fires made
themselves heard, railing at the blower for his disturbance. And
presently it became stationary, and standing up we could see through the
slits in the walls the people of the camp rousing up from their uneasy
rest, and clustering together round one who stood and talked to them
from the pedestal of a war engine.

What he was declaiming upon we could not hear, and our curiosity on
the matter was not keen. Given that all who did not sleep went to weary
themselves with this fellow, as Nais whispered, it would be simple for
me to make an exit in the opposite direction.

But here we were reckoning without the inevitable busybody. A dozen
pairs of feet splashing through the wet came up to the side of the
little temple, and cried loudly that Nais should join the audience. She
had eloquence of tongue, it appeared, and they feared lest this speaker
who had taken his stand on the war engine should make schisms amongst
their ranks unless some skilled person stood up also to refute his
arguments.

Here, then, it seemed to me that I must be elbowed into my skirmish by
the most unexpected of chances, but Nais was firmly minded that there
should be no fight, if courage on her part could turn it. “Come out with
me,” she whispered, “and keep distant from the light of the fires.”

“But how explain my being here?”

“There is no reason to explain anything,” she said bitterly. “They will
take you for my lover. There is nothing remarkable in that: it is the
mode here. But oh, why did not the Gods make you wear a beard, and curl
it, even as other men? Then you could have been gone and safe these two
hours.”

“A smooth chin pleases me better.”

“So it does me,” I heard her murmur as she leaned her weight on the
stone which hung in the doorway, and pushed it ajar; “your chin.” The
ragged men outside--there were women with them also--did not wait to
watch me very closely. A coarse jest or two flew (which I could have
found good heart to have repaid with a sword-thrust) and they stepped
off into the darkness, just turning from time to time to make sure we
followed. On all sides others were pressing in the same direction--black
shadows against the night; the rain spat noisily on the camp fires as we
passed them; and from behind us came up others. There were no sleepers
in the camp now; all were pressing on to hear this preacher who stood on
the pedestal of the war engine; and if we had tried to swerve from the
straight course, we should have been marked at once.

So we held on through the darkness, and presently came within earshot.

Still it was little enough of the preacher’s words we could make out at
first. “Who are your chiefs?” came the question at the end of a fervid
harangue, and immediately all further rational talk was drowned in
uproar. “We have no chiefs,” the people shouted, “we are done with
chiefs; we are all equal here. Take away your silly magic. You may kill
us with magic if you choose, but rule us you shall not. Nor shall
the other priests rule. Nor Phorenice. Nor anybody. We are done with
rulers.”

The press had brought us closer and closer to the man who stood on the
war engine. We saw him to be old, with white hair that tumbled on his
shoulders, and a long white beard, untrimmed and uncurled. Save for a
wisp of rag about the loins, his body was unclothed, and glistened in
the wet.

But in his hand he held that which marked his caste. With it he pointed
his sentences, and at times he whirled it about bathing his wet,
naked body in a halo of light. It was a wand whose tip burned with an
unconsuming fire, which glowed and twinkled and blazed like some star
sent down by the Gods from their own place in the high heaven. It was
the Symbol of our Lord the Sun, a credential no one could forge, and one
on which no civilised man would cast a doubt.

Indeed, the ragged frantic crew did not question for one moment that
he was a member of the Clan of Priests, the Clan which from time out
of numbering had given rulers for the land, and even in their loudest
clamours they freely acknowledged his powers. “You may kill us with your
magic, if you choose,” they screamed at him. But stubbornly they refused
to come back to their old allegiance. “We have suffered too many
things these later years,” they cried. “We are done with rulers now for
always.”

But for myself I saw the old man with a different emotion. Here was
Zaemon that was father to Nais, Zaemon that had seen me yesterday seated
on the divan at Phorenice’s elbow, and who to-day could denounce me as
Deucalion if so he chose. These rebels had expended a navy in their
wish to kill me four days earlier, and if they knew of my nearness, even
though Nais were my advocate, her cold reasoning would have had little
chance of an audience now. The High Gods who keep the tether of our
lives hide Their secrets well, but I did not think it impious to be sure
that mine was very near the cutting then.

The beautiful woman saw this too. She even went so far as to twine her
fingers in mine and press them as a farewell, and I pressed hers in
return, for I was sorry enough not to see her more. Still I could not
help letting my thoughts travel with a grim gloating over the fine mound
of dead I should build before these ragged, unskilled rebels pulled me
down. And it was inevitable this should be so. For of all the emotions
that can ferment in the human heart, the joy of strife is keenest, and
none but an old fighter, face to face with what must necessarily be his
final battle, can tell how deep this lust is embroidered into the very
foundations of his being.

But for the time Zaemon did not see me, being too much wrapped in his
outcry, and so I was free to listen to the burning words which he spread
around him, and to determine their effect on the hearers.

The theme he preached was no new one. He told that ever since the
beginning of history, the Gods had set apart one Clan of the people
to rule over the rest and be their Priests, and until the coming of
Phorenice these had done their duties with exactitude and justice.
They had fought invaders, carried war against the beasts, and studied
earth-movements so that they were able to foretell earthquakes and
eruptions, and could spread warnings that the people might be able
to escape their devastations. They are no self-seekers; their aim was
always to further the interest of Atlantis, and so do honour to the
kingdom on which the High Gods had set their special favour. Under the
Priestly Clan, Atlantis had reached the pinnacle of human prosperity and
happiness.

“But,” cried the old man, waving the Symbol till his wet body glistened
in a halo of light, “the people grew fat and careless with their easy
life. They began to have a conceit that their good fortune was earned
by their own puny brains and thews, and was no gift from the Gods above;
and presently the cult of these Gods became neglected, and Their temples
were barren of gifts and worshippers. Followed a punishment. The Gods
in Their inscrutable way decreed that a wife of one of the Priests (that
was a governor of no inconsiderable province) should see a woman child
by the wayside, and take it for adoption. That child the Gods in their
infinite wisdom fashioned into a scourge for Atlantis, and you who have
felt the weight of Phorenice’s hand, know with what completeness the
High Gods can fashion their instruments.

“Yet, even as they set up, so can they throw down, and those that
shall debase Phorenice are even now appointed. The old rule is to
be re-established; but not till you who have sinned are sufficiently
chastened to cry to it for relief.” He waved the mysterious glowing
Symbol before him. “See,” he cried in his high old quavering voice, “you
know the unspeakable Power of which that is the sign, and for which I
am the mouthpiece. It is for you to make decision now. Are the Gods to
throw down this woman who has scorned Them and so cruelly trodden on
you? Or are you to be still further purged of your pride before you are
ripe for deliverance?”

The old priest broke off with a gesture, and his ragged white beard
sank on to his chest. Promptly a young man, skin clad and carrying his
weapon, elbowed up through the press of listeners, and jumped on to the
platform beside him. “Hear me, brethren!” he bellowed, in his strong
young voice. “We are done with tyrants. Death may come, and we all of us
here have shown how little we fear it. But own rulers again we will not,
and that is our final say. My lord,” he said, turning to the old man
with a brave face, “I know it is in your power to kill me by magic if
you choose, but I have said my say, and can stand the cost if needs be.”

“I can kill you, but I will not,” said Zaemon. “You have said your
silliness. Now go you to the ground again.”

“We have free speech h

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