had finished even
dared to go out of the pavilion. Looking around them they saw that they
stood upon a high deck in the midst of a great ship, but that this ship
was enclosed with a net of silver cords in which they could find no
opening. Looking through its meshes they noted that the oars were
inboard, and the great purple sails set upon the mast, also that the
rowers were gone, perchance to rest beneath the deck, while on the
forecastle of the ship stood the captain, white-robed and masked, and
aft the steersman, also still masked, so that they could see nothing of
their faces. Now, too, they were no longer sailing on a river, but down
a canal bordered by banks of sand on either side, beyond which stretched
desert farther than the eye could reach.

Asti studied the desert, then turned and said:

"I think I know this canal, Lady, for once I sailed it as a child. I
think it is that which was dug by the Pharaohs of old, and repaired
after the fall of the Hyksos kings, and that it runs from Bubastis to
that bay down which wanderers sail towards the rising sun."

"Mayhap," answered Tua. "At least, this is the world that bore us and no
other, and by the mercy of Amen and the power of my Spirit we are still
alive, and not dead, or so it seems. Call now to the captain on yonder
deck; perhaps he will tell whither he bears us in his magic ship."

So Asti called, but the captain made no sign that he saw or heard her.
Next she called to the steersman, but although his veiled face was
towards them, he also made no sign, so that at last they believed either
that these were spirits or that they were men born deaf and dumb. In the
end, growing weary of staring at this beautiful ship, at the canal and
the desert beyond it, and of wondering where they were, and how they
came thither, they returned to the pavilion to avoid the heat of the
sun. Here they found that during their absence some hand unseen had
arranged the silken bed-clothing on their couches and cleared away the
fragments of their meal, resetting the beautiful table with other foods.

"Truly here is wizardry at work," said Tua, as she sank into a
leather-seated ivory chair that was placed ready.

"Who doubts it?" answered Asti calmly. "By wizardry were you born; by
wizardry was Pharaoh slain; by wizardry we are saved to an end that we
cannot guess; by wizardry, or what men so name, does the whole world
move; only being so near we see it not."

Tua thought a while, th