what, for lack of a better name, must still
continue to be called the fish-shop, and finding her alone, frankly
told her the salient points of my story. When she learned I had
"robbed the lion of his prey" and taken his new wife singlehanded from
the dreaded Ar-hap her astonishment was unbounded. Nothing would do
but she must look upon the princess, so back we went to the
hiding-place, and when Heru knew that on this woman depended our lives
she stepped ashore, taking the rugged Martian hand in her dainty
fingers and begging her help so sweetly that my own heart was moved,
and, thrusting hands in pocket, I went aside, leaving those two to
settle it in their own female way.

And when I looked back in five minutes, royal Seth had her arms round
the woman's neck, kissing the homely cheeks with more than imperial
fervour, so I knew all was well thus far, and stopped expectorating at
the little fishes in the water below and went over to them. It was
time! We had hardly spoken together a minute when a couple of
war-canoes filled with men appeared round the nearest promontory,
coming down the swift water with arrow-like rapidity.

"Quick!" said the fishwife, "or we are all lost. Into your canoe and
paddle up this creek. It runs out to the sea behind the town, and at
the bar is my man's fishing-boat amongst many others. Lie hidden there
till he comes if you value your lives." So in we got, and while that
good Samaritan went back to her house we cautiously paddled through a
deserted backwater to where it presently turned through low sandbanks
to the gulf. There were the boats, and we hid the canoe and lay down
amongst them till, soon after, a man, easily recognised as the husband
of our friend, came sauntering down from the village.

At first he was sullen, not unreasonably alarmed at the danger into
which his good woman was running him. But when he set eyes on Heru he
softened immediately. Probably that thick-bodied fellow had never seen
so much female loveliness in so small a bulk in all his life, and,
being a man, he surrendered at discretion.

"In with you, then," he growled, "since I must needs risk my neck for a
pair of runaways who better deserve to be hung than I do. In with you
both into this fishing-cobble of mine, and I will cover you with nets
while I go for a mast and sail, and mind you lie as still as logs. The
town is already full of soldiers looking for you, and it will be short
shrift for us all