stood my ground and gave him the
salutation prescribed between our ranks, which he returned to me with
circumstance and accuracy. The crowd fell back, being driven away by the
ineffable force of the Symbol, leaving us alone in the middle of a
ring. Even Nais, though she was a priest's daughter, was ignorant of the
Mysteries, and could not withstand its force. And so we two men stood
there alone together, with the glow of the Symbol bathing us, and
lighting up the sea of ravenous faces that watched.

The people were quick to put their natural explanation on the scene. "A
spy!" they began to roar out. "A spy! Zaemon salutes him as a Priest!"

Zaemon faced round on them with a queer look on his grim old face.
"Aye," he said, "this is a Priest. If I give you his name, you might
have further interest. This is the Lord Deucalion."

The word was picked up and yelled amongst them with a thousand emotions.
But at least they were loyal to their policy; they had decided that
Deucalion was their enemy; they had already expended a navy for his
destruction; and now that he was ringed in by their masses, they lusted
to tear him into rags with their fingers. But rave and rave though they
might against me, the glare from the Symbol drove them shuddering back
as though it had been a lava-stream; and Zaemon was not the man to hand
me over to their fury until he had delivered formal sentence as the
emissary of our Clan on the Sacred Mount. So the end was not to be yet.

The old man faced me and spoke in the sacred tongue, which the common
people do not know. "My brother," he said, "which have you come to
serve, Deucalion or Atlantis?"

"Words are a poor thing to answer a question like that. You will know
all of my record. According to the Law of the Priests, each ship from
Yucatan will have carried home its sworn report to lay at the feet of
their council, and before I went to that vice-royalty, what I did was
written plain here on the face of Atlantis."

"We know your doings in the past, brother, and they have found approval.
You have governed well, and you have lived austerely. You set up
Atlantis for a mistress, and served her well; but then, you have had no
Phorenice to tempt you into change and fickleness."

"You can send me where I shall see her no more, if you think me frail."

"Yes, and lose your usefulness. No, brother, you are the last hope which
this poor land has remaining. All other human means that have been tried
aga