y its murderous trunk, but only their cries came to us. The golden
castle, with its canopy of royal snakes, was swayed and tossed, so that
we two occupants had much ado not to be shot off like stones from a
catapult. But I took a brace with my feet against the front, and one
arm around a pillar, and clapped the spare arm round Phorenice, so as to
offer myself to her as a cushion.

She lay there contentedly enough, with her lovely face just beneath my
chin, and the faint scent of her hair coming in to me with every breath
I took; and the mammoth charged madly on through the narrow streets. We
had outstripped the taint of smoke, and the original cause of fear, but
the beast seemed to have forgotten everything in its mad panic. It
held furiously on with enormous strides, carrying its trunk aloft, and
deafening us with its screams and trumpetings. We left behind us quickly
all those who had trod in that glittering pageant, and we were carried
helplessly on through the wards of the city.

The beast was utterly beyond all control. So great was its pace that
there was no alternative but to try and cling on to the castle. Up there
we were beyond its reach. To have leapt off, even if we had avoided
having brains dashed out or limbs smashed by the fall, would have been
to put ourselves at once at a frightful disadvantage. The mammoth would
have scented us immediately, and turned (as is the custom of these
beasts), and we should have been trampled into a pulp in a dozen
seconds.

The thought came to me that here was the High God's answer to
Phorenice's sacrilege. The mammoth was appointed to carry out Their
vengeance by dashing her to pieces, and I, their priest, was to be human
witness that justice had been done. But no direct revelation had been
given me on this matter, and so I took no initiative, but hung on to the
swaying castle, and held the Empress against bruises in my arms.

There was no guiding the brute: in its insanity of madness it doubled
many times upon its course, the windings of the streets confusing it.
But by degrees we left the large palaces and pyramids behind, and got
amongst the quarters of artisans, where weavers and smiths gaped at
us from their doors as we thundered past. And then we came upon the
merchants' quarters where men live over their storehouses that do
traffic with the people over seas, and then down an open space there
glittered before us a mirror of water.

"Now here," thought I, "this ma