k stopped
their arrowshots, and the steersman swerved her off on a new course to
pick us up. Till then we had been swimming leisurely across an angle of
the harbour, so as to avoid landing where the sewers outpoured; but we
stopped now, treading the water, and were helped over the side by most
respectful hands.

The galley belonged to the captain of the port, a mincing figure of
a mariner, whose highest appetite in life was to lick the feet of the
great, and he began to fawn and prostrate himself at once, and to wish
that his eyes had been blinded before he saw the Empress in such deadly
peril.

"The peril may pass," said she. "It's nothing mortal that will ever kill
me. But I have spoiled my pretty clothes, and shed a jewel or two, and
that's annoying enough as you say, good man."

The silly fellow repeated a wish that he might be blinded before the
Empress was ever put to such discomfort again.

But it seemed she could be cloyed with flattery. "If you are tired of
your eyes," said she, "let me tell you that you have gone the way to
have them plucked out from their sockets. Kill my mammoth, would you,
because he has shown himself a trifle frolicsome? You and your sort want
more education, my man. I shall have to teach you that port-captains and
such small creatures are very easy to come by, and very small value when
got, but that my mammoth is mine--mine, do you understand?--the property
of Goddess Phorenice, and as such is sacred."

The port-captain abased himself before her. "I am an ignorant fellow,"
said he, "and heaven was robbed of its brightest ornament when Phorenice
came down to Atlantis. But if reparation is permitted me, I have two
prisoners in the cabin of the boat here who shall be sacrificed to the
mammoth forthwith. Doubtless it would please him to make sport with
them, and spill out the last lees of his rage upon their bodies."

"Prisoners you've got, have you? How taken?"

"Under cover of last night they were trying to pass in between the two
forts which guard the harbour mouth. But their boat fouled the chain,
and by the light of the torches the sentries spied them. They were
caught with ropes, and put in a dungeon. There is an order not to abuse
prisoners before they have been brought before a judgment?"

"It was my order. Did these prisoners offer to buy their lives with
news?"

"The man has not spoken. Indeed, I think he got his death-wound in being
taken. The woman fought like a cat als