ouring at
a banquet.

Of the smaller merchants who had no substance laid by, taxes and the
constant bickerings of war had wellnigh ground them into starvation.
Besides, with the country in constant uproar, there were few markets
left for most merchandise, nor was there aught made now which could be
carried abroad. If your weaver is pressed as a fire-tube man he does not
make cloth, and if your farmer is playing at rebellion, he does not buy
slaves to till his fields. Indeed, they told me that a month before my
return, as fine a cargo of slaves had been brought into harbour as ever
came out of Europe, and there was nothing for it but to set them ashore
across the estuary, and leave them free to starve or live in the wild
ground there as they chose. There was no man in all Atlantis who would
hold so much as one more slave as a gift.

But though I was grieved at this falling away, all schemes for remedy
would be for afterwards. It would only make ill worse to speak of it as
we rode together in the litter. I was growing to know Phorenice's moods
enough for that. Still, I think that she too had studied mine, and did
her best to interest me between her bursts of trifling. We went out to
where the westernmost harbour wall joins the land, and there the panting
bearers set us down. She led me into a little house of stone which stood
by itself, built out on a promontory where there is a constant run of
tide, and when we had been given admittance, after much unbarring, she
showed me her new gold collectors.

In the dry knowledge taught in the colleges and groves of the Sacred
Mountain it had been a common fact to us that the metal gold was present
in a dissolved state in all sea water, but of plans for dragging it
forth into yellow hardness, none had ever been discussed. But here this
field-reared upstart of an Empress had stumbled upon the trick as though
it had been written in a book.

She patted my arm laughingly as I stared curiously round the place. "I
tell all others in Atlantis that only the Gods have this secret," said
she, "and that They gave it to me as one of themselves. But I am no
Goddess to you, am I, Deucalion? And, by my face! I have no other
explanation of how this plan was invented. We'll suppose I must have
dreamed it. Look! The sea-water sluices in through that culvert, and
passes over these rough metal plates set in the floor, and then flows
out again yonder in its natural course. You see the yellow metal