doubtless make an image of him, as accurate as our art permits, and
build him a temple for shelter, and bring there our offerings and
prayers. And as I say, my lord, I shall be priest, and when I am dead,
the sons of my body shall be priests after me, and the eldest a king
also."

"Let me plead with you," I said. "This must not be."

The ship was drifting rapidly away with the current, and they were
hoisting sail. Tob had to shout to make himself heard. "Aye, but it
shall be. For I, too, am a strong man after my kind, and I have ordered
it so. And if you want the name of our Hero that some day shall be God,
you wear it on yourself. Deucalion shall be God for our children."

"This is blasphemy," I cried. "Have a care, fool, or this impiety will
sink you."

"We will risk it," he bawled back, "and consider the odds against us are
small. Regard! Here is thy last horn of wine in the ship, and my woman
has treasured it against this moment. Regard, all men, together
with Those above and Those below! I pour this wine as a libation to
Deucalion, great lord that is to-day, Hero that shall be to-morrow, God
that will be in time to come!" And then all those on the ship joined
in the acclaim till they were beyond the reach of my voice, and were
battling their way out to sea through the roaring breakers of the bar.

Solitary I stood at the brink of the forest, looking after them and
musing sadly. Tob, despite his lowly station, was a man I cared for more
than many. Like all seamen, I knew that he paid his devotions to one
of the obscurer Gods, but till then I had supposed him devout in his
worship. His new avowal came to me as a desolating shock. If a man like
Tob could forsake all the older Gods to set up on high some poor mortal
who had momentarily caught his fancy, what could be expected from
the mere thoughtless mob, when swayed by such a brilliant tongue as
Phorenice's? It seemed I was to begin my exile with a new dreariness
added to all the other adverse prospects of Atlantis.

But then behind me I heard the rustle of some great beast that had
scented me, and was coming to attack through the thicket, and so I had
other matters to think upon. I had to let Tob and his ship go out over
the rim of the horizon unwatched.

15. ZAEMON'S SUMMONS

Since the days when man was first created upon the earth by Gods who
looked down and did their work from another place, there have always
been areas of the land ill-adapted