ile more
with memories of Nais than in study of those uppermost recesses of the
Higher Mysteries in which Zaemon was so prodigiously wise, still I had
some inkling of his powers.

Zaemon I knew would be back again in his dwelling on the Sacred
Mountain, shaken and breathless, even before I had found an end to his
tracks in the snow, and it behoved me to join him there in the quickest
possible time. I had his promise now for my reward, and I knew that he
would carry it into effect. Beforetime I had made an error. I had valued
Atlantis most, and Nais, my private love, as only second. But now it was
in my mind to be honest with others even as with myself. Though all
the world were hanging on my choice, I could but love my Nais most, and
serve her first and foremost of all.

16. SIEGE OF THE SACRED MOUNTAIN

Now, my passage across the great continent of Atlantis, if tedious and
haunted by many dangers, need not be recounted in detail here. Only one
halt did I make of any duration, and that was unavoidable. I had killed
a stag one day, bringing it down after a long chase in an open savannah.
I scented the air carefully, to see if there was any other beast which
could do me harm within reach, and thinking that the place was safe,
set about cutting my meat, and making a sufficiency into a bundle for
carriage.

But underfoot amongst the grasses there was a great legged worm, a
monstrous green thing, very venomous in its bite; and presently as I
moved I brushed it with my heel, and like the dart of light it swooped
with its tiny head and struck me with its fangs in the lower thigh. With
my knife I cut through its neck and it fell to writhing and struggling
and twining its hundred legs into all manner of contortions; and then,
cleaning my blade in the ground, I stabbed with it deep all round the
wound, so that the blood might flow freely and wash the venom from its
lodgement. And then with the blood trickling healthily down from my
heel, I shouldered the meat and strode off, thankful for being so well
quit of what might have made itself a very ugly adventure.

As I walked, however, my leg began to be filled with a tightness and
throbbing which increased every hour, and presently it began to swell
also, till the skin was stretched like drawn parchment. I was taken,
too, with a sickness, that racked me violently, and if one of the
greater and more dangerous beasts had come upon me then, he would have
eaten me without