tone, on which you are sitting
(profanely if you are a mere stowaway, and not the Chosen of the Gods)
to complete the splendid structure of a temple built on a great plain in
the second of the islands which are our colonies in the North East.'

'Tell me all about Atlantis,' said Quentin. And the priest, protesting
that Quentin knew as much about it as he did, told.

And all the time the ship was ploughing through the waves, sometimes
sailing, sometimes rowed by hidden rowers with long oars. And Quentin
was served in all things as though he had been a king. If he had
insisted that he was not the Chosen of the Gods everything might have
been different. But he did not. And he was very anxious to show how much
he knew about Atlantis. And sometimes he was wrong, the Priest said, but
much more often he was right.

'We are less than three days' journey now from the Eastern Isles,' Blue
Mantle said one day, 'and I warn you that if you are a mere stowaway you
had better own it. Because if you persist in calling yourself the Chosen
of the Gods you will be expected to act as such--to the very end.'

'I don't call myself anything,' said Quentin, 'though I am not a
stowaway, anyhow, and I don't know how I came here--so of course it was
magic. It's simply silly your being so cross. _I_ can't help being here.
Let's be friends.'

'Well,' said Blue Mantle, much less crossly, 'I never believed in magic,
though I _am_ a priest, but if it is, it is. We may as well be friends,
as you call it. It isn't for very long, anyway,' he added mysteriously.

[Illustration: The cart was drawn by an enormous creature, more like an
elephant than anything else.]

And then to show his friendliness he took Quentin all over the ship, and
explained it all to him. And Quentin enjoyed himself thoroughly, though
every now and then he had to pinch himself to make sure that he was
awake. And he was fed well all the time, and all the time made much of,
so that when the ship reached land he was quite sorry. The ship anchored
by a stone quay, most solid and serviceable, and every one was very
busy.

Quentin kept out of sight behind the purple curtains. The sailors and
the priests and the priests' attendants and everybody on the boat had
asked him so many questions, and been so curious about his clothes, that
he was not anxious to hear any more questions asked, or to have to
invent answers to them.

And after a very great deal of talk--almost as much as Mr.