d suppose, the
Atlas mountains in particular. It is just possible Shard might have
got through by El Cantara, following the camel road which is many
centuries old; or he may have gone by Algiers and Bou Saada and
through the mountain pass El Finita Dem, though that is a bad enough
way for camels to go (let alone bullocks with a ship) for which reason
the Arabs call it Finita Dem--the Path of Blood.

I should not have ventured to give this story the publicity of print
had the sailor been sober when he told it, for fear that he I should
have deceived you, O my reader; but this was never the case with him
as I took good care to ensure: "in vino veritas" is a sound old
proverb, and I never had cause to doubt his word unless that proverb
lies.

If it should prove that he has deceived me, let it pass; but if he has
been the means of deceiving you there are little things about him that
I know, the common gossip of that ancient tavern whose leaded
bottle-glass windows watch the sea, which I will tell at once to every
judge of my acquaintance, and it will be a pretty race to see which of
them will hang him.

Meanwhile, O my reader, believe the story, resting assured that if you
are taken in the thing shall be a matter for the hangman.

A Tale of the Equator

He who is Sultan so remote to the East that his dominions were deemed
fabulous in Babylon, whose name is a by-word for distance today in the
streets of Bagdad, whose capital bearded travellers invoke by name in
the gate at evening to gather hearers to their tales when the smoke of
tobacco arises, dice rattle and taverns shine; even he in that very
city made mandate, and said: "Let there be brought hither all my
learned men that they may come before me and rejoice my heart with
learning."

Men ran and clarions sounded, and it was so that there came before the
Sultan all of his learned men. And many were found wanting. But of
those that were able to say acceptable things, ever after to be named
The Fortunate, one said that to the South of the Earth lay a Land--
said Land was crowned with lotus--where it was summer in our winter
days and where it was winter in summer.

And when the Sultan of those most distant lands knew that the Creator
of All had contrived a device so vastly to his delight his merriment
knew no bounds. On a sudden he spake and said, and this was the gist
of his saying, that upon that line of boundary or limit that divided
the North from the