The Lost Continent Part 10

"You have come to the wrong market here with your qualms. I am captain here, and my word carries, subject only to Ph.o.r.enice's nod. Do you hear that? Do you know too that I can have you tossed to those striped gate-keepers of mine for meddling in here without an invitation?" He looked at me sharp enough, but saw plainly that I was a stranger. "But perhaps you carry a name, my man, which warrants your impertinence?"

"Deucalion is my poor name," I said, "but I cannot expect you will know it. I am but newly landed here, sir, and when I left Atlantis some score of years back, a very different man to you held guard over these gates."

He had his forehead on my feet by this time. "I had it from the Empress this night that she will to-morrow make a new sorting of this kingdom's dignities. Perhaps there is some recommendation you would wish me to lay before her in return for your courtesies?"

"My lord," said the man, "if you wish it, I can have a turn with those cave-tigers myself now, and you can look on from behind the walls and see them tear me."

"Why tell me what is no news?"

"I wish to remind my lord of his power; I wish to beg of his clemency."

"You showed your power to these poor prisoners; but from what remains here to be seen, few of them have tasted much of your clemency."

"The orders were," said the captain of the gate, as though he thought a word might be said here for his defence, "the orders were, my lord, that the tigers should be kept fierce and accustomed to killing."

"Then, if you have obeyed orders, let me be the last to chide you.

But it is my pleasure that this woman be respited, and I wish now to question her."

The man got to his feet again with obvious relief, though still bowing low.

"Then if my lord will honour me by sitting in my room that overlooks the outer gate, the favour will never be forgotten."

"Show the way," I said, and took the woman by the fingers, leading her gently. At the two ends of the circus the tigers prowled about on short chains, growling and muttering.

We pa.s.sed through the door into the thickness of the outer wall, and the captain of the gate led us into his private chamber, a snug enough box overlooking the plain beyond the city. He lit a torch from his lamp and thrust it into a bracket on the wall, and bowing deeply and walking backwards, left us alone, closing the door in place behind him. He was an industrious fellow, this captain, to judge from the spoil with which his chamber was packed. There could have come very few traders in through that gate below without his levying a private tribute; and so, judging that most of his goods had been unlawfully come by, I had little qualm at making a selection. It was not decent that the woman, being an Atlantean, should go bereft of the dignity of clothes, as though she were a mere savage from Europe; and so I sought about amongst the captain's spoil for garments that would be befitting.

But, as I busied myself in this search for raiment, rummaging amongst the heaps and bales, with a hand and eye little skilled in such business, I heard a sound behind which caused me to turn my head, and there was the woman with a dagger she had picked from the floor, in the act of drawing it from the sheath.

She caught my eye and drew the weapon clear, but seeing that I made no advance towards her, or move to protect myself, waited where she was, and presently was took with a shuddering.

"Your designs seem somewhat of a riddle," I said. "At first you wished to kill me from motives which you explained, and which I quite understood. It lay in my power next to confer some small benefit upon you, in consequence of which you are here, and not--shall we say?--yonder in the circus. Why you should desire now to kill the only man here who can set you completely free, and beyond these walls, is a thing it would gratify me much to learn. I say nothing of the trifle of ingrat.i.tude. Grat.i.tude and ingrat.i.tude are of little weight here. There is some far greater in your mind."

She pressed a hand hard against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "You are Deucalion," she gasped; "I heard you say it."

"I am Deucalion. So far, I have known no reason to feel shame for my name."

"And I come of those," she cried, with a rising voice, "who bite against this city, because they have found their fate too intolerable with the land as it is ordered now. We heard of your coming from Yucatan. It was we who sent the fleet to take you at the entrance to the Gulf."

"Your fleet gave us a pretty fight."

"Oh, I know, I know. We had our watchers on the high land who brought us the tidings. We had an omen even before that. Where we lay with our army before the walls here, we saw great birds carrying off the slain to the mountains. But where the fleet failed, I saw a chance where I, a woman, might--"

"Where you might succeed?" I sat me down on a pile of the captain's stuffs. It seemed as if here at last that I should find a solution for many things. "You carry a name?" I asked.

"They call me Nais."

"Ah," I said, and signed to her to take the clothes that I had sought out. She was curiously like, so both my eyes and hearing said, to Ylga, the fan-girl of Ph.o.r.enice, but as she had told me of no parentage I asked for none then. Still her talk alone let me know that she was bred of none of the common people, and I made up my mind towards definite understanding. "Nais," I said, "you wish to kill me. At the same time I have no doubt you wish to live on yourself, if only to get credit from your people for what you have done. So here I will make a contract with you. Prove to me that my death is for Atlantis' good, and I swear by our Lord the Sun to go out with you beyond the walls, where you can stab me and then get you gone. Or the--"

"I will not be your slave."

"I do not ask you for service. Or else, I wished to say, I shall live so long as the High G.o.ds wish, and do my poor best for this country. And for you--I shall set you free to do your best also. So now, I pray you, speak."

7. THE BITERS OF THE WALLS (FURTHER ACCOUNT)

"You will set me free," she said, regarding me from under her brows, "without any further exactions or treaty?"

"I will set you free exactly on those terms," I answered, "unless indeed we here decide that it is better for Atlantis that I should die, in which case the freedom will be of your own taking."

"My lord plays a bold game."

"Tut, tut," I said.

"But I shall not hesitate to take the full of my bond, unless my theories are most clearly disproved to me."

"Tut," I said, "you women, how you can play out the time needlessly.

Show me sufficient cause, and you shall kill me where and how you please. Come, begin the accusation."

"You are a tyrant."

"At least I have not paraded my tyrannies in Atlantis these twenty years. Why, Nais, I did but land yesterday."

"You will not deny you came back from Yucatan for a purpose."

"I came back because I was sent for. The Empress gives no reasons for her recalls. She states her will; and we who serve her obey without question."

"Pah, I know that old dogma."

"If you discredit my poor honesty at the outset like this, I fear we shall not get far with our unravelling."

"My lord must be indeed simple," said this strange woman scornfully, "if he is ignorant of what all Atlantis knows."

"Then simple you must write me down. Over yonder in Yucatan we were too well wrapped up in our own parochial needs and policies to have leisure to ponder much over the slim news which drifted out to us from Atlantis--and, in truth, little enough came. By example, Ph.o.r.enice (whose office be adored) is a great personage here at home; but over there in the colony we barely knew so much as her name. Here, since I have been ash.o.r.e, I have seen many new wonders; I have been carried by a riding mammoth; I have sat at a banquet; but in what new policies there are afoot, I have yet to be schooled."

"Then, if truly you do not know it, let me repeat to you the common tale. Ph.o.r.enice has tired of her unmated life."

"Stay there. I will hear no word against the Empress."

"Pah, my lord, your scruples are most decorous. But I did no more than repeat what the Empress had made public by proclamation. She is minded to take to herself a husband, and nothing short of the best is good enough for Ph.o.r.enice. One after another has been put up in turn as favourite--and been found wanting. Oh, I tell you, we here in Atlantis have watched her courtship with jumping hearts. First it was this one here, then it was that one there; now it was this general just returned from a victory, and a day later he had been packed back to his camp, to give place to some dashing governor who had squeezed increased revenues from his province. But every ship that came from the West said that there was a stronger man than any of these in Yucatan, and at last the Empress changed the wording of her vow. 'I'll have Deucalion for my husband,' said she, 'and then we will see who can stand against my wishes.'"

"The Empress (whose name be adored) can do as she pleases in such matters," I said guardedly; "but that is beside the argument. I am here to know how it would be better for Atlantis that I should die?"

"You know you are the strongest man in the kingdom."

"It pleases you to say so."

"And Ph.o.r.enice is the strongest woman."