The Lost Continent by C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne (best desktop ebook reader TXT) 📕

had not suspected my name, it was clear, for my stature and garb were nothing out of the ordinary; but if my bodily strength and fighting power had been sufficient to raise me to a viceroyalty like that of Yucatan, and let me endure alive in that government throughout twenty hard-battling years, why, it was likely that this rabble of savages would see something that was new and admirable in the practice of arms before the crude weight of their numbers could drag me down. Nay, I did not even despair of winning free altogether. I must find me a weapon from those that came up to battle, with which I could write worthy signatures, and I must attempt no standing fights. Gods! but what a glow the prospect did send through me as I stood there waiting.

A vainer man, writing history, might have said that always, before everything else, he held in mind the greater interests before the less. But for me⁠—I prefer to be honest, and own myself human. In my glee at that forthcoming fight⁠—which promised to be the greatest and most furious I had known in all a long life of battling⁠—I will confess that Atlantis and her differing policies were clean forgot. I should go out an unknown man from the little cell of a temple, I should do my work, and then, whether I took freedom with me, or whether I came down at last myself on a pile of slain, these people would guess without being told the name, that here was Deucalion. Gods! what a fight we would have made!

But the door did not open wide to give me space for my first rush. It creaked gratingly outwards on its pivots, and a slim hand and a white arm slipped inside, beckoning me to quietude. Here was some woman. The door creaked wider, and she came inside.

“Nais,” I said.

“Silence, or they will hear you, and remember. At present those who brought you here are killed, and unless by chance someone blunders into this robbed shrine, you will not be found.”

“Then, if that is so, let me go out and walk amongst these people as one of themselves.”

She shook her head.

“But, Nais, I am not known here. I am merely a man in very plain and mud-stained robe. I should be in no ways remarkable.”

A smile twitched her face. “My lord,” she said, “wears no beard; and his is the only clean chin in the camp.”

I joined in her laugh. “A pest on my want of foppishness then. But I am forgetting somewhat. It comes to my mind that we still have unfinished that small discussion of ours concerning the length of my poor life. Have you decided to cut it off from risk of further mischief, or do you propose to give me further span?”

She turned to me with a look of sharp distress. “My lord,” she said, “I would have you forget that silly talk of mine. This last two hours I thought you were dead in real truth.”

“And you were not relieved?”

“I felt that the only man was gone out of the world⁠—I mean, my lord, the only man who can save Atlantis.”

“Your words give me a confidence. Then you would have me go back and become husband to Phorenice?”

“If there is no other way.”

“I warn you I shall do that, if she still so desires it, and if it seems to me that that course will be best. This is no hour for private likings or dislikings.”

“I know it,” she said, “I feel it. I have no heart now, save only for Atlantis. I have schooled myself once more to that.”

“And at present I am in this lone little box of a temple. A minute ago, before you came, I had promised myself a pretty enough fight to signalise my changing of abode.”

“There must be nothing of that. I will not have these poor people slaughtered unnecessarily. Nor do I wish to see my lord exposed to a hopeless risk. This poor place, such as it is, has been given to me as an abode, and, if my lord can remain decorously till nightfall in a maiden’s chamber, he may at least be sure of quietude. I am a person,” she added simply, “that in this camp has some respect. When darkness comes, I will take my lord down to the sea and a boat, and so he may come with ease to the harbour and the water-gate.”

VIII The Preacher from the Mountains

It was long enough since I had found leisure for a parcel of sleep, and so during the larger part of that day I am free to confess that I slumbered soundly, Nais watching me. Night fell, and still we remained within the privacy of the temple. It was our plan that I should stay there till the camp slept, and so I should have more chance of reaching the sea without disturbance.

The night came down wet, with a drizzle of rain, and through the slits in the temple walls we could see the many fires in the camp well cared for, the men and women in skins and rags toasting before them, with steam rising as the heat fought with their wetness. Folk seated in discomfort like this are proverbially alert and cruel in the temper, and Nais frowned as she looked on the inclemency of the weather.

“A fine night,” she said, “and I would have sent my lord back to the city without a soul here being the wiser; but in this chill, people sleep sourly. We must wait till the hour drugs them sounder.”

And so we waited, sitting there together on that pavement so long unkissed by worshippers, and it was little enough we said aloud. But there can be good companionship without sentences of talk.

But as the hours drew on, the night began to grow less quiet. From the distance someone began to blow on a horn