‘Whatever the way may be,’ she urged; for now the column was facing round towards the harbour. Orestes had taken his place, swelling with importance and eager to display his prowess. In a word, Neopalia was in revolt again, and the death-chant threatened to swell out in all its barbaric simple savagery at any moment.
There was nothing else for it; I must temporise; and that word is generally, and was in this case, the equivalent of a much shorter one. I could not leave these mad fools to rush on ruin. A plan was in my head and I gave it play. I took a pace forward, raised my hand, and cried:
‘Hear me before you march, Neopalians, for I am your friend.’
My voice gained me a minute’s silence; the column stood still, though Orestes chafed impatiently at the delay.
‘You’re in haste, men of Neopalia,’ said I. ‘Indeed you’re always in haste. You were in haste to kill me who had done you no harm. You are in haste to kill yourselves by marching into the mouth of the great gun of the ship. In truth I wonder that any of you are still alive. But here, in this matter, you are most of all in haste, for having heard what the Lady Phroso said, you have not asked nor waited to hear what I say, but have at once gone mad, all of you, and chosen the maddest among you and made him your leader.’
I do not think that they had expected quite this style of speech. They had looked for passionate reproaches or prayerful entreaties; cool scorn and chaff put them rather at a loss, and my reference to Orestes, who looked sour enough, won me a hesitating laugh.
‘And then, all of you mad together, off you go, leaving me here, the only sane man in the place! For am not I sane? Aye, not mad enough to leave the fairest lady in the world when she says she loves me!’ I took Phroso’s hand and kissed it. It lay limp and cold in mine. ‘For my home,’ I went on, ‘is a long way off, and it is long since I have seen the lady of whom you have heard; and a man’s heart will not be denied.’ Again I kissed Phroso’s hand, but I dared not look her in the face.
My meaning had dawned on them now. There was an instant’s silence, the last relic of doubt and puzzle; then a sudden loud shout went up from them. Orestes alone was sullen and mute, for my surrender deposed him from his brief eminence. Again and again they shouted in joy. I knew that their shouts must reach nearly to the harbour. Men and women crowded round me and seized my hand; nobody seemed to make any bones about the ‘lady who waited’ for me. They were single-hearted patriots, these Neopalians. I had observed that virtue in them several times before, and their behaviour now confirmed my opinion. But there was, of course, a remarkable difference in the manifestation. Before I had been the object, now I was the subject; for by announcing my intention of marrying Phroso I took rank as a Neopalian. Indeed for a minute or two I was afraid that the post of generalissimo, vacant by Orestes’s deposition, would be forcibly thrust upon me.
Happily their enthusiasm took a course which was more harmless, although it was hardly less embarrassing. They made a ring round Phroso and me, and insisted on our embracing one another in the glare of publicity. Yet somehow I forgot them all for a moment—them all, and more than them all—while I held her in my arms.
Now it chanced that the captain, Denny and Hogvardt chose this moment for appearing on the road, in the course of a leisurely approach to the house; and they beheld Phroso and myself in a very sentimental attitude on the doorstep, with the islanders standing round in high delight. Denny’s amazed ‘Hallo!’ warned me of what had happened. The islanders—their enmity towards the suzerain power allayed as quickly as it had been roused—ran to the captain to impart the joyful news. He came up to me, and bestowed his sanction by a shake of the hand.