“The peril may pass,” said she. “It’s nothing mortal that will ever kill me. But I have spoiled my pretty clothes, and shed a jewel or two, and that’s annoying enough as you say, good man.”
The silly fellow repeated a wish that he might be blinded before the Empress was ever put to such discomfort again.
But it seemed she could be cloyed with flattery. “If you are tired of your eyes,” said she, “let me tell you that you have gone the way to have them plucked out from their sockets. Kill my mammoth, would you, because he has shown himself a trifle frolicsome? You and your sort want more education, my man. I shall have to teach you that port-captains and such small creatures are very easy to come by, and very small value when got, but that my mammoth is mine—mine, do you understand?—the property of Goddess Phorenice, and as such is sacred.”
The port-captain abased himself before her. “I am an ignorant fellow,” said he, “and heaven was robbed of its brightest ornament when Phorenice came down to Atlantis. But if reparation is permitted me, I have two prisoners in the cabin of the boat here who shall be sacrificed to the mammoth forthwith. Doubtless it would please him to make sport with them, and spill out the last lees of his rage upon their bodies.”
“Prisoners you’ve got, have you? How taken?”
“Under cover of last night they were trying to pass in between the two forts which guard the harbour mouth. But their boat fouled the chain, and by the light of the torches the sentries spied them. They were caught with ropes, and put in a dungeon. There is an order not to abuse prisoners before they have been brought before a judgment?”
“It was my order. Did these prisoners offer to buy their lives with news?”
“The man has not spoken. Indeed, I think he got his death-wound in being taken. The woman fought like a cat also, so they said in the fort, but she was caught without hurt. She says she has got nothing that would be of use to tell. She says she has tired of living like a savage outside the city, and moreover that, inside, there is a man for whose nearness she craves most mightily.”
“Tut!” said Phorenice. “Is this a romance we have swum to? You see what affectionate creatures we women are, Deucalion.”—The galley was brought up against the royal quay and made fast to its golden rings. I handed the Empress ashore, but she turned again and faced the boat, her garments still yielding up a slender drip of water.—“Produce your woman prisoner, master captain, and let us see whether she is a runaway wife, or a lovesick girl mad after her sweetheart. Then I will deliver judgment on her, and as like as not will surprise you all with my clemency. I am in a mood for tender romance to-day.”
The port-captain went into the little hutch of a cabin with a white face. It was plain that Phorenice’s pleasantries scared him. “The man appears to be dead, Your Majesty. I see that his wounds—”