“I have heard,” he said humbly, “that the king Ithobal, the great king, always pays his debts, and as I—an outlander—shall be leaving Zimboe shortly under his safe conduct, I desire to close this small account.”
Ithobal went to the door of his tent and commanded that his treasurer should attend him, bringing money. Presently he came, and at his lord’s bidding weighed out one hundred ounces of gold.
“You are right, Phœnician,” said Ithobal; “I always pay my debts, sometimes in gold and sometimes in iron. Be careful that I owe you no more, lest you who to-day are paid in gold, to-morrow may receive the iron, weighed out in the fashion of which I have spoken. Now, begone.”
Metem gathered up the treasure, and hiding it in his ample robe, bowed himself from the royal presence and out of the thorn-hedged camp.
“Without doubt I have been in danger,” he said to himself, wiping his brow, “since at one time that black brute, disregarding the sanctity of an envoy, had it in his mind to torture and to kill me. So, so, king Ithobal, Metem the Phœnician is also an honest merchant who ‘always pays his debts,’ as you may learn in the market-places of Jerusalem, of Sidon and of Zimboe, and I owe you a heavy bill for the fright you have given me to-day. Little of Elissa’s company shall you have if I can help it; she is too good for a cross-bred savage, and if before I go from these barbarian lands I can set a drop of medicine in your wine, or an arrow in your gizzard, upon the word of Metem the Phœnician, it shall be done, king Ithobal.”
When Metem reached Sakon and the envoys, he found that a message had already been sent to them announcing that Ithobal would meet them presently upon the plain outside his camp. But still the king did not come; indeed, it was not until Sakon had despatched another messenger, saying that he was about to return to the city, that at length Ithobal appeared at the head of a bodyguard of black troops. Arranging these in line in front of the camp, he came forward, attended by twelve or fourteen counsellors and generals, all of them unarmed. Half-way between his own line and that of the Phœnicians, but out of bowshot of either, he halted.
Thereon Sakon, accompanied by a similar number of priests and nobles, among whom were Aziel and Metem, all of them also unarmed, except for the knives in their girdles, marched out to meet him. Their escort they left drawn up upon the hillside.
“Let us to business, King,” said Sakon, when the formal words of salutation had passed. “We have waited long upon your pleasure, and already troops move out from the city to learn what has befallen us.”
“Do they then fear that I should ambush ambassadors?” asked Ithobal hotly. “For the rest, is it not right that servants should bide at the door of their king till it is his pleasure to open?”