For a barely perceptible interval Croft appeared to hesitate, and then he caught a heavy breath.
"Against the father of Naia of Aphur it were hard indeed for anger to find a place in my heart. Zitu be with you, Lakkon, also," he said, and left.
Outside the room he made his way, outside the palace of Jadgor, once more to a seat in the motur, and in it toward the city walls and the foot of a mounting flight of stairs.
A sentry stood with sword and spear before them. Croft addressed him. He saluted and permitted him to pass. Jason, Mouthpiece of Zitu, climbed up in the silvery moonlight, his shadow a purple blot beside him, to reach the top at last. And there strangely in all that archaic scene he paused before the door of a hut, above which towered the spidery outline of a wireless mast. For an instant he turned his eyes outward over the expanse of the Central Sea, and then he passed inside.
A man seated at a table, with the key of the wireless before him, started to his feet.
"A message to Robur, Governor of Aphur in Himyra, and quickly," Croft said.
The operator regained his seat and produced his headdress, clamping it against his ears. Croft gave the message. There came the hissing crash of the spark. Strange, I found myself thinking as I watched—an anachronism surely that this youth of Palos, clad in plain tunic and sandals and leg-casings of leather, above which showed the sinewy flesh of his lower thighs and knees, should be sitting here on top of the ramparts of a walled city, hurling forth across the ocean beyond him the potential Hertzian waves. And yet it was no more strange than that I should know it—than that the grim-visaged man in the metal harness of a Tamarizian noble was the one through whose genius it was inspired.
And then the thing was done. The crashing of the spark was silenced. Croft tossed a coin on the table and passed outside and down the stairs. And when next the motur paused he gave the driver another coin and dismissed him. He stood before a galley, moored close to the semi-circular quays of Zitra's inner harbor, stretching like a pool of liquid silver beyond him to the mighty sea-doors that closed the entrance to it in the overarching walls.
But though I thrilled to the massive grandeur of the picture, Croft heeded it little. To him it was an old scene, and, too, he was ridden with the spur of haste.
"Hai! Captain of the watch, aboard the galley!" he hailed sharply and stood waiting until a head appeared above the rail of the waist and a voice replied: