The runners flew. The crowds in the narrow streets backed close against the houses on either side.
"Long live King Hiram!" murmured from hundreds of lips, but the king noted that it was shouted by none. If there were loyalty, it was without enthusiasm. The priests scowled, or, pretending to be preoccupied with pious meditation, allowed the royal palanquin to pass without salute.
Reaching the quay, the king stepped quickly from his carriage, and returning with equal courtesy the low salâm of an elderly man, embraced him cordially. Even if this person's garb had not revealed his nationality, his straight nose on a line with his forehead would have proclaimed him a Greek. His face was weather-beaten and bronzed by exposure to many climes. His firm lips and strong chin would have suggested to an observer that he was a man of resoluteness, perhaps one engaged in daring adventures; were it not that a certain quiet depth in his eyes, a passive introspective sort of look, such as they acquire who are accustomed to think more than they see, betrayed the philosopher.
"I feared, noble Herodotus, that my detention at the council had prevented my wishing you farewell," said the king.
"My thanks, your majesty! But, without this final and unlooked-for courtesy, my voyage across the seas would have been gladdened by the memory of your many kindnesses. I shall bear to my nation the knowledge I have acquired of the past greatness of your people, and the prediction that, under the liberal rule of King Hiram, a new era of progress is to follow."
"The new era will come, sire, when the Phœnicians learn from the Greeks what I have learned from you. The benefactors of nations are not their kings, but their wise men."
"Blessed is the nation whose wisest man is their king," replied Herodotus, with almost reverential courtesy.
To which Hiram responded: "The throne of Tyre would not lack a wise king, if he could detain the sage of Halicarnassus as the man of his right hand. Do me the pleasure to accept the vessel you sail in as a reminder of your visit. Her deck planks are larch from the isles that lie to the north; her masts are of cedar from Lebanon, whose snow-peaks whiten the sky yonder; her oars are oak cut in Bashan beyond the Jews' river, her side-planks are from the slope of Hermon; her sails of linen were woven on the looms of Egypt; her purple awning is tinted with the dye of insects found on your own coast. If my orders have been obeyed, you will find on board wines that our caravans have brought from Damascus."
"No. Not a word of thanks," added the king, interrupting the exclamation of grateful surprise from his guest.
"Farewell, then," replied the Greek, kissing the hand of the young man, and stepping upon the deck of the craft. "But tell me, O king, to which of the gods shall a Greek traveller in a Phœnician bireme commend his journey? to Neptune, or to your Cabeiri?"