Not until much later did I learn that the ruler had granted everything the professor had asked, nor did I know how deeply everything that had happened affected myself. But his speech, as I afterwards read it in the court records, ran something as follows:
"Lord High Dictator Thuno Flâtum, sovereign of the great empire of Wu and illustrious ruler of the Underworld and the Overworld, I prostrate myself before you! Long may your distinguished might endure! Long may your power cause the nations to shake! I come to you today on a momentous mission, and I trust you will let no thought of my personal unworthiness deter you from that just decision for which you are so rightly renowned. Know, O Thuno Flâtum, that this day a stranger of queer and unprepossessing appearance has been found in our midst. His dark skin and gray eyes proclaim him to be a member of one of those colored races of which ancient traditions tell. But he was at first mistaken for a spy sent out against us by our enemy, Zu, in the war now being waged. This view was re-inforced by the fact that he was found in the Scouting Galleries, just above Black Ravine, where the forces of Your Highness have this day won such a glorious victory. Hence he was sentenced to be executed, in accordance with that good old maxim, 'In wartime, kill first and investigate afterwards.'
"But, as fortune would have it, I arrived in time to save him. Your Highness will observe the curious little book which I carry in my hand; this proves him to be not a spy after all, but a creature of some outside race who arrived in some manner beyond our imagining. It is preposterous, of course, to suppose that he came from the Overworld, which, as our scientists have conclusively proved, is incapable of supporting life, since all living things would be instantly killed by the sunlight and fresh air. But may he not have come from caverns deep down in the earth's center, where we have never penetrated?
"This is my theory, Your Highness, and it is supported by the queer writing in his book, which I take to be the hieroglyphics of the crude and undeveloped race of which he is a member. As a philologist, I cannot but be interested, and as a student of primitive writing, I consider that here is an unparalleled opportunity for scholarly research. So I request, Your Highness, that you permit me to take him to my own home, where I will care for him and will attempt, in case his mind be capable of absorbing a few simple facts, to educate him in the rudiments of our language, so as better to study his habits in the interests of science. I will deliver a full report in not less than three octavo volumes, before the Royal Institute of Anthropological Abnormalities, and meanwhile will put up a bond to take every reasonable care of the prisoner and not to let him bite any one or escape...."
Such was the opening of Professor Tan Trum's speech, which continued in the same vein for thirty pages. It is little wonder, therefore, that the patience of Dictator Thuno Flâtum finally weakened, and that, with his permission, I left the hall in the company of Professor Tan Trum, to be launched by him into a new and unpredictably strange career.
