“Thanks,” said he, “and I know you are a judge. ‘Twas pretty whilst it lasted; and, seeing that my lads were, for the most, scurvy-rotten, I will say they fought with credit. I have lost my Lord Tatho’s navy, but I think Phorenice will see me righted there. If those that are against her took so much trouble to kill my Lord Deucalion before he could come to her aid, I can fancy she will not be niggard in her joy when I put Deucalion safe, if somewhat dented and blood-bespattered, on the quay.”
“The Gods know,” I said, for it is never my custom to discuss policies with my inferiors, even though etiquette be for the moment loosened, as ours was then by the thrill of battle. “The Gods will decide what is best for you, Tob, even as they have decided that it is best that I should go on to Atlantis.”
The sailor held a horn filled from the wine-skin in his hand, and I think was minded to pour a libation at my feet, even as I had done at his. But he changed his mind, and emptied it down his throat instead. “It is thirsty work, this fighting,” he said, “and that drink comes very useful.”
I put my hand on his blood-smeared arm. “Tob,” I said, “whether I step into power again, or whether I go to the block to-morrow, is another matter which the Gods alone know, but hear me tell you now, that if a chance is given me of showing my gratitude, I shall not forget the way you have served me in this voyage, and the way you have fought this day.”
Tob filled another brimming horn from the wine-skin and splashed it at my feet. “That’s good enough surety for me,” he said, “that my woman and brats never want from this day onward. The Lord Deucalion for the block, indeed!”
Now I can say it with all truth that, till the rival navy met us in the mouth of the gulf, I had thought little enough of my importance as a recruit for the Empress. But the laying in wait for us of those ships, and the wild ferocity with which they fought so that I might fall into their hands, were omens which the blindest could not fail to read. It was clear that I was expected to play a lusty part in the fortunes of the nation.
But if our coming had been watched for by enemies it seemed that Phorenice also had her scouts; and these saw us from the mountains, and carried news to the capital. The arm of the sea at the head of which the vast city of Atlantis stands, varies greatly in width. In places where the mountains have over-boiled, and sent their liquid contents down to form hard stone below, the channel has barely a river’s wideness, and then beyond, for the next half-day’s sail it will widen out into a lake, with the sides barely visible. Moreover, its course is winding, and so a runner who knows his way across the flats, and the swamps, and between the smoking hills which lie along the shore, and did not get overcome by fire-streams, or water, or wandering beasts, could carry news overland from seacoast to capital far speedier than even the most shrewdly whipped of galleys could ferry it along the water.