had never returned. And so Marco, kicking his heels upon the
quay, caught sailor-men by the sleeve and asked them about
those wild horsemen with their mares' milk and their
magicians and their droves of cattle; and as he asked he
wondered about his father and his uncle, and whether they
were dead and lost for ever in the wilds of Tartary. But even
while he asked and wondered and kicked his heels on the quay,
while the Doge Tiepolo was watching the procession of the
gilds and the clerk Canale was adding up customs dues or
writing the ancient history of the Venetians, at that very
moment the two Polos were slowly and wearily making their way
across the heights of central Asia with a caravan of mules
and camels, drawing near to golden Samarcand with its teeming
bazaars, coming nearer and nearer to the West; and in the
following year, 1269, they reached Acre, and took ship there
for Venice, and so at last came home.

They had a strange story to tell, stranger and better than
anything the lean, inquisitive boy had heard upon the quays.
They had soon disposed of their jewels and they had spent a
year at the camp of the Khan of the Golden Horde of Kipchak
on the mighty River Volga. Then war broke out between that
ruler and the Khan who ruled the Persian Khanate, and it cut
off their way back. But Marco's curiosity was inherited; and
no Venetian was ever averse to seeing strange lands and
seeking out new opportunities for trade; so the Polos decided
to go on and visit the Khan of central Asia or Chagatai, and
perhaps make their way back to Constantinople by some
unfrequented route. They struggled over plains peopled only
by tent-dwelling Tartars and their herds, until at last they