of Pen-Kai and Blut, and the wandering streets of Mlo, where priests
propitiate the avalanche with wine and maize. Then night came down
over the plains of Tlun, and we saw the lights of Cappadarnia.
We heard the Pathnites beating upon drums as we passed Imaut and
Golzunda, then all but the helmsman slept. And villages scattered
along the banks of the Yann heard all that night in the helmsman's
unknown tongue the little songs of cities that they knew not.

I awoke before dawn with a feeling that I was unhappy before I
remembered why. Then I recalled that by the evening of the approaching
day, according to all foreseen probabilities, we should come to
Bar-Wul-Yann, and I should part from the captain and his sailors. And
I had liked the man because he had given me of his yellow wine that
was set apart among his sacred things, and many a story he had told me
about his fair Belzoond between the Acroctian hills and the Hian Min.
And I had liked the ways that his sailors had, and the prayers that
they prayed at evening side by side, grudging not one another their
alien gods. And I had a liking too for the tender way in which they
often spoke of Durl and Duz, for it is good that men should love their
native cities and the little hills that hold those cities up.

And I had come to know who would meet them when they returned to their
homes, and where they thought the meetings would take place, some in
a valley of the Acroctian hills where the road comes up from Yann,
others in the gateway of one or another of the three cities, and
others by the fireside in the home. And I thought of the danger that
had menaced us all alike outside Perdóndaris, a danger that, as things
have happened, was very real.

And I thought too of the helmsman's cheery song in the cold and lonely