intolerable with the land as it is ordered now. We heard of your
coming from Yucatan. It was we who sent the fleet to take you at
the entrance to the Gulf."

"Your fleet gave us a pretty fight."

"Oh, I know, I know. We had our watchers on the high land who
brought us the tidings. We had an omen even before that. Where we
lay with our army before the walls here, we saw great birds
carrying off the slain to the mountains. But where the fleet
failed, I saw a chance where I, a woman, might--"

"Where you might succeed?" I sat me down on a pile of the
captain's stuffs. It seemed as if here at last that I should find
a solution for many things. "You carry a name?" I asked.

"They call me Nais."

"Ah," I said, and signed to her to take the clothes that I had
sought out. She was curiously like, so both my eyes and hearing
said, to Ylga, the fan-girl of Phorenice, but as she had told me of
no parentage I asked for none then. Still her talk alone let me
know that she was bred of none of the common people, and I made up
my mind towards definite understanding. "Nais," I said, "you wish
to kill me. At the same time I have no doubt you wish to live on
yourself, if only to get credit from your people for what you have
done. So here I will make a contract with you. Prove to me that
my death is for Atlantis' good, and I swear by our Lord the Sun to
go out with you beyond the walls, where you can stab me and then
get you gone. Or the--"