The request seemed to surprise him. "That you may certainly
have if you wish it. But my ships are foul with the long passage,
and are in need of a careen. If you take them, you will make a
slow voyage of it to Atlantis. Why do you not take your own navy?
The ships are in harbour now, for I saw them there when we came in.
Brave ships they are too."

"But not mine. That navy belongs to Yucatan."

"Well, Deucalion, you are Yucatan; or, rather, you were
yesterday, and have been these twenty years."

I saw what he meant, and the idea did not please me. I answered
stiffly enough that the ships were owned by private merchants,
or belonged to the State, and I could not claim so much as a
ten-slave galley.

Tatho shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose you know your own
policies best," he said, "though to me it seems but risky for a man
who has attained to a position like yours and mine not to have
provided himself with a stout navy of his own. One never knows
when a recall may be sent, and, through lack of these precautions,
a life's earnings may very well be lost in a dozen hours."

"I have no fear for mine," I said coldly.

"Of course not, because you know me to be your friend. But
had another man been appointed to this vice-royalty, you might have
been sadly shorn, Deucalion. It is not many fellows who can resist
a snug hoard ready and waiting in the very coffers they have come