said, "that my woman and brats never want from this day onward.
The Lord Deucalion for the block, indeed!"



4. THE WELCOME OF PHORENICE


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.