Isles, and finding a happy people which had no gods, told how they
should be happier still and know the gods and fight for the honour of
the gods and leave their names writ large in histories and at the last
die proclaiming the names of the gods. And the people of the islands
met and said:

"The beasts we know, but lo! these sailors tell of things beyond that
know us as we know the beasts and use us for their pleasure as we use
the beasts, but yet are apt to answer idle prayer flung up at evening
near the hearth, when a man returneth from the ploughing of the fields.
Shall we now seek these gods?" And some said:

"We are lords of the Three Islands and have none to trouble us, and
while we live we find prosperity, and when we die our bones have ease
in the quiet. Let us not therefore seek those who may loom greater than
we do in the Islands Three or haply harry our bones when we be dead."

But others said:

"The prayers that a man mutters, when the drought hath come and all the
cattle die, go up unheeded to the heedless clouds, and if somewhere
there be those that garner prayer let us send men to seek them and to
say: 'There be men in the Isles called Three, or sometimes named by
sailors the Prosperous Isles (and they be in the Central Sea), who
ofttimes pray, and it hath been told us that ye love the worship of
men, and for it answer prayer, and we be travellers from the Islands
Three.'"

And the people of the Islands were greatly allured by the thought of
strange things neither men nor beasts who at evening answered prayer.