"I have no mind to be bereaved before I have tasted my wedded
life."

"Pish! There is little enough of danger. I will stay and ride
it out. I am not one of your nervous women, sir. But go you,

if you please."
"There is little enough chance of that now."

Blood flowed from the mammoth's neck where the spikes of the
collar tore it, and with each drop, so did the tameness seem to

ooze out from it also. With wild squeals and trumpetings it turned
and charged viciously down the way it had come, scattering like

straws the spearmen who tried to stop it, and mowing a great swath
through the crowd with its monstrous progress. Many must have been

trodden under foot, many killed by its murderous trunk, but only
their cries came to us. The golden castle, with its canopy of

royal snakes, was swayed and tossed, so that we two occupants had
much ado not to be shot off like stones from a catapult. But I

took a brace with my feet against the front, and one arm around a
pillar, and clapped the spare arm round Phorenice, so as to offer

myself to her as a cushion.
She lay there contentedly enough, with her lovely face just

beneath my chin, and the faint scent of her hair coming in to me
with every breath I took; and the mammothcharged madly on through

the narrow streets. We had outstripped the taint of smoke, and the
original cause of fear, but the beast seemed to have forgotten

everything in its mad panic. It held furiously on with enormous
strides, carrying its trunk aloft, and deafening us with its

screams and trumpetings. We left behind us quickly all those who
had trod in that glittering pageant, and we were carried helplessly

on through the wards of the city.
The beast was utterly beyond all control. So great was its

pace that there was no alternative but to try and cling on to the
castle. Up there we were beyond its reach. To have leapt off,

even if we had avoided having brains dashed out or limbs smashed by
the fall, would have been to put ourselves at once at a frightful

disadvantage. The mammoth would have scented us immediately, and
turned (as is the custom of these beasts), and we should have been

trampled into a pulp in a dozen seconds.
The thought came to me that here was the High God's answer to

Phorenice's sacrilege. The mammoth was appointed to carry out
Their vengeance by dashing her to pieces, and I, their priest, was

to be human witness that justice had been done. But no direct
revelation had been given me on this matter, and so I took no

initiative, but hung on to the swaying castle, and held the Empress
against bruises in my arms.

There was no guiding the brute: in its insanity of madness it
doubled many times upon its course, the windings of the streets

confusing it. But by degrees we left the large palaces and
pyramids behind, and got amongst the quarters of artisans, where

weavers and smiths gaped at us from their doors as we thundered
past. And then we came upon the merchants' quarters where men live

over their storehouses that do traffic with the people over seas,
and then down an open space there glittered before us a mirror of

water.
"Now here," thought I, "this mad beast will come to sudden

stop, and as like as not will swerve round sharply and charge back
again towards the heart of the city." And I braced myself to

withstand the shock, and took fresh grip upon the woman who lay
against my breast. But with louder screams and wilder trumpetings

the mammoth held straight on, and presently came to the harbour's
edge, and sent the spray sparkling in sheets amongst the sunshine

as it went with its clumsy gait into the water.
But at this point the pace was very quickly slackened. The

great sewers, which science devised for the health of the city in
the old King's time, vomit their drainings into this part of the

harbour, and the solid matter which they carry is quickly deposited
as an impalpable sludge. Into this the huge beast began to sink

deeper and deeper before it could halt in its rush, and when with
frightened bellowings it had come to a stop, it was bogged

irretrievably. Madly it struggled, wildly it screamed and
trumpeted. The harbour-water and the slime were churned into one

stinking compost, and the golden castle in which we clung lurched
so wildly that we were torn from it and shot far away into the

water.
Still there, of course, we were safe, and I was pleased enough

to be rid of the bumpings.
Phorenice laughed as she swam. "You handle yourself like a

sore man, Deucalion. I owe you something for lending me the
cushion of your body. By my face! There's more of the gallant

about you when it comes to the test than one would guess to hear
you talk. How did you like the ride, sir? I warrant it came to

you as a new experience."
"I'd liefer have walked."

"Pish, man! You'll never be a courtier. You should have
sworn that with me in your arms you could have wished the bumping

had gone on for ever. Ho, the boat there! Hold your arrows.
Deucalion, hail me those fools in that boat. Tell them that, if

they hurt so much as a hair of my mammoth, I'll kill them all by
torture. He'll exhaust himself directly, and when his flurry's

done we'll leave him where he is to consider his evil ways for a
day or so, and then haul him out with windlasses, and tame him

afresh. Pho! I could not feel myself to be Phorenice, if I had no
fine, red, shaggymammoth to take me out for my rides."

The boat was a ten-slave galley which was churning up from the
farther side of the harbour as hard as well-plied whips could make

oars drive her, but at the sound of my shouts the soldiers on her
foredeck stopped their arrowshots, and the steersman swerved her

off on a new course to pick us up. Till then we had been swimming
leisurely across an angle of the harbour, so as to avoid landing

where the sewers outpoured; but we stopped now, treading the water,
and were helped over the side by most respectful hands.

The galley belonged to the captain of the port, a mincing
figure of a mariner, whose highest appetite in life was to lick the

feet of the great, and he began to fawn and prostrate himself at
once, and to wish that his eyes had been blinded before he saw the

Empress in such deadly peril.
"The peril may pass," said she. "It's nothing mortal that

will ever kill me. But I have spoiled my pretty clothes, and shed
a jewel or two, and that's annoying enough as you say, good man."

The silly fellow repeated a wish that he might be blinded
before the Empress was ever put to such discomfort again.

But it seemed she could be cloyed with flattery. "If you are
tired of your eyes," said she, "let me tell you that you have gone

the way to have them plucked out from their sockets. Kill my
mammoth, would you, because he has shown himself a trifle

frolicsome? You and your sort want more education, my man. I
shall have to teach you that port-captains and such small creatures

are very easy to come by, and very small value when got, but that
my mammoth is mine--mine, do you understand?--the property of

Goddess Phorenice, and as such is sacred."
The port-captain abased himself before her. "I am an ignorant

fellow," said he, "and heaven was robbed of its brightest ornament
when Phorenice came down to Atlantis. But if reparation is

permitted me, I have two prisoners in the cabin of the boat here
who shall be sacrificed to the mammothforthwith. Doubtless it

would please him to make sport with them, and spill out the last
lees of his rage upon their bodies."