Part 6

“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 to line.”

“My Lord Tatho,” I said, “it is clear to me that you and I have grown to be of different tastes. All of the hoard that I have made for myself in this colony, few men would covet. I have the poor clothes you see me in this moment, and a box of drugs such as I have found useful to the stomach. I possess also three slaves, two of them scribes and the third a sturdy savage from Europe, who cooks my victual and fills for me the bath. For my maintenance during my years of service, here, I have bled the State of a soldier’s ration and nothing beyond; and if in my name any man has mulcted a creature in Yucatan of so much as an ounce of bronze, I request you as a last service to have that man hanged for me as a liar and a thief.”

Tatho looked at me curiously. “I do not know whether I admire you most or whether I pity. I do not know whether to be astonished or to despise. We had heard of much of your uprightness over yonder in Atlantis, of your sternness and your justice, but I swear by the old Gods that no soul guessed you carried your fancy so far as this. Why, man, money is power. With money and the resources money can buy, nothing could stop a fellow like you; whilst without it you may be tripped up and trodden down irrevocably at the first puny reverse.”

“The Gods will choose my fate.”

“Possibly; but for mine, I prefer to nourish it myself. I tell you with frankness that I have not come here to follow in the pattern you have made for a vice-royalty. I shall govern Yucatan wisely and well to the best of my ability; but I shall govern it also for the good of Tatho, the viceroy. I have brought with me here my navy of eight ships and a personal bodyguard. There is my wife also, and her women and her slaves. All these must be provided for. And why indeed should it be otherwise? If a people is to be governed, it should be their privilege to pay handsomely for their prince.”

“We shall not agree on this. You have the power now, and can employ it as you choose. If I thought it would be of any use, I should like to supplicate you most humbly to deal with lenience when you come to tax these people who are under you. They have grown very dear to me.”

“I have disgusted you with me, and I am grieved for it. But even to retain your good opinion, Deucalion--which I value more than that of any man living--I cannot do here as you have done. It would be impossible, even if I wished it. You must not judge all other men by your own strong standard: a Tatho is by no means a colossus like a Deucalion. And besides, I have a wife and children, and they must be provided for, even if I neglect myself.”

“Ah, there,” I said, “it does seem that I possess the advantage. I have no wife, to clog me.”

He caught up my word quickly. “It seems to me you have nothing that makes life worth living. You have neither wife, children, riches, cooks, retinue, dresses, nor anything else in proportion to your station. You will pardon my saying it, old comrade, but you are plaguey ignorant about some matters. For example, you do not know how to dine. During every day of a very weary voyage, I have promised myself when sitting before the meagre sea victual, that presently the abstinence would be more than repaid by Deucalion’s welcoming feast. Oh, I tell you that feast was one of the vividest things that ever came before my eyes. And then when we get to the actuality, what was it? Why, a country farmer every day sits down to more delicate fare. You told me how it was prepared. Well, your savage from Europe may be lusty, and perchance is faithful, but he is a devil-possessed cook. Gods! I have lived better on a campaign.

“I know this is a colony here, without any of the home refinements; but if in the days to come, the deer of the forest, the fish of the stream, and the other resources of the place are not put to better use than heretofore, I shall see it my duty as ruler to fry some of the kitchen staff alive in grease so as to encourage better cookery. Gods! Deucalion, have you forgotten what it is to have a palate? And have you no esteem for your own dignity? Man, look at your clothes. You are garbed like a herdsman, and you have not a gaud or a jewel to brighten you.”

“I eat,” I said coldly, “when my hunger bids me, and I carry this one robe upon my person till it is worn out and needs replacement. The grossness of excessive banqueting, and the effeminacy of many clothes are attainments that never met my fancy. But I think we have talked here over long, and there seems little chance of our finding agreement. You have changed, Tatho, with the years, and perhaps I have changed also. These alterations creep imperceptibly into one’s being as time advances. Let us part now, and, forgetting these present differences, remember only our friendship of twenty years agone. That for me, at any rate, has always had a pleasant savour when called up into the memory.”

Tatho bowed his head. “So be it,” he said.

“And I would still charge myself upon your bounty for that ship. Dawn cannot be far off now, and it is not decent that the man who has ruled here so long, should walk in daylight through the streets on the morning after his dismissal.”

“So be it,” said Tatho. “You shall have my poor navy. I could have wished that you had asked me something greater.”

“Not the navy, Tatho; one small ship. Believe me, more is wasted.”

“Now, there,” said Tatho, “I shall act the tyrant. I am viceroy here now, and will have my way in this. You may go naked of all possessions: that I cannot help. But depart for Atlantis unattended, that you shall not.”

And so, in fine, as the choice was set beyond me, it was in the “Bear,” Tatho’s own private ship, with all the rest of his navy sailing in escort, that I did finally make my transit.

But the start was not immediate. The vessels lay moored against the stone quays of the inner harbour, gutted of their stores, and with crews exhausted, and it would have been suicide to have forced them out then and there to again take the seas.

So the courtesies were fulfilled by the craft whereon I abode hauling out into the entrance basin, and anchoring there in the swells of the fairway; and forthwith she and her consorts took in wood and water, cured meat and fish ashore, and refitted in all needful ways, with all speed attainable.

For myself there came then, as the first time during twenty busy years, a breathing space from work. I had no further connection with the country of my labours; indeed, officially, I had left it already. Into the working of the ship it was contrary to rule that I should make any inspection or interest, since all sea matters were the exclusive property of the Mariners’ Guild, secured to them by royal patent, and most jealously guarded.

So there remained to me in my day, hours to gaze (if I would) upon the quays, the harbours, the palaces, and the pyramids of the splendid city before me which I had seen grow stone by stone from its foundations; or to roam my eye over the pastures and the grain lands beyond the walls, and to look longingly at the dense forests behind, from which field by field we had so tediously ripped our territory.

Would Tatho continue the work so healthily begun? I trusted so, even in spite of his selfish words. And at all hours, during the radiance of our Lord the Sun, or under the stars of night, I was free to pursue that study of the higher mysteries, on which we of the Priests’ Clan are trained to set our minds, without aid of book or instrument, of image or temple.

The refitting of the navy was gone about with speed. Never, it is said, had ships been reprovisioned and caulked, and remanned with greater speed for the over-ocean voyage. Indeed, it was barely over a month from the day that they brought up in the harbour, they put out beyond the walls, and began their voyage eastward over the hills and dale of the ocean.