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DUKE UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

The Glenn Negley Collection of Utopian Literature

ACROSS THE ZODIAC.

BALT.ANTYNB, HANSON AND CO. BDINBURGH AND LONDON

Across the Zodiac

Gbe Stoi^ of a Wrecfcefc IRecorfc

DECIPHERED, TRANSLATED AND EDITED

BY

PERCY GREG

AUTHOR OF "THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE" ETC

Thoughts he sends to each planet,

Uranus, Venus, and Mars ; Soars to the Centre to span it,

Numbers the infinite Stars."

Courthope's Paradise of Birds

VOL. II.

LONDON

TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL

1880 [ All rights reserved]

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

/f OK

anrA

CHAP.		PAGE
XIV.	BY SEA	I
XV.		9
XVI.		■ 27
XVII.		• 42
XVIII.	A prince's present ....	• 53
XIX.	A COMPLETE ESTABLISHMENT .	81
XX.	LIFE, SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC .	• 95
XXI.	PRIVATE AUDIENCES ....	. 115
XXII.	PECULIAR INSTITUTIONS ....	• ■ 136
XXIII.		• 154
XXIV.
XXV.	APOSTACY	. 201
XXVI.	TWILIGHT	. 216
XXVII.	THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW	. 225
XXVIII.	DARKER YET	242
XXIX.	AZRAEL
XXX.	FAREWELL	. 285

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Duke University Libraries

http://www.archive.org/details/acrosszodiacstor02greg

ACROSS THE ZODIAC.

CHAPTER XIV.

BY SEA.

An hour after sunrise next morning. Esmo, his son, and our host accompanied us to the vessel in which we were to make the principal part of our journey. "We were received by an officer of the royal Court, who was to accompany us during the rest of our journey, and from whom, Esmo assured me, I might obtain the fullest information regarding the various objects of interest, to visit which we had adopted an unusual and circuitous course. We embarked on a gulf running generally from east to west, about midway between the northern tropic and the arctic circle. As this was the summer of the northern hemisphere, we should thus enjoy a longer day, and should not suffer from the change of climate. After taking leave of our friends, we went down. below to take possession of the fore part of the vessel, which was assigned as our exclusive quarters. Immediately in front of the machine-room, which occupied the centre of the vessel, were two cabins, about sixteen feet square, reaching from side to side. Beyond these, opening out of a passage running

VOL. II. A

2 Across tiie Zodiac.

along one si Jo, were two smaller cabins about eight feet lung. All these apartments were furnished and orna- mented with the luxury and elegance of chambers in the best houses on shore. In the foremost of the larger cabins were a couple of desks, and three or four writing or easy chairs. In the outer cabin nearest to the engine-room, and entered immediately by the ladder descending from the deck, was fixed a low central table. In all we found abundance of those soft ex- quisitely covered and embroidered cushions which in Mars, as in Oriental countries, are the most essential and most luxurious furniture. The officer had quarters in the stern of the vessel, which was an exact copy of the fore part. But the first of these rooms was con- sidered as public or neutral ground. Leaving Eveena below, I went on deck to examine, before she started, the construction of the vessel. Her entire length was about one hundred and eighty feet, her depth, from the flat deck to the wide keel, about one half of her breadth ; the height of the cabins not much more than eight feet ; her draught, when most completely lightened, not more than four feet. Her electric machinery drew in and drove out with great force currents of water which pro- pelled her with a speed greater than that afforded by the most powerful paddles. It also pumped in or out, at whatever depth, the quantity of water required as ballast, not merely to steady the vessel, but to keep her in position on the surface or to sink her to the level at which the pilot might choose to sail. At either end was fixed a steering screw, much resembling the tail-fin of a fish, capable of striking sideways, upwards, or down- wards, and directing our course accordingly.

By Sea. 3

Ergimo, our escort, had not yet reached middle age, but was a man of exceptional intellect and unusual knowledge. He had made many voyages, and had occupied for some time an important official post on one of those Arctic continents which are inhabited only by the hunters employed in collecting the furs and skins furnished exclusively by these lands. The shores of the gulf were lofty, rocky, and uninteresting. It was difficult to see any object on shore from the deck of the vessel, and I assented, therefore, without demur, after the first hour of the voyage, to his proposal that the lights, answering to our hatches, should be closed, and that the vessel should pursue her course below the surface. This was the more desirable that, though winds and storms are, as I have said, rare, these long and narrow seas with their lofty shores are exposed to rough currents, atmospheric and marine, which render a voyage on the surface no more agreeable than a passage in average weather across the Bay of Biscay. After descending I was occupied for some time in study- ing, with Ergimo's assistance, the arrangement of the machinery, and the simple process by which electric force is generated in quantities adequate to any effort at a marvellously small expenditure of material. In this form the Martialists assert that they obtain without waste all the potential energy stored in . . . [About half a score lines, or two pages of an ordinary octavo volume like this, are here illegible.] She (Eveena ?) was somewhat pale, but rose quickly, and greeted me with a smile of unaffected cheerfulness, and was evidently surprised as well as pleased that I was content to remain alone with her, our conversation turning chiefly

4 Across the Zodiac.

on the lessons of last night. Our time passed quickly till, about the middle of the day, we were startled by a shock which, as I thought, must be due to our having run aground or struck against a rock. But when I passed into the engine-room, Ergimo explained that the pilot was nowise in fault. We had encountered one of those inconveniences, hardly to be called perils, which are peculiar to the waters of Mars. Though animals hostile or dangerous to man have been almost extirpated upon the land, creatures of a type long since supposed to be extinct on Earth still haunt the depths of the Martial seas ; and one of these — a real sea-serpent of above a hundred feet in length and perhaps eight feet in circumference — had attacked our vessel, entangling the steering screw in his folds and trying to crush it, checking, at the same time, by his tremendous force the motion of the vessel.

•' We shall soon get rid of him, though," said Ergimo, as I followed him to the stern, to watch with great interest the method of dealing with the monster, whose strange form was visible through a thick crystal pane in the stern-plate. The asphyxiator could not have been used without great risk to ourselves. But several tubes, filled with a soft material resembling cork, ori- ginally the pith of a Martial cane of great size, were inserted in the floor, sides, and deck of the vessel, and through the centre of each of these passed a strong metallic wire of great conducting power. Two or three of those in the stern were placed in contact with some of the electric machinery by which the rudder was usually turned, and through them were sent rapid and energetic currents, whose passage rendered the

By Sea. 5

covering of the wires, notwithstanding their great conductivity, too hot to he touched. We heard im- mediately a smothered sound of extraordinary char- acter, which was, in truth, no other than a scream deadened partly by the water, partly by the thick metal sheet interposed between us and the element. The steering screw was set in rapid motion, and at first revolving with some difficulty, afterwards moving faster and more regularly, presently released us. Its rotation was stopped, and we resumed our course. The serpent had relaxed his folds, stunned by the shock, but had not disentangled himself from the screw, till its blades, no longer checked by the tre- mendous force of his original grasp, striking him a series of terrific blows, had broken the vertebra and paralysed if not killed the monstrous enemy.

At each side of the larger chambers and of the engine- room were fixed small thick circular windows, through which we could see from time to time the more remark- able objects in the water. We passed along one curious submarine bank, built somewhat like our coral rocks, not by insects, however, but by shellfish, which, fixing themselves as soon as hatched on the shells below or around them, extended slowly upward and sideways. As each of these creatures perished, the shell, about half the size of an oyster, was filled with the same sort of material as that of which its hexagonic walls were originally formed, drawn in by the surrounding and still living neighbours ; and thus, in the course of centuries, were constructed solid reefs of enormous extent. One of these had run right across the gulf, forming a complete bridge, ceasing, however, within

6 Across the Zodiac.

some five feet of the surface ; but on this a regular roadway had been constructed by human art and mechanical labour, while underneath, at the usual depth of thirty feet, several tunnels had been pierced, each large enough to admit the passage of a single vessel of the largest size. At every fourth hour our vessel rose to the surface to renew her atmosphere, which was thus kept purer than that of an ordinary Atlantic packet between decks, while the temperature was maintained at an agreeable point by the warmth diffused from the electric machinery.

On the sixth day of our voyage, wre reached a point where the Gulf of Serocasfe divides, a sharp jutting cape or peninsula parting its waters. We took the northern branch, about fifteen miles in width, and here, rising to the surface and steering a zigzag course from coast to coast, I was enabled to see something of the character of this most extraordinary strait. Its walls at first were no less than 2000 feet in height, so that at all times we were in sight, so to speak, of laud. A road had been cut along the sea-level, and here and there tunnels ascending through the rock rendered this accessible from the plateau above. The strata, as upon Earth, were of various character, none of them very thick, seldom reproducing exactly the geology of our own planet, but seldom very widely deviating in character from the rocks with which we are acquainted. The lowest were evidently of the same hard, fused, compressed character as those which our terminology calls plutonic. Above these were masses which, like the carboniferous strata of Earth, recalled the previous existence of a richer but less

By Sea. 7

highly organised form of vegetation than at present exists anywhere upon the surface. Intermixed with these were beds of the peculiar submarine shell-rock whose formation I have just described. Above these again come strata of diluvial gravel, and about 400 feet below the surface rocks that bore evident traces of a glacial period. As we approached the lower end of the gulf the shores sloped constantly downward, and where they were no more than 600 feet in height I was able to distinguish an upper stratum of some forty yards in depth, preserving through its whole extent traces of human life and even of civilisation. This implied, if fairly representative of the rest of the planet's crust, an existence of man upon its surface ten, twenty, or even a hundred-fold longer than he is supposed to have enjoyed upon Earth. About noon on the seventh day we entered the canal which con- nects this arm of the gulf with the sea of the northern temperate zone. It varies in height from 400 to 600 feet, in width from 100 to 300 yards, its channel never exceeds 20 feet in depth. Ergimo explained that the length had been thought to render a tunnel unsuitable, as the ordinary method of ventilation could hardly have been made to work, and to ventilate such a tunnel through shafts sunk to so great a depth would have been almost as costly as the method actually adopted. A much smaller breadth might have been thought to suffice, and was at first intended; but it was found that the current in a narrow channel, the outer sea being many inches higher than the water of the gulf, would have been too rapid and violent for safety. The work had occupied fifteen Martial years,

8 Across the Zodiac.

and had been opened only for some eight centuries. TIk' water was not more than twenty feet in depth ; but the channel was so perfectly scoured by the current that no obstacle had ever arisen and no expense had been incurred to keep it clear. We entered the Nor- thern sea where a bay ran up some half dozen miles towards the end of the gulf, shortening the canal by this distance. The bay itself was shallow, the only channel being scarcely wider than the canal, and created or preserved by the current setting in to the latter; a current which offered a very perceptible resist- ance to our course, and satisfied me that had the canal been no wider than the convenience of navigation would have recpiired in the absence of such a stream, its force would have rendered the wTork altogether useless. We crossed the sea, holding on in the same direction, and a little before sunset moored our vessel at the wharf of a small harbour, along the sides of which was built the largest town of this subarctic land- belt, a village of some fifty houses named Askinta.

( 9 )

CHATTER XV.

FUR-HUNTING.

EEGIMO landed to make arrangements for the chase, to witness which was the principal object of this deviation from what would otherwise have been our most con- venient course. Not only would it be possible to take part in the pursuit of the wild fauna of the continent, but I also hoped to share in a novel sport, not unlike a whale-hunt in Baffin's Bay. A large inland sea, occupy- ing no inconsiderable part of the area of this belt, lay immediately to the northward, and one wide arm thereof extended within a few miles of Askinta, a distance which, notwithstanding the interposition of a mountain range, might be crossed in a couple of hours. One or two days at most would suffice for both adventures. I had not yet mentioned my intention to Eveena. During the voyage I had been much alone with her, and it was then only that our real acquaintance began. Till then, however close our attachment, we were, in knowledge of each other's character and thought, almost as strangers. While her painful timidity had in some degree worn off, her anxious and watchful deference was even more marked than before. True to the strange ideas derived chiefly from her training, partly from her own natural

VOL. II. b

i o Across the Zodiac.

character, she was the more careful to avoid giving ihe slightest pain or displeasure, as she ceased to fear that either would he immediately and intentionally visited upon herself. She evidently thought that on this account there was the greater danger lest a series of trivial annoyances, unnoticed at the time, might cool the affection she valued so highly. Diffident of her own charms, she knew how little hold the women of her race generally have on the hearts of men after the first fever of passion has cooled. It was difficult for her to realise that her thoughts or wishes could truly interest me, that compliance with her inclinations could be an object, or that I could be seriously bent on teach- ing her to speak frankly and openly. But as this new idea became credible and familiar, her unaffected desire to comply with all that was expected from her drew out her hitherto undeveloped powers of conversation, and enabled me day by day to appreciate more thoroughly the real intelligence and soundness of judgment con- cealed at first by her shyness, and still somewhat obscured by her childlike simplicity and absolute in- experience. In the latter respect, however, she was, of course, at the less disadvantage with a stranger to the manners and life of her world. A more perfectly charming companion it would have been difficult to desire and impossible to find. If at first I had been secretly inclined to reproach her with exaggerated timidity, it became more and more evident that her personal fears were due simply to that nervous sus- ceptibility which even men of reputed courage have often displayed in situations of sudden and wholly unfamiliar peril. Her tendency to overrate all dangers,

Fur- Hunting. i r

not merely as they affected herself, but as they might involve others, and. above all her husband, I ascribed to the ideas and habits of thought now for so many centuries hereditary among a people in whom the fear of annihilation — and the absence of all the motives that impel men on earth to face danger and death with calmness, or even to enjoy the excitement of deadly peril — have extinguished manhood itself.

I could not, however, conceal from Eveena that I was about to leave her for an adventure which could not but seem to her foolhardy and motiveless. She was more than terrified when she understood that I really intended to join the professional hunters in an enterprise which, even on their part, is regarded by their countrymen with a mixture of admiration and contempt, as one wherein only the hope of large remuneration would induce any sensible man to share ; and which, from my utter ignorance of its conditions, must be obviously still more dangerous to me. The confidence she was slowly learning from what seemed to her extravagant indul- gence, to me simply the consideration due to a rational being, wife or comrade, slave or free, first found expres- sion in the freedom of her loving though provoking expostulations.

" You must be tired of me," she said at last, " if you are so ready to run the risk of parting out of mere curiosity."

" Sheer petulance ! " I answered. "You know well that you are dearer to me every day as I learn to understand you better ; but a man cannot afford to play the coward because marriage has given new value to life. And you might remember that I have threefold the strength which

1 2 Ac?'oss the Zodiac.

emboldens your hunters to incur all the dangers that seem to your fancy so terrible."

That no shade of mere cowardice or feminine affecta- tion influenced her remonstrance was evident from her next words.

" Well, then, if you will go, however improper and outrageous the thing may be, let me go with you. I cannot bear to wait alone, fancying at every moment what may be happening to you, and fearing to see them carry you back wounded or killed."

Touched by the unselfishness of her terror, and feel- ing that there was some truth in her representation of the state of mind in which she would spend the hours of my absence, I tried to quiet her by caresses and soft words. But these she received as symptoms of yield- ing on my part ; and her persistence brought upon her at last the resolute and somewhat sharp rebuke with which men think it natural and right to repress the excesses of feminine fear.

" This is nonsense, Eveena. You cannot accompany me ; and, if you could, your presence would multiply tenfold the danger to me, and utterly unnerve me if any real difficulty should call for presence of mind. You must be content to leave me in the hands of Provi- dence, and allow me to judge what becomes a man, and what results are worth the risks they may involve. I hear Ergiino's step on deck, and I must go and learn from him what arrangements he has been able to make for to-morrow."

My escort had found no difficulty in providing for the fulfilment of both my wishes. We were to beat the forests which covered the southern seabord in the

Fur-Hunting. 1 3

neighbourhood, driving our game out upon the open ground, where alone we should have a chance of secur- ing it. By noon we might hope to have seen enough of this sport, and to find ourselves at no great distance from that part of the inland sea where a yet more exciting chase was to employ the rest of the day. Failing to bring both adventures within the sixteen hours of light which at this season and in this latitude we should enjoy, we were to bivouac for the night on the northern sea-coast and pursue our aquatic game in the morning of the morrow, returning before dark to our vessel.

Ergimo, however, was more of Eveena's mind than of mine. " I have complied," he said, " with your wishes, as the Camp t a ordered me to do. But T am equally bound, by his orders and by my duty, to tell you that in my opinion you are running risks altogether out of proportion to any object our adventure can serve. Scarcely any of the creatures we shall hunt are other than very formidable. Even the theme, with the spikes on its fore-limbs, can inflict painful if not dangerous wounds, and its bite is said to be not unfrequently veno- mous. You are not used to our methods of hunting, to the management of the caldccta, or to the use of our weapons. I can conceive no reason why you should incur what is at any rate a considerable chance, not merely of death, but of defeating the whole purpose of your extraordinary journey, simply to do or to see the work on which we peril only the least valuable lives among us."

I was about to answer him even more decidedly than I had replied to Eveena, when a pressure on my arm

1 4 Across the Zodiac.

drew my eyes in the other direction; and, to my extreme mortification, I perceived that Eveena herself, in all- absorbing eagerness to learn the opinion of an intelli- gent and experienced hunter, had stolen on deck and had heard all that had passed. I was too much vexed to make any other reply to Ergimo's argument than the single word, " I shall go." Beally angry with her for the first and last time, but not choosing to express my displeasure in the presence of a third person, I hurried Eveena down the ladder into our cabin.

" Tell me," I said, " what, according to your own rules of feminine reserve and obedience, you deserve ? Whal would one of your people say to a wife who followed him without leave into the company of a stranger, to listen to that which she knew she was not meant to hear ? "

She answered by throwing off her veil and head-dress, and standing up silent before me.

"Answer me, child," I repeated, more than half appeased by the mute appeal of her half-raised eyes and submissive attitude. " I know you will not tell me that you have not broken all the restraints of your own laws and customs. What would your father, for instance, say to such an escapade ? "

She was silent, till the touch of my hand, contradict- ing perhaps the harshness of my words, encouraged her to lift her eyes, full of tears, to mine.

" Nothing," was her very unexpected reply.

"Nothing?" I rejoined. "If you can tell me that you have not done wrong, I shall be sorry to have reproved you so sharply."

" I shall tell you no such lie ! " she answered

Fur-Hunting. 1 5

almost indignantly. " You asked what would be said!'

I was fairly at a loss. The figure which Martial grammarians call " the suppressed alternative " is a great favourite, and derives peculiar force from the varied emphasis their syntax allows. But, resolved not to understand a meaning much more distinctly conveyed in her words than in my translation, I replied, "I shall say nothing then, except — don't do it again ; " and I extricated myself promptly if ignominiously from the dilemma, by leaving the cabin and closing the door, so sharply and decidedly as to convey a distinct inti- mation that it was not again to be opened.

We breakfasted earlier than usual. My gentle bride had been subdued into a silence, not sullen, but so sad that when her wistful eyes followed my every move- ment as I prepared to start, I could willingly, to bring back their brightness, have renounced the promise of the day. But this must not be ; and turning to take leave on the threshold, I said —

" Be sure I shall come to no harm ; and if I did, the worst pang of death would be the memory of the first sharp words I have spoken to you, and which, I confess, were an ill return for the inconvenient expression of your affectionate anxiety."

" Do not speak so," she half whispered. " I deserved any mark of your displeasure ; I only wish I could per- suade you that the sharpest sting lies in the lips we love. Do remember, since you would not let me run the slightest risk of harm, that if you come to hurt you will have killed me."

" Best assured I shall come to no serious ill. I hope

1 6 Across the Zodiac.

this evening to laugh •with you at your alarms ; and so long as you do not see me either in the flesh or in the spirit, you may know that I am safe. I could nut leave you for ever without meeting you again."

This speech, which I should have ventured in no other presence, would hardly have established my lunacy more decisively in Martial eyes than in those of Terrestrial common sense. It conveyed, however, a real if not sufficient consolation to Eveena ; the idea it implied being not wholly unfamiliar to a daughter of the Star. I was surprised that, almost shrinking from my last embrace, Eveena suddenly dropped her veil around her; till, turning, I saw that Ergimo was stand- ing at the top of the ladder leading to the deck, and just in sight.

" I will send word," he said, addressing himself to me, but speaking for her ears, " of your safety at noon and at night. So far as my utmost efforts can ensure it you will be safe ; an obligation higher, and enforced by sanctions graver, than even the Camptus command for- bids me to lead a brother into peril, and fail to bring him out of it."

The significant word was spoken in so low a tone that it could not possibly reach the ears of our com- panions of the chase, who had mustered on shore within a few feet of the vessel. But Eveena evidently caught both the sound and the meaning, and I was glad that they should convey to her a confidence which seemed to myself no better founded than her alarms. To me its only value lay in the friendly relation it established with one I had begun greatly to like. I relied on my own strength and nerve for all that human exertion

Fur-Hunting. 1 7

could do in such peril as we might encounter ; and, in a case in which these might fail me, I doubted whether even the one tie that has binding force on Mars would avail me much.

Immediately outside the town were waiting, saddled but not bridled, some score of the extraordinary riding- birds Eveena had described. The seat of the rider is on the back, between the wings ; but the saddle consists only of a sort of girth immediately in front, to which a pair of stirrups, resembling that of a lady's side-saddle, were attached. The creature that was to carry my un- usual weight was the most powerful of all, but I felt some doubt whether even his strength might not break down. One of the hunters had charge of a carriage on which was fixed a cage containing two dozen birds of a dark greenish grey, about the size of a crow, and with the slender form, piercing eyes, and powerful beak of the falcon. They were not intended, however, to strike the prey, but simply to do the part of dogs in tracing out the game, and driving it from the woods into the open ground. Our birds, rising at once into the air, carried us some fifty feet above the tops of the trees. Here the chief huntsman took the guidance of the party, keeping in front of the line in which we were ranged, and watching through a pair of what might be called spectacles, save that a very short tube with double lenses was substituted for the single glass, the move- ment of the hawks, which had been released in the wood below us. These at first dispersed in every direc- tion, extending at intervals from end to end of a line some three miles in length, and moving slowly forwards, followed by the hunters. A sharp call from one bird

1 8 Across the Zodiac.

on the left gathered the rest around him, and in a few

moments the rustling and rushing of an invisible Hock through the glades of the forest apprised us that we had started, though we could not see, the prey. Ergimo, wh i kept close beside me, and who had often witnessed the sport before, kept me informed of what was proceeding underneath us, of which I could see but little. Glimpses here and there showed that we were pursuing a nume- rous flock of large white-plumed or white-haired crea- tures, standing at most some four feet in height; but what they were, even whether birds or quadrupeds, their movements left me in absolute uncertainty. Wor- ried and frightened by the falcons, which, however, never ventured to close upon them, they were gradually driven in the direction intended by the huntsman to- wards the open plain, which bordered the forest at a distance of about six miles to the northward. In half- an-hour after the " find," the leader of the flock broke out of the wood two or three hundred yards ahead of us, and was closely followed by his companions. I then recognised in the objects of the chase the strange thernee described by Eveena, whose long soft down fur- nished the cloak she wore on our visit to the Astronaut. Their general form, and especially the length and grace- ful curve of the neck, led one instinctively to regard them as birds ; but the foredimbs, drawn up as they ran, but now and then outstretched with a sweep to strike at a falcon that ventured imprudently near, had, in the distance, much more resemblance to the arm of ;t baboon than to the limb of any other creature, and bore no likeness whatever to the wing even of the bat. The object of the hunters was not to strike these crea-

Fur-Hunting. 19

tures from a distance, but to run them down and cap- ture them by sheer exhaustion. This the great wing- power of the caldectaa enabled us to do, though by the time we had driven the thernee to bay my own Pegasus was fairly tired. The hunters, separating and spread- ing out in the form of a semicircle, assisted the move- ments of the hawks, driving the prey gradually into a narrow defile among the hills bordering the plain to the north-eastward, whose steep upward slope greatly hin- dered and fatigued creatures whose natural habitat con- sists of level plains or seabord forests. At last, under a steep half-precipitous rock which defended them in rear, and between clumps of trees which guarded either flank — protected by botli overhead — the flock, at the call of their leader, took up a position which displayed an instinctive strategy, whereof an Indian or African chief might have been proud. The caldectaa, however, well knew the vast superiority of their own strength and of their formidable beaks, and did not hesitate to carry us close to but somewhat above the thernee, as these stood ranged in line with extended fore-limbs and snouts; the latter armed with teeth about an inch and a half in length tapering singly to a sharp point, the former with spikes stronger, longer, and sharper than those of the porcupine ; but, as I satisfied myself by a subsequent inspection, formed by rudimentary, or, more properly speaking, transformed or degenerated quills. The bite was easily avoided. It was not so easy to keep out of reach of the powerful fore-limb while endeavouring to strike a fatal blow at the neck with the long rapier-like cutting weapons carried by the hunters. My own shorter and sharp sword, to which I

20 Across the Zodiac.

had trusted, preferring a familiar weapon to one, how- ever suitable, to which I was not accustomed, left me no choice but to abandon the hope of active participa- tion in the slaughter, or to venture dangerously near. Choosing the latter alternative, I received from the arm of the thernee I had singled out a blow which, caught upon my sword, very nearly smote it from my hand, and certainly would have disarmed at once any of my weaker companions. As it was, the stroke maimed the limb that delivered it ; but with its remaining arm the creature maintained a light so stubborn that, had both been available, the issue could not have been in my favour. This conflict reminded me singularly of an encounter with the mounted swordsmen of Scindiah and the Teishwah ; all my experience of sword-play being called into use, and my brute opponent using its natural weapon with an instinctive skill not unworthy of comparison with that of a trained horse-soldier ; at the same time that it constantly endeavoured to seize with its formidable snout either my own arm or the wing or body of the caldecta, which, however, was very well able to take care of itself. In fact, the prey was secured at last not by my sword but by a blow from the caldecta's beak, which pierced and paralysed the slender neck of our antagonist. Some twenty thernee formed the booty of a chase certainly novel, and pos- sessing perhaps as many elements of peril and excite- ment as that finest of Earthly sports which the affected cynicism of Anglo-Indian speech degrades by the name of " pig-sticking."

When the falcons had been collected and recaged, and the bodies of the thernee consigned to a carriage

Fit r-Hu 11 ting . 2 1

brought up for the purpose by a subordinate who had watched the hunters' course, our birds, from which we had dismounted, were somewhat rested ; and Ergimo informed me that another and more formidable, as well as more valuable, prey was thought to be in sight a few miles off. Mounted on a fresh bird, and reso- lutely closing my ears to his urgent and reasonable dissuasion, I joined the smaller party which was detached for this purpose. As we were carried slowly at no great distance from the ground, managing our birds with ease by a touch on either side of the neck — they are spurred at need by a slight electric shock communicated from the hilt of the sword, and are checked by a forcible pressure on the wings — I asked Ergimo why the thernee were not rather shot than hunted, since utility, not sport, governs the method of capturing the wild beasts of Mars.

" ^Ye have," he replied, " two weapons adapted to strike at a distance. The asphyxiator is too heavy to be carried far or fast, and pieces of the shell inflict such injuries upon everything in the immediate neigh- bourhood of the explosion, as to render it useless where the value of the prey depends upon the condition of its skin. Our other and much more convenient, if less powerful, projective weapon has also its own disad- vantage. It can be used only at short distances ; and at these it is apt to burn and tear a skin so soft and delicate as that of the thernee. Moreover, it so terrifies the caldecta as to render it unmanageable ; and we are compelled to dismount before using it, as you may presently see. Four or five of our party are now

22 Across tlie Zodiac.

armed with it, and I wish you had allowed me to furnish 3-011 with one."

" I prefer," I answered, " my own weapon, an air-gun which I can fire sixteen times without reloading, and which will kill at a hundred yards' distance. With a weapon unknown to me I might not only fail altogether, but I might not improbably do serious injury, by my clumsiness and inexperience, to my companions."

" I wish, nevertheless," he said, " that you carried the mordyta. You will have need of an efficient weapon if you dismount to share the attack we are just about to make. But I entreat you not to do so. You can see it all in perfect safety, if only you will keep far enough away to avoid danger from the fright of your bird."

xVs he spoke, we had come into proximity to our new game, a large and very powerful animal, about four feet high at the shoulders, and about six feet from the head to the root of the tail. The latter carries, as that of the lion was fabled to do, a final claw, not to lash the creature into rage, but for the more practical purpose of striking down an enemy endeavouring to approach it in flank or rear. Its hide, covered with a long beautifully soft fur, is striped alternately with brown and yellow, the ground being a sort of silver-grey. The head resembles that of the lion, but without the mane, and is prolonged into a face and snout more like those of the wild boar. Its limbs are less unlike those of the feline genus than any other Earthly type, but have three claws and a hard pad in lieu of the soft cushion. The upper jaw is armed with two formidable tusks about twelve inches in

Fur- Hunting. 23

length, and projecting directly forwards. A blow from the claw-furnished tail would plough up the thigh or rip open the abdomen of a man. A stroke from one of the paws would fracture his skull, while a wound from the tusk in almost any part of the body must prove certainly fatal. Fortunately, the Tcargynda has not the swiftness of movement belonging to nearly all our feline races, otherwise its skins, the most valuable prize of the Martial hunter, would yearly be taken at a terrible cost of life. Two of these creatures were said to be reposing in a thick jungle of reeds bordering a narrow stream immediately in our front. The hunters, with Ergimo, now dis- mounted and advanced some two hundred yards in front of their birds, directing the latter to turn their heads in the opposite direction. I found some difficulty in making my wish to descend intelligible to the docile creature which carried me, and was still in the air when one of the enormous creatures we were hunting rushed out of its hiding-place. The nearest hunter, raising a shining metal staff about three and a half feet in length (having a crystal cylinder at the hinder end, about six inches in circumference, and occupying about one-third the entire length of the weapon), levelled it at the beast. A flash as of lightning darted through the air, and the creature rolled over. Another flash from a similar weapon in the hands of another hunter followed. By this time, how- ever, my bird was entirely unmanageable, and what happened I learned afterwards from Ergimo. Neither of the two shots had wounded the creature, though the near passage of the first had for a moment stunned and overthrown him. His rush among the party dispersed

24 Across tJie Zodiac.

them all, but each being able to send forth from his piece a second flash of lightning, the monster was mortally wounded before they fairly started in pursuit of their scared birds, which — their attention being called by the roar of the animal, by the crash accompanying each flash, and probably above all by the restlessness of my own caldecta in their midst — had flown off to some distance. My bird, floundering forwards, flung me to the ground about two hundred yards from the jungle, fortunately at a greater distance from the dying but not yet utterly disabled prey. Its companion now came forth and stood over the tortured creature, licking its sores till it expired. By this time I had recovered the consciousness I had lost with the shock of my fall, and had ascertained that my gun was safe. I had but time to prepare and level it when, leaving its dead com- panion, the brute turned and charged me almost as rapidly as an infuriated elephant. I fired several times, and assured, if only from my skill as a marksman, that some of the shots had hit it, was surprised to see that at each it was only checked for a moment and then resumed its charge. It was so near now that I could aim with some confidence at the eye ; and if, as I sus- pected, the previous shots had failed to pierce the hide, no other aim was likely to avail. I levelled, therefore, as steadily as I could at its blazing eyeballs and fired three or four shots, still without doing more than arrest or rather slacken its charge, each shot provoking a fearful roar of rage and pain. I fired my last within about twenty yards, and then, before I could draw my sword, was dashed to the ground with a violence that utterly stunned me. When I recovered my senses,

Fur- Hunting. 25

Ergimo was kneeling beside me pouring down my throat the contents of a small phial ; and as I lifted my head and looked around, I saw the enormous carcass from under which I had been dragged lying dead almost within reach of my hand. One eye was pierced through the very centre, the other seriously injured. But such is the creature's tenacity of life, that, though three balls were actually in its brain, it had driven home its charge, though far too unconscious to make more than convulsive and feeble use of any of its for- midable weapons. "When I fell it stood for perhaps a second, and then dropped senseless upon my lower limbs, which were not a little bruised by its weight. That no bone was broken or dislocated by the shock, deadened though it must have been by the repeated pauses in the kargynda's charge and by its final exhaustion, was more than I expected or could under- stand. Before I rose to my feet, Ergimo had per- emptorily insisted on the abandonment of the further excursion we had intended, declaring that he could not answer to his Sovereign, after so severe a lesson, for my exposure to any future peril. The Campta had sent him to bring me into his presence for purposes which would not be fulfilled by producing a lifeless carcass, or a maimed and helpless invalid ; and the discipline of the Court and central Administration allowed no excuse for disobedience to orders or failure in duty. My protest was very quickly silenced. On attempting to stand, I found ruyself so shaken, torn, and shattered that I could not again mount a caldccta or wield a weapon ; and was carried back to Askinta on a sort of inclined litter placed upon the carriage which had conveyed our booty. vol. 11. c

26 Across the Zodiac.

I was mortified, aa we approached the place where our vessel lay, to observe a veiled female figure ou the deck. Eveena's quick eye had noted our return some minutes before, and inferred from the early abandonment of the chase some serious accident. Happily our party were so disposed that I had time to assume the usual position before she caught sight of me. I could not, however, deceive her by a desperate effort to walk steadily and unaided. She stood by quietly and calmly while the surgeon of the hunters dressed my hurts, observing exactly how the bandages and lotions were applied. Only when we were left alone did she in any degree give way to an agitation by which she feared to increase my evident pain and feverishness. It was im- possible to satisfy her that black bruises and broad gashes meant no danger, and would be healed by a few days' rest. But when she saw that I could talk and smile as usual, she was unsparing in her attempts to coax from me a pledge that I would never again peril life or limb to gratify my curiosity regarding the very few pursuits in which, for the highest remuneration, Martialists can be induced to incur the probability of injury and the chance of that death they so abjectly dread. Scarcely less reluctant to repeat the scolding she felt so acutely than to employ the methods of rebuke she deemed less severe, I had no little difficulty in evad- ing her entreaties. Only a very decided request to drop the subject at once and for ever, enforced on her con- science by reminding her that it would be enforced no otherwise, at last obtained me peace without the sacrifice of liberty.

( ^7 )

CHAPTER XVI.

TROUBLED WATERS.

We were now in Martial N. latitude 570, in a compara- tively open part of the narrow sea which encloses the northern land-belt, and to the south-eastward lay the only channel by which this sea communicates with the main ocean of the southern hemisphere. Along this we took our course. Bather against Ergimo's advice, I insisted on remaining on the surface, as the sea was tolerably calm. Eveena, with her usual self-suppression, professed to prefer the free air, the light of the long day, and such amusement as the sight of an occasional sea- monster or shoal of fishes afforded, to the fainter light and comparative monotony of submarine travelling. Ergimo, who had in his time commanded the hunters of the Arctic Sea, was almost as completely exempt as myself from sea-sickness ; but I was surprised to find that the crew disliked, and, had they ventured, would have grumbled at, the change, being so little accustomed to any long superficial voyage as to suffer like landsmen from rough weather. The difference between sailing on and below the surface is so great, both in comfort and in the kind of skill and knowledge required, that the sea- men of passenger and of mercantile vessels are classes much more distinct than those of the mercantile and

28 A cross the Zodiac.

national marine of England, or any other maritime Power on Earth. I consented readily that, except on the rare occasions when the heavens were visible, the short night, from the fall of the evening to the dissipation of the morning mists, should be passed under water. I have said that gales are comparatively rare and the tides insignificant ; but the narrow and exceedingly long channels of the Martial seas, with the influence of a Solar movement from north to south more extensive though slower than that which takes place between our Winter and Summer Solstices, produce currents, atmos- pheric and oceanic, and sudden squalls that often give rise to that worst of all disturbances of the surface, known as a " chopping sea." When we crossed the tropic and came fairly into the channel separating the western coast of the continent on which the Astronaut had landed from the eastern seabord of that upon whose southern coast I was presently to disembark, this dis- turbance was even worse than, except on peculiarly disagreeable occasions, in the Straits of Dover. After enduring tins for two or three hours, I observed that Eveena had stolen from her seat beside me on the deck. Since we left Askinta her spirits had been unusually variable. She had been sometimes lively and almost excitable ; more generally quiet, depressed, and silent even beyond her wont. Still, her manner and bearing were always so equable, gentle, and docile that, accus- tomed to the caprices of the sex on Eart h, I had hardly noticed the change. I thought, however, that she was to-day nervous and somewhat pale ; and as she did not return, after permitting the pilot to seek a calmer stratum at some five fathoms depth, I followed Eveena

Troubled Waters. 29

into our cabin or chamber. Standing with her back to the entrance and with a goblet to her lips, she did not hear me till I had approached within arm's length. She then started violently, so agitated that the colour faded at once from her countenance, leaving it white as in a swoon, then as suddenly returning, flushed her neck and face, from the emerald shoulder clasps to the silver snood, with a pink deeper than that of her robe.

" I am very sorry I startled you," I said. " You are certainly ill, or you would not be so easily upset."

I laid my hand as I spoke on her soft tresses, but she withdrew from the touch, sinking down among the cushions. Leaving her to recover her composure, I took up the half-empty cup she had dropped on the central table. Thirsty myself, I had almost drained without tasting it, when a little half-stifled cry of dis- may checked me. The moment I removed the cup from my mouth I perceived its flavour — the unmistakable taste of the dravadoiU (" courage cup "), so disagreeable to us both, which we had shared on our bridal evening. "Wetting with one drop the test-stone attached to my watch-chain, it presented the local discoloration indicat- ing the narcotic poison which is the chief ingredient of this compound.

"I don't think this is wise, child," I said, turning once more to Eveena. To my amazement, far from having recovered the effect of her surprise, she was yet more overcome than at first; crouching among the cushions with her head bent down over her knees, and covering her face with her hands. Reclining in the soft pile, I held her in my arms, overcoming perforce what seemed hysterical reluctance ; but when I would

30 - Icross the Zodiac.

have withdrawn the little hands, she threw herself on my knee, burying her face in the cushions.

" It is very wicked," she sobbed; "I cannot ask you to forgive me."

" Forgive what, ray child ? Eveena, you are certainly ill. Calm yourself, and don't try to talk just now."

" I am not ill, I assure you," she faltered, resisting the ana that sought to raise her; " but . . ."

In my hands, however, she was powerless as an infant; and I would hear nothing till I held her gathered within my arm and her two hands fast in my ri'dit. Now that I could look into the face she strove to avert, it was clear that she was neither hysterical nor simply ill ; her agitation, however unreasonable and extravagant, was real.

" What troubles you, my own ? I promise you not to say one word of reproach ; I only want to understand with what you so bitterly reproach yourself."

" But you cannot help being angry," she urged, " if you understand what I have done. It is the chanty, which I never tasted till that night, and never ought to have tasted again. I know you cannot forgive me ; only take my fault for granted, and don't question me."

These incoherent words threw the first glimpse of light on the meaning of her distress and penitence. I doubt if the best woman in Christendom would so reproach and abase herself, if convicted of even a worse sin than the secret use of those stimulants for which the charny is a Martial equivalent. No Martialist would dream of poisoning his blood and besotting his brain with alcohol in any form. But their opiates

Troubled Waters. 31

affect a race addicted to physical repose, to sensuous enjoyment rather than to sensual excitement, and to lucid intellectual contemplation, with a sense of serene delight as supremely delicious to their temperament as the dreamy illusions of haschisch to the Turk, the fierce frenzy of bhang to the Malay, or the wild excitement of brandy or Geneva to the races of Northern Europe. But as with the luxury of intoxication in Europe, so in Mars indulgence in these drugs, freely permitted to the one sex, is strictly forbidden by opinion and domestic rule to the other. A lady discovered in the use of charny is as deeply disgraced as an European matron detected in the secret enjoyment of spirits and cigars ; and her lord and master takes care to render her suffi- ciently conscious of her fault.

And there was something stranger here than a violation of the artificial restraint of sex. Slightly and seldom as the Golden Circle touches the lines defining personal or social morality — carefully as the Founder has abstained from imposing an ethical code of his own, or attaching to his precepts any rule not directly derived from the fundamental tenets or necessary to the cohesion of the Order — he had expressed in strong terms Iris dread and horror of narcotism ; the use for pleasure's sake, not to relieve pain or nervous excitement, of drugs which act, as he said, through the brain upon the soul. His judg- ment, expressed with unusual directness and severity and enforced by experience, has become with his fol- lowers a tradition not less imperative than the most binding of their laws. It was so held, above all, in that household in which Eveena and I had first learnt the " lore of the Starlight." Esmo, indeed, regarded not

3 2 Across the Zodiac.

merely as an unscientific superstition, but as blas- phemous folly, the rejection of any means of restoring health or relieving pain which Providence has placed within human reach. But he abhorred the use for pleasure's sake of poisons affirmed to reduce the activity and in the long-run to impair the energies of the mind, and weaken the moral sense and the will, more in- tensely than the strictest follower of the Arabian Prophet abhors the draughts which deprive man of the full use of the senses, intelligence, and conscience which Allah has bestowed, and degrade him below the brute. Esmo's children, moreover, were not more strictly com- pelled to respect the letter than carefully instructed in the principle of every command for which he claimed their obedience.

But in such measure as Eveena's distress became intelligible, the fault of which she accused herself became incredible. I could not believe that she could be wilfully disloyal to me — still less that she could have suddenly broken through the fixed ideas of her whole life, the principles engraved on her mind by education more stringently than the maxims of the Koran or the Levitical Law on the children of Ishmael or of Israel ; and this while the impressive rites of Initiation, the imprecation at which I myself had shuddered, were fresh in her memory — their impression infinitely deep- ened, moreover, by the awful mystery of that Vision of which even yet we were half afraid to speak to one another. While I hesitated to reply, gathering up as well as I could the thread of these thoughts as they passed in a few seconds through my mind, my left hand touched an object hidden in my bride's zone. I

Troitbled Waters. $3

drew out a tiny crystal phial three parts full, taken, as I saw, from the medicine-chest Esmo had i carefully stocked and as carefully fastened. As, holding this, I turned again to her, Eveena repeated : " Punish, but don't question me ! "

" My own," I said, " you are far more punished already than you deserve or I can bear to see. How did you get this ? "

Releasing her hands, she drew from the folds of her robe the electric keys, which, by a separate combination, would unlock each of my cases ; — without which it was impossible to open or force them.

" Yes, I remember ; and you were surprised that I trusted them to you. And now you expect me to believe that you have abused that trust, deceived me, broken a rule which in your father's house and by all our Order is held sacred as the rings of the Signet, for a drug which twelve days ago you disliked as much as I ? "

" It is true."

The words were spoken with downcast eyes, in the low faltering tone natural to a confession of disgrace.

" It is not true, Eveena ; or if true in form, false in matter. If it were possible that you could wish to deceive me, you knew it could not be for long."

" I meant to be found out," she interrupted, " only not yet."

She had betrayed herself, stung by words that seemed to express the one doubt she could not nerve herself to endure — doubt of her loyalty to me. Before I could speak, she looked up hastily, and began to retract. I stopped her.

34 Across the Zodiac.

" I see — when you had done with it. But, Eveena, why conceal it \ J >0 you think I would not have given this or all the contents of the chest into your hands, and asked no question? "

" Do you mean it ? Could you have so trusted ine?"

" My child ! is it difficult to trust where I know there is no temptation to wrong ? Do you think that to-day I h;ive doubted or suspected you. even while you have accused yourself ? I cannot guess at your motive, but I am as sure as ever of your loyalty. Take these things," — forcing back upon her the phial and the magnets, — " yes, and the test-stone." . . . She burst into passionate tears.

" I cannot endure this. If I had dreamed your patience would have borne with me half so far, I would never have tried it so, even for your own sake. I meant to be found out and accept the consequences in silence. But you trust me so, that I must tell you what I wanted to conceal. AVhen you kept on the surface it made me so ill "

" But, Eveena, if the remedy be not worse than the sickness, why not ask for it openly ? "

" It was not that. Don't you understand ? Of course, I would bear any suffering rather than have done this ; hut then you would have found me out at once. I wnii ted to conceal my suffering, not to escape it."

" My child ! my child ! how could you put us both to all this pain ? "

" You know you would not have given me the draught ; you would have left the surface at once; and I cannot bear to be always in the way, always hindering your

Troubled Waters.

oo

pleasures, and even your discoveries. You came across a distance that makes a bigger world than this look less than that light, through solitude and dangers and horrors I cannot hear to think of, to see and examine this world of ours. And then you leave things unseen or half-seen, you spoil your work, because a girl is sea- sick ! You ran great risk of death and got badly hurt to see what our hunting was like, and you will not let my head ache that you may find out what our sea-storms and currents are ! How can I bear to be such a burden upon you ? You trust me, and, I believe," (she added, colour- ing), "you love me, twelvefold more than I deserve; yet you think me unwilling or unworthy to take ever so small an interest in your work, to bear a few hours' discomfort for it and for you. And yet," she went on passionately, " I may sit trembling and heart-sick for a whole day alone that you may carry out your purpose. I may receive the only real sting your lips have given, because I could not bear that pain without crying. And so with everything. It is not that I must not suffer pain, but that the pain must not come from with- out. Your lips would punish a fault with words that shame and sting for a day, a summer, a year ; your hand must never inflict a sting that may smart for ten minutes. And it is not only that you do this, but you pride yourself on it. Why ? It is not that you think the pain of the body so much worse than that of the spirit : — you that smiled at me when you were too badly bruised and torn to stand, yet could scarcely keep back your tears just now, when you thought that I had suffered half an hour of sorrow I did not quite deserve. AVhy then ? Do you think that women feel so diffe-

2,6 Across the Zodiac.

rently ? Have the women of your Earth hearts so much harder and skins so much softer than ours ? "

She spoke with most unusual impetuosity, and with that absolute simplicity and sincerity which marked her every look and word, which gave them, for me at least, an unspeakable charm, and for all who heard her a characteristic individuality unlike the speech or manner of any other woman. As soon suspect an infant of elaborate sarcasm as Eveena of affectation, irony, or conscious paradox. Nay, while her voice was in my ears, I never could feel that her views were paradoxical. The direct straightforwardness and simple structure of the Martial language enhanced this peculiar effect of her speech; and much that seems infantine in trans- lation was all but eloquent as she spoke it. Often, as on this occasion, I felt guilty of insincerity, of a verbal fencing unworthy of her unalloyed good faith and earnestness, as I endeavoured to parry thrusts that went to the very heart of all those instinctive doctrines which I could the less defend on the moment, because I had never before dreamed that they could be doubted.

" At any rate," I said at last, " your sex gain by my heresy, since they are as richly gifted in stinging words as we in physical force."

" So much the worse for them, surely," she answered simply, " if it be right that men should rule and women obey ? "

" That is the received doctrine on Earth," I answered. " In practice, men command and women disobey them ; men bully and women lie. But in truth, Eveena, having a wife only too loyal and too loving, I don't care to canvass the deserts of ordinary women or the

Troubled Waters. -\>1

discipline of other households. I own that it was wrong to scold you. Do not insist on making me say that it would have been a little less wrong to heat you ! "

She laughed — her low, sweet, silvery laugh, the like of which I have hardly heard among Earthly women, even of the simpler, more child-like races of the East and South; a laugh still stranger in a world where childhood is seldom bright and womanhood mostly sad and fretful. Of the very few satisfactory memories I bore away from that world, the sweetest is the recol- lection of that laugh, which I heard for the first time on the morrow of our bridals, and for the last time on the day before we parted. I cherish it as evidence that, despite many and bitter troubles, my bride's short mar- ried life was not wholly unhappy. By this time she had found out that we had left the surface, and be^an to remonstrate.

" Nay, I have seen all I care to see, my own. I con- fess the justice of your claim, as the partner of my life, to be the partner of its paramount purpose. You are more precious to me than all the discoveries of which I ever dreamed, and I will not for any purpose whatsoever expose you to real peril or serious pain. But hence- forth I will ask you to bear discomfort and inconveni- ence when the object is worth it, and to help me wherever your help can avail."

" I can help you?"

" Much., and in many ways, my Eveena. You will soon learn to understand what I wish to examine and the use of the instruments I employ ; and then you will be the most useful of assistants, as you are the best and most welcome of companions."

38 Across the Zodiac.

As I spoke a soft colour suffused her face, and her eyes brightened with a joy and contentment such as no promise of pleasure or indulgence could have inspired. To be the partner of adventure and hardship, the drudge in toil and sentinel in peril, was the boon she claimed, the best guerdon I could promise. If but the promise might have been better fulfilled !

It was not till in latitude 9° S. we emerged into the open ocean, and presently found ourselves free from the currents of the narrow waters, that, in order to see the remarkable island of which I had caught sight in my descent, I requested Ergimo to remain for some hours above the surface. The island rises directly out of the sea, and is absolutely unascendible. Balloons, however, render access possible, both to its summit and to its cave- pierced sides. It is the home of enormous flocks of white birds, which resemble in form the heron rather than the eider duck, but which, like the latter, line with down drawn from their own breasts the nests which, counted by millions, occupy every nook and cranny of the crystalline walls, about ten miles in circumference. Each of the nests is nearly as large as that of the stork. They are made of a jelly digested from the bones of the iish upon which the birds prey, and are almost as white in colour as the birds themselves. Ereshly formed nest dissolved in hot water makes dishes as much to the taste of Martialists as the famous bird-nest soup to that of the Chinese. Both down and nests, therefore, are largely plundered; but the birds are never injured, and care is taken in robbing them to leave enough of the outer portion of the nest to constitute a bed for the eggs, and encourage the creatures to rebuild and reline it.

Troubled Waters. 39

One harvest only is permitted, the second stripping of feathers and the rebuilt nest being left undisturbed. The caverns are lined with a white guano, now some feet thick, since it has ceased to be sought for manure ; the Martialists having discovered means of saturating the soil with ammonia procured from the nitrogen of the atmosphere, which with the sewage and other similar materials enables them to dispense with this valuable bird manure. Whether the white colour of the island, perceptible even in a large Terrestrial telescope, is in any degree due to the whiteness of the birds, their nests, and leavings, or wholly to reflection from the bright spar-like surface of the rock itself, and especially of the flat table-like summit, I will not pretend to say.

From this point we held our course south-westward, and entered the northernmost of two extraordinary gulfs of exactly similar shape, separated by an isthmus and peninsula which assume on a map the form of a gigantic hammer. The strait by which each gulf is entered is about a hundred miles in length and ten in breadth. The gulf itself, if it should not rather be called an inland sea, occupies a total area of about 100,000 square miles. The isthmus, 500 miles in length by 50 in breadth, ends in a roughly square peninsula of about 10,000 square miles in extent, nearly the whole of which is a plateau 2000 feet above the sea-level. On the narrowest point of the isthmus, just where it joins the mainland, and where a sheltered bay runs up from either sea, is situated the great city of Amakasfe, the natural centre of Martial life and commerce. At this point we found awaiting us the balloon which was to convey us to the Court of the Suzerain. A very light but strong metallic framework

40 Across the Zodiac.

maintained the form of the "fish-shaped" or spindle- shaped balloon itself, which closely resembled that of our vessel, its dimensions being of necessity greater. Attached to this framework was the car of similar form, about twelve feet in length and six in depth, the upper third of the sides, however, being of open-work, so as not to interfere with the survey of the traveller. Eveena could not help shivering at the sight of the slight vehicle and the enormous machine of thin, bladder-like material by which it was to be upheld. She embarked, indeed, without a word, her alarm betraying itself by no volun- tary sign, unless it were the tight clasp of my hand, resembling that of a child frightened, but ashamed to confess its fear. I noticed, however, that she so arranged her veil as to cover her eyes wThen the signal for the start was given. She was, therefore, wholly unconscious of the sudden spring, unattended by the slightest jolt or shake, which raised us at once 500 feet above the coast, and under whose influence, to my eyes, the ground appeared suddenly to fall from us. When I drew out the folds of her veil, it was with no little amazement that she saw the sky around her, the sea and the city far below. An aerial current to the north- westward at our present level, which had been selected on that account, carried us at a rate of some twelve miles an hour ; a rate much increased, however, by the sails at the stern of the car, sails of thin metal fixed on strong frames, and striking with a screwr-like motion. Their lack of expanse was compensated by a rapidity of motion such that they seemed to the eye not to move at all, presenting the appearance of an uniform disc reflecting the rays of the Sun, which was now almost

Troubled Waters. 41

immediately above us. Towards evening the Eesidence of the Campta became visible on the north-western horizon. It was built on a plateau about 400 feet above the sea-level, towards which the ground from all sides sloped up almost imperceptibly. Around it was a garden of great extent with a number of trees of every sort, some of them masses of the darkest green, others of bright yellow, contrasting similarly shaped masses of almost equal size clothed from base to top in a con- tinuous sheet of pink, emerald, white or crimson flowers. The turf presented almost as great a variety of colours, arranged in every conceivable pattern, above which rose innumerable flower-beds, uniform or varied, the smallest perhaps two, the largest more than 200 feet in diameter ; each circle of bloom higher than that outside it, till in some cases the centre rose even ten feet above the general level. 1 The building itself was low, having no- where more than two stories. One wing, pointed out to me by Ergimo, was appropriated to the household of the Prince ; the centre standing out in front and rear, divided by a court almost as wide as the wings ; the further wing accommodating the attendants and officials of the Court. "We landed, just before the evening mist began to gather, at the foot of an inclined way of a concrete resembling jasper, leading up to the main entrance of the Palace.

VOL. II.

( 4? )

CHAPTER XVII.

PRESENTED AT COURT.

Leading Eveena by the hand — for to hold my arm after the European fashion was always an inconveni- ence and fatigue to her — and preceded by Ergimo, I walked unnoticed to the closed gate of pink crystal, contrasting the emerald green of the outer walls. Along the front of this central portion of the residence was a species of verandah, supported by pillars overlaid with a bright red metal, and wrought in the form of smooth tree trunks closely clasped by creepers, the silver flowers of the latter contrasting the dense golden foliage and ruby-like stems. Under this, and in front of the gate itself, were two sentries armed with a spear, the shaft of which was about six feet in length, hollow, and almost as light as the cane or reed handle of an African assegai. The blade more resembled the trian- gular bayonet. Beside each, however, was the terrible asphyxiator, fixed on its stand, with a bore about as great as that of a nine-pounder, but incomparably lighter. These two weapons might at one discharge have annihilated a huge mob of insurgents threatening to storm the palace, were insurrections known in Mars. These men saluted us by dropping the points of their weapons and inclining the handle towards us ; gazing

Presented at Court. 43

upon me with surprise, and with something of soldierly admiration for physical superiority. The doors, wide enough to admit a dozen Martialists abreast, parted, and we entered a vaulted hall whose arched roof was supported not by pillars but by gigantic statues, each presenting the lustre of a different jewel, and all wrought with singular perfection of proportion and of beauty. Here we were met by two officers wearing the same dress as the sentries outside — a diaper of crimson and silver. The rank of those who now received us, however, was indicated by a silver ribbon passing over the left shoulder, and supporting what I should have called a staff, save that it was of metal and had a sharp point, rendering it almost as formidable a weapon as the rapier. Exchanging a word or two with Ergimo, these gentlemen ushered us into a small room on the right, where refreshments were placed before us. Eveena whispered me that she must not share our meal in presence of these strangers ; an intimation which somewhat blunted the keen appetite I always derived from a journey through the Martial atmosphere. Checked as it was, however, that appetite seemed a new astonishment to our attendants ; the need of food among their race being proportionate to their inferior size and strength. "When we rose, I asked Ergimo what was to become of Eveena, as the officers were evidently waiting to conduct me into the presence of their Sove- reign, where it would not be appropriate for her to appear. He repeated my question to the principal official, and the latter, walking to a door in the farther corner of the room, sounded an electric signal ; a few seconds after which the door opened, showing two

44 Across the Zodiac.

veiled figures, the pink ground of whose robes indicated their matronhood, if I may apply such a term to the relation of his hundred temporary wives to the Camptu,. But this Ground colour was almost hidden in the em- broidery of crimson, gold, and white, which, as I soon found, were the favourite colours of the reigning Prince. To these ladies I resigned Eveena, the officer saying, as I somewhat reluctantly parted from her, " What you entrust to the Campta's household you will find again in your own when your audience is over." Whether this avoidance of all direct mention of women were matter of delicacy or contempt I hardly knew, though I had observed it on former occasions.

When the door closed, I noticed that Ergimo had left us, and the officers indicated by gesture rather than by words that they were to lead me immediately into the presence. I had considered with some care how I was, on so critical an occasion, to conduct myself, and had resolved that the most politic course would probably be an assumption of courteous but absolute independence; to treat the Autocrat of this planet much as an English envoy would treat an Indian 1'rince. It was in accordance with this intention that I had assumed a dress somewhat more elaborate than is usually worn here, a white suit of a substance re- sembling velvet in texture, and moire' in lustre, with collar and belt of silver. On my breast I wore my order of [illegible], and in my belt my one cherished Terrestrial possession — the sword, reputed the best in Asia, that had twice driven its point home within a finger's breadth of my life; and that clove the turban on my brow but a minute before it was sur-

Presented at Court. 45

rendered — just in time to save its gallant owner and his score of surviving comrades. In its hilt I had set the emerald with which alone the Commander of the Faith- ful rewarded my services. The turban is not so unlike the masculine head-dress of Mars as to attract any special attention. Ee-entering the hall, I was con- ducted along a gallery and through another crystal door into the immediate presence of the Autocrat. The audience chamber was of no extraordinary size, perhaps one-quarter as large as the peristyle of Esmo's dwelling. Along the emerald walls ran a series of friezes wrought in gold, representing various scenes of peace and war, agricultural, judicial, and political ; as well as incidents which, I afterwards learnt, preserved the memory of the long struggles wherein the Communists were finally overthrown. The lower half of the room was empty, the upper was occupied by a semicircle of seats forming part of the building itself and directly facing the entrance. These took up about one-third of the space, the central floor being divided from the upper portion of the room by a low wall of metal surmounted by arches supporting the roof and hung with drapery, which might be so lowered as to conceal the whole occupied part of the chamber. The seats rose in five tiers, one above the other. The semicircle, however, was broken exactly in the middle, that is, at the point farthest from the entrance, by a broad flight of steps, at the summit of which, and raised a very little above the seats of the highest tier, was the throne, supported by two of the royal brutes whose attack had been so nearly fatal to myself, wrought in silver, their erect heads forming the arms and front. About fifty persons

46 Across I he Zodiac.

■were present, occupying only the seats nearest to the throne. On the upper tier were nine or ten who wore a scaxlet sash, among whom I recognised a face I had not seen since the day of my memorable visit to the Astronaut ; not precisely the face of a friend — Endo Zampta. Behind the throne were ranged a dozen guards, armed with the spear and with the lightning gun used in hunting. That a single Martial battalion with its appropriate artillery could annihilate the best army of the Earth I could not but be aware ; yet the first thought that occurred to me, as I looked on these formidably armed but diminutive soldiers, was that a score of my Arab horsemen would have cut a regiment of them to pieces. But by the time I had reached the foot of the steps my attention was concentrated on a single figure and face — the form and countenance of the Prince, who rose from his throne as I approached. Those who remember that Louis XIV., a prince reputed to have possessed the most majestic and awe-inspiring presence of his age, was actually beneath the ordinary height of Frenchmen, may be able to believe me when I say that the Autocrat of Mars, though scarcely five feet tall, was in outward appearance and bearing the most truly royal and imposing prince I have ever seen. His stature, rising nearly two inches over the tallest of those around him, perhaps added to the effect of a mien remarkable for dignity, composure, and self- confidence. The predominant and most immediately observable expression of his face wTas one of serene calm and command. A closer inspection and a longer experience explained why, notwithstanding, my first conception of his character (and it was a true one)

Presented at Court. 47

ascribed to him quite as much of fire and spirit as o:* impassive grandeur. His voice, though its tone was gentle and almost strikingly quiet, had in it something of the ring peculiar to those which have sent the word of command along a line of battle. I felt as I heard it more impressed with the personal greatness, and even with the rank and power, of the Prince before me, than when I knelt to kiss the hand of the Most Christian King, or stood barefooted before the greatest modern successor of the conqueror of Stamboul.

" I am glad to receive you," he said. " It will be among the most memorable incidents of my reign that I welcome to my Court the first visitor from another world, or," he added, after a sudden pause, and with an inflection of unmistakable irony in his tone, " the first who has descended to our world from a height to which no balloon could reach and at which no balloonist could live."

" I am honoured, Prince," I replied, " in the notice of a greater potentate than the greatest of my own world."

These compliments exchanged, the Prince at once proceeded to more practical matters, aptly, however, connecting his next sentence with the formal phrases preceding it.

" Nevertheless, you have not shown excessive respect for my power in the person of one of my greatest officers. If you treated the princes of Earth as un- ceremoniously as the Regent of Elcavoo, I can under- stand that you found it convenient to place yourself beyond their reach."

I thought that this speech afforded me an opportunity

4S Across the Zodiac.

of repairing my offence with the least possible loss oi dignity.

" The proudest of Earthly princes," I replied, " would, I think, have pardoned the roughness which forgot the duty of a subject in the first obligations of humanity. Xo Sovereign whom I have served, but would have for- given me more readily for rough words spoken at such a moment, than for any delay or slackness in saving the life of a woman in danger under his own eyes. Permit me to take this opportunity of apologising to the Regent in your presence, and assuring him that I was influenced by no disrespect to him, but only by overpowering terror for another."

" The lives of a dozen women," said the Campta, still with that covert irony or sarcasm in his tone, " would seem of less moment than threats and actual violence offered to the ruler of our largest and wealthiest dominion. The excuse which Endo Zampta must accept " (with a slight but perceptible emphasis on the imperative) " is the utter difference between our laws and ideas and your own."

The Eegent, at this speech from his Sovereign, rose and made the usual gesture of assent, inclining his head and lifting his left hand to his mouth. But the look on his face as he turned it on me, thus partly conceal- ing it from the Campta, boded no good should I ever fall into his power. The Prince then desired me to give an account of the motives which had induced my voyage and the adventures I had encountered. In reply, I gave him, as briefly and clearly as I could, a summary of all that is recorded in the earlier part of this narrative, carefully forbearing to afford any explana-

Presented at Court. 49

tion of the manner in which the apergic force was generated. This omission the Prince noticed at once with remarkable quickness.

" You do not choose," he said, " to tell us your secret, and of course it is your property. Hereafter, however, I shall hope to purchase it from you."

" Prince," I answered, " if one of your subjects found himself in the power of a race capable of conquering this world and destroying its inhabitants, would you forgive him if he furnished them with the means of reaching you ? "

" I think," he replied, " my forgiveness would be of little consequence in that case. But go on with your story."

I finished my narration among looks of surprise and incredulity from no inconsiderable part of the audience, which, however, I noticed the less because the Prince himself listened with profound interest ; putting in now and then a question which indicated his perfect com- prehension of my account, of the conditions of such a journey and of the means I had employed to meet them.

" Before you were admitted," he said, " Endo Zampta had read to us his report upon your vessel and her machinery, an account which in every respect consists with and supports the truth of your relation. Indeed, were your story untrue, you have run a greater risk in telling it here than in the most daring adventure I have ever known or imagined. The Court is dismissed. Eeclamomorta will please me by remaining with me for the present."

"When the assembly dispersed, I followed their Auto-

50 si cross the Zodiac.

crat at his desire into his private apartments, where, resting among a pile of cushions and motioning me to take a place in immediate proximity to himself, he con- tinued the conversation in a tone and manner so exactly the same as that he had employed in public as to show that the latter was not assumed for purposes of monar- chical stage-play, but was the natural expression of his own character as developed under the influence of un- limited and uncontradicted power. He only exchanged, for unaffected interest and implied confidence, the tone of ironical doubt by which he had rendered it out of the question for his courtiers to charge him with a belief in that which public opinion might pronounce impossible, while making it apparent to me that he regarded the bigotry, of scepticism with scarcely veiled contempt.

" I wish," he said, " I had half-a-dozen subjects capable of imagining such an enterprise and hardy enough to undertake it. But though we all profess to consider knowledge, and especially scientific knowledge, the one object for which it is worth while to live, none of us would risk his life in such an adventure for all the rewards that science and fame could give."

" I think, Prince," I replied, " that I am in presence of one inhabitant of this planet who would have dared at least as much as I have done."

" Possibly," he said. "Because, weary as most of us profess to be of existence, the weariest life in this world is that of him who rules it ; living for ever under the silent criticism which he cannot answer, and bound to devote his time and thoughts to the welfare of a race whose utter extermination would be, on their own show-

Presented at Court. 5 1

ing, the greatest boon he could confer upon them. Cer- tainly I would rather be the discoverer of a world than its Sovereign."

He asked me numerous questions about the Earth, the races that inhabit it, their several systems of govern- ment, and their relations to one another ; manifesting a keener interest, I thought, in the great wars which ended while I was yet a youth, than in any other sub- ject. At last he permitted me to take leave. " You are," he said, " the most welcome guest I ever have or could have received; a guest distinguished above all others by a power independent of my own. But what honour I can pay to courage and enterprise, what wel- come I can give such a guest, shall not be unworthy of him or of myself. Ketire now to the home you will find prepared for you. I will only ask you to remember that I have chosen one near my own in order that I may see you often, and learn in private all that you can tell me."

At the entrance of the apartment I was met by the officer who had introduced me into the presence, and conducted at once to a door opening on the interior court or peristyle of the central portion of the Palace. This was itself a garden, but, unlike those of private houses, a garden open to the sky and traversed by roads in lieu of mere paths ; not serving, as in private dwell- ings, the purposes of a common living room. Here a carriage awaited us, and my escort requested me to mount. I had some misgivings on Eveena's account, but felt it necessary to imitate the reserve and affected indifference on such subjects of those among whom I had been thrown, at least until I somewhat better under-

52 Across the Zodiac.

stood their ways, and had established my own position. Traversing a vaulted passage underneath the rearward portion of the Palace, we emerged into the outer garden, and through this into a road lighted with a brilliancy almost equal to that of day. Our journey occupied nearly half an hour, when we entered an enclosure apparently of great size, the avenue of which was so wide that, without dismounting, our carriage passed directly up to the door of a larger house than I had yet seen.

53

CHAPTER XVIII.

A PRINCE 'S PRESENT.

" This," said my escort, as we dismounted, " is the residence assigned to you by the Campta. Besides the grounds here enclosed, he has awarded you, by a deed which will presently be placed in your hands, an estate of some ten stoltau, which you can inspect at your leisure, and which will afford you a revenue as large as is enjoyed by any save by the twelve Eegents. He has endeavoured to add to this testimony of his regard by rendering your household as complete as wealth and forethought could make it. "What may be wanting to your own tastes and habits you will find no difficulty in adding."

"We now entered that first and principal chamber of the mansion wherein it is customary to receive all visitors and transact all business. The hall was one of unusual size and magnificence. Here, at a table not far from the entrance, stood another official, not wearing the uniform of the Court, with several documents in his hand. As he turned to salute me, his face wore an expression of annoyance and discomfiture which not a little surprised me, till, by following his sidelong, uncom- fortable glances, I perceived a veiled feminine figure,

54 Across the Zodiac.

which could be no other than Eveena's. Misreading my surprise, the official said —

" It is no fault of mine, and I have not spoken except to remonstrate, as far as might be allowed, against so unusual a proceeding."

He must have been astonished and annoyed indeed to take such notice of a stranger's wife ; and, above all, to take upon himself to comment on her conduct for good or ill. I thought it best to make no reply, and simply saluted him in form as I received the first paper handed to me, to which, by the absence of any blank space, I perceived that my signature was not required. This was indeed the document which bestowed on me the house and estate presented by the Sovereign. The next paper handed to me appeared to resemble the marriage-contract I had already signed, save that but one blank was left therein. Unable to decipher it, I was about to ask the official to read it aloud, when Eveena, who had stolen up to me unperceived, caught my arm and drew me a little way aside, indifferent to the won- dering glances of the officials ; who had probably never seen a woman venture uncalled into the public apart- ments of her husband's house, still less interpose in any matter of business, and no doubt thought that she was taking outrageous advantage of my ignorance and inexperience.

"I will scold you presently, child," I said quickly and low. " What is it ? "

" Sign at once," she whispered, " and ask no ques- tions. Deal with me as you will afterwards. You must take what is given you now, without comment or objection, simply expressing your thanks."

A Prince s Present. 55

" Must ! Eveena ? "

" It is not safe to refuse or slight gifts from such a quarter," she answered, in the same low tone. " Trust me so far ; please do what I entreat of you now. I must bear your displeasure if I fail to satisfy you when we are alone."

Her manner was so agitated and so anxious that it recalled to me at once the advice of Esmo upon the same point, though the fears which had prompted so strange an intervention were wholly incomprehensible to me. I knew her, however, by this time too well to refuse the trust she now for the first time claimed, and taking the documents one by one as if I had perfectly understood them, I wrote my name in the space left blank for it, and allowed the official to stamp the slips without a word. I then expressed briefly but earnestly my thanks both to the Autocrat and to the officials who had been the agents of his kindness. They re- tired, and I looked round for Eveena ; but as soon as she saw that I was about to comply with her request, she had quitted the room. Alone in my own house, knowing nothing of its geography, having no notion how to summon the brute domestics — if, indeed, the dwelling were furnished with those useful creatures, without whom a Martial household would be signally incomplete — I could only look for the spring that opened the principal door. This should lead into the gallery which, as I judged, must divide the hall and the front apartments from those looking into the peristyle. Having found and pressed this spring, the door opened on a gallery longer, wider, and more elaborately orna- mented than that of the only Martial mansions into

56 Across the Zodiac.

which I had been hitherto admitted. Looking round in no little perplexity, I observed a niche in which stood a statue of white relieved by a scarlet back- ground ; and beside this statue, crouching and half hidden, a slight pink object, looking at first like a bundle of drapery, but which in a moment sprang up, and, catching my hand, made me aware that Eveena had been waiting for me.

" I beg you," she said with an earnestness I could not understand, "I beg you to come this way," leading me to the right, for I had turned instinctively to the left in entering the gallery, perhaps because my room in Esmo's house had lain in that direction. Reaching the end of the gallery, she turned into one of the inner apartments ; and as the door closed behind us, I felt that she was sinking to the ground, as if the agitation she had manifested in the hall, controlled till her object was accomplished, had now overpowered her. I caught and carried her to the usual pile of cushions in the corner. The room, according to universal custom in Martial houses after sunset, was brilliantly lighted by the electric lamp in the peristyle, and throwing back her veil, I saw that she was pale to ghastliness and almost fainting. In my ignorance of my own house, I could call for no help, and employ no other restoratives than fond words and caresses. Under this treatment, nevertheless, she recovered perhaps as quickly as under any which the faculty might have prescribed. She was still, however, much more distressed than mere con- sciousness of the grave solecism she had committed could explain. But I had no other clue to her trouble,

A Prince's Present. 5 7

and could only hope that in repudiating this she would explain its real cause.

" Come, bambina ! " I expostulated, " we understand one another too well by this time for you to wrong me by all this alarm. I know that you would not have broken through the customs of your people without good reason ; and you know that, even if your reason were not sufficient, I should not be hard upon the error."

" I am sure you would not," she said. " But this time you have to consider others, and you cannot let it be supposed that you do not know a wife's duty, or will allow your authority to be set at naught in your own household."

" What matter ? Do you suppose I listen in the roads ? " [care for gossip], I rejoined. " Household rule is a matter of the veil, and no one — not even your autocratic Prince — will venture to lift it."

" You have not lifted it yourself yet," she answered. " You will understand me, when you have looked at the slips you were about to make them read aloud, had I not interrupted you."

" Eead them yourself," I said, handing to her the papers I still held, and which, after her interposition, I had not attempted to decipher. She took them, but with a visible shudder of reluctance — not stronger than came over me before she had read three lines aloud. Had I known their purport, I doubt whether even Eveena's persuasion and the Autocrat's power together could have induced me to sign them. They were in very truth contracts of marriage — if marriage it can be called. The Sovereign had done me the unusual, but

VOL. II. E

5S Across the Zodiac.

not wholly unprecedented, favour of selecting half a dozen of the fairest maidens of those waiting their fate in the Nurseries of his empire ; had proffered on my behoof terms which satisfied their ambition, gratified their vanity, and would have induced them to accept any suitor so recommended, without the insignificant formality of a personal courtship. It had seemed to hini only a gracious attention to complete my house- hold ; and he had furnished me with a bevy of wives, as I presently found he had selected a complete set of the most intelligent ambau, carvee, and tyrcc which he could procure. Without either the one or the other, the dwelling he had given me would have seemed equally empty or incomplete.

This mark of royal favour astounded and dismayed me more than Eveena herself. If she had entertained the wish, she would hardly have acknowledged to her- self the hope, that she might remain permanently the sole partner of my home. But so sudden, speedy, and wholesale an intrusion thereon she certainly had not expected. Even in Mars, a first bride generally enjoys for some time a monopoly of her husband's society, if she cannot be said to enchain his affection. It was hard, indeed, before the thirtieth day after her marriage, to find herself but one in a numerous family — the harder that our union had from the first been close, intimate, unrestrainedly confidential, as it can hardly be where neither expects that the tie can remain exclu- sive : and because she had learned to realise and rest upon such love as belongs to a life in which woman, never affecting the independence of coequal partnership, has never yet sunk by reaction into a mere slave and

A Prince s Present. 59

toy. It was hard, cruelly hard, on one who had given in the first hour of marriage, and never failed to give, a love whose devotion had no limit, no reserve or qualifi- cation ; a submission that was less self-sacrifice or self- suppression than the absolute surrender of self — of will* feeling, and self-interest — to the judgment and pleasure of him she loved : hard on her who had neither thought nor care for herself as apart from me.

When I understood to what I had actually committed myself, I snatched the papers from her, and might have torn them to pieces but for the gentle restraining hand she laid upon mine.

" You cannot help it," she said, the tears falling from her eyes, but with a self-command of which I could not have supposed her capable. " It seems hard on me ; but it is better so. It is not that you are not content with me, not that you love me less. I can bear it better when it comes from a stranger, and is forced upon you without, and even, I think, against your will."

The pressure of the arm that clasped her waist, and the hand that held her own, was a sufficient answer to any doubt that might be implied in her last words; and, lifting her eyes to mine, she said —

»" I shall always remember this. I shall always think that you were sorry not to have at least a little while longer alone with me. It is selfish to feel glad that you are pained ; but your sympathy, your sharing my own feeling, comforts me as I never could have been comforted when, as must have happened sooner or later, you had found for yourself another companion."

" Child, do you mean to say there is ' no portal to this passage ; ' and that, however much against my will, I

60 Across the Zodiac.

am bound to women I have never seen, and never wish to see ? "

" You have signed," replied Eveena gently. " The contracts are stamped, and are in the official's hands ; and you could not attempt tu break them without giving mortal offence to the Prince, who has intended you a signal favour. Besides, these girls themselves have done no wrong, and deserve no affront or unkindness from you."

I was silent for some minutes ; at first simply astounded at the calm magnanimity which was mingled with her perfect simplicity, then, pondering the possi- bilities of the situation —

" Can we not escape ? " I said at last, rather to my- self than to her.

" Escape ! " she repeated with surprise. " And from what ? The favour shown you by our Sovereign, the wealth he has bestowed, the personal interest he has taken in perfecting every detail of one of the most splendid homes ever given save to a prince — every inci- dent of your position — make you the most envied man in this world ; and you would escape from them ? "

Gazing for a few moments in my face, she added —

" These maidens were chosen as the loveliest in -all the Nurseries of two continents ; every one of them far more beautiful than I can be, even in your eyes. Pray do not, for my sake, be unkind to them or try to dislike them. What is it you would escape ? "

" Being false to you," I answered, " if nothing else."

" False ! " she echoed, in unaffected wonder. " What did you promise me ? "

Again I was silenced by the loyal simplicity with

A Prince s Present. 6 1

which, she followed out ideas so strange to me that their consequences, however logical, I could never anticipate ; and could hardly admit to be sound, even when so directly and distinctly deduced as now from the into- lerable consistency of the premises.

" But," I answered at last, " how much did you pro- mise, Eveena ? and how much more have you given ? "

" Nothing," she replied, " that I did not owe. You won your right to all the love I could give before you asked for it, and since."

" We ' drive along opposite lines,' Madonna ; but we would both give and risk much to avoid what is before us. Let me ask your father whether it be not yet pos- sible to return to my vessel, and leave a world so un- congenial to both of us."

" You cannot ! " she answered. " Try to escape — you insult the Prince ; you put yourself and me, for whom you fear more, in the power of a malignant enemy. You cannot guide a balloon or a vessel, if you could get possession of one ; and within a few hours after your departure was known, every road and every port would be closed to you."

" Can I not send to your father ? " I said.

" Probably," she replied. " I think we shall find a telegraph in your office, if you will allow me to enter there, now there is no one to see ; and it must be morning in Ecasfe."

Familiar with the construction and arrangement of a Martial house, Eveena immediately crossed the gal- lery to what she called the office — the front room on the right, where the head of the house carries on his work or study. Here, above a desk attached to the wall,

62 Across the Zodiac.

was one of those instruments whose manipulation was simple enough for a novice like myself.

" But," I said, " I cannot write your stylic characters ; and if I used the phonic letters, a message from me would be very likely to excite the curiosity of officials who would care about no other."

"May I," she suggested, "write your message for you, and put your purport in words that will be under- stood by my father alone ? "

" Do," I rejoined, " but do it in my name, and I will sign it."

Under her direction, I took the stylus or pencil and the slip of tafroo she offered me, and wrote my name at the head. After eliciting the exact purport of the message I desired to send, and meditating for some moments, she wrote and read out to me words literally translated as follows : —

" The rich aviary my flower-bird thought over full. I would breathe home [air]. Health-speak." The sense of which, as I could already understand, was —

"A splendid mansion has been given us, but my flower-bird has found it too full. I wish for my native air. Prescribe."

The brevity of the message was very characteristic of the language. Equally characteristic of the stylo- graphy was the fact that the words occupied about an inch beyond the address. Following her pencil as she pointed to the ciphers, I said —

" Is not asny card a false concord ? And why have you used the past tense ? "

This ill-timed pedantry, applying to Martial grammar the rules of that with which my boyhood had been

A Prince s Present. 63

painfully familiarised, provoked, amid all our trouble, Eveeua's low silver-toned laugh.

" I meant it," she answered. " My father will look at his pupil's writing with both eyes."

" Well, you are out of reach even of the leveloo."

She laughed again.

"Asnyca-re," she said ; the changed accentuation turn- ing the former words into the well-remembered name of my landing-place, with the interrogative syllable annexed.

This message despatched, we could only await the reply. Nestling among the cushions at my knee, her head resting on my breast, Eveena said —

" And now, forgive my presumption in counselling you, and my reminding you of what is painful to both. But what to us is as the course of the clock, is strange as the stars to you. You must see — them, and must order all household arrangements ; and " (glancing at a dial fixed in the wall) " the black is driving down the green."

"So much the better," I said. "I shall have less time to speak to them, and less chance of speaking or looking my mind. And as to arrangements, those, of course, you must make."

" I ! forgive me," she answered, " that is impossible. It is for you to assign to each of us her part in the household, her chamber, her rank and duties. You forget that I hold exactly the same position with the youngest among them, and cannot presume even to suggest, much less to direct."

I was silent, and after a pause she went on —

" It is not for me to advise you; but"

64 Across the Zodiac.

" Speak your thought, now and always, Eveena. Even if I did not stand in so much need of your guid- ance in a new world, I never yet refused to hear counsel ; and it is a wife's right to offer it."

" Is it ? We are not so taught," she answered. " I am afraid you have rougher ground to steer over than you are aware. Alone with you, I hope I should have done my best, remembering the lesson of the leveloo, never to give you the pain of teaching a different one. But we shall no longer be alone ; and you cannot hope to manage seven as you might manage one. Moreover, these girls have neither had that first experience of your nature which made that lesson so impressive to me, nor the kindly and gentle training, under a mother's care and a father's mild authority, that I had enjoyed. They would not understand the control that is not enforced. They will obey when they must ; and will feel that they must obey when they cannot deceive, and dare not rebel. Do not think hardly of them for this. They have known no life but that of the strict clockwork routine of a great Nursery, where no personal affection and no rule but that of force is possible."

" I understand, Madonna. Your Prince's gift puts a man in charge of young ladies, hitherto brought up among women only, and, of course, petty, petulant, frivolous, as women left to themselves ever are ! I wish you could see the ridiculous side of the matter which occurs to me, as I see the painful aspect which alone is plain to you. I can scarcely help laughing at the chance which has assigned to me the daily personal management of half-a-dozen school-girls ; and school- girls who must also be wives ! I don't think you need

A Prince s Present. 65

fear that I shall deal with them as with you : as a man of sense and feeling must deal with a woman whose own instincts, affection, and judgment are sufficient for her guidance. I never saw much of girls or children. I remember no home but the Western school and the Oriental camp. I never, as soldier or envoy, was acquainted with other men's homes. While still beardless, I have ruled bearded soldiers by a discipline whose sanctions were the death-shot and the bastinado ; and when I left the camp and court, it was for colleges where a beardless face is never seen. I must look to you to teach me how discipline may be softened to suit feminine softness, and what milder sanction may replace the noose and the stick of the /crash " (Persian executioner).

" I cannot believe," Eveena answered, taking me, as usual, to the letter, " that you will ever draw the zone too tight. We say that ' anarchy is the worst tyranny. ' Laxity which leaves us to quarrel and tor- ment each other, tenderness which encourages disorder and disobedience till they must be put down perforce, is ultimate unkindness. I will not tell you that such indulgence will give you endless trouble, win you neither love nor respect, and probably teach its objects to laugh at you under the veil. You will care more for this — that you would find yourself forced at last to change ' velvet hand for leathern band.' Believe me, my — our comfort and happiness must depend on your grasping the helm at once and firmly ; ruling us, and ruling with a strong hand. Otherwise your home will resemble the most miserable of all scenes of dis- comfort— an ungoverned school ; and the most severe

66 Across the Zodiac.

and arbitrary household rule is better by far than that. And — forgive me once more — but do not speak as if you would deal one measure with the left hand and another with the right. Surely you do not so mis- understand me as to think I counselled you to treat myself differently from others ? • Just rule only can be gentle.' If you show favouritism at first, you will find yourself driven step by step to do what you will feel to be cruel ; what will pain yourself perhaps more than any one else. You may make envy and dislike bite (hold) their tongues, but you cannot prevent their sting- ing under the veil. Therefore, once more, you cannot let my interference pass as if none but you knew of it."

" Madonna, if I am to rule such a household, I will rule as absolutely as your autocratic Prince. I will tolerate no criticism and no questions."

"You surely forget," she urged, " that they know my offence, and do not know — must not know — what in your judgment excuses it. Let them once learn that it is possible so to force the springs [bolts] without a sting, it will take a salt-fountain [of tears] to blot the lesson from their memory."

"What would you have, Eveena? Am I to deal unjustly that I may seem just? That course steers straight to disaster. And, had you been in fault, could I humble you in other eyes ? "

" If I feel hurt by any mark of your displeasure, or humbled that it should be known to my equals in your own household," she replied, " it is time I were de- prived of the privileges that have rendered me so overweening."

My answer was intercepted by the sound of an electric

A Prince s Present. 67

bell or miniature gong, and a slip of tafroo fell upon the desk. The first words were in that vocal character which I had mastered, and came from Esmo.

" Hysterical folly," he had said. " Mountain air might be fatal ; and clear nights are dangerously cold for more than yourselves."

" What does he mean ? " I asked, as I read out a formula more studiously occult than those of the Pharmacopoeia.

" That I am unpardonably silly, and that you must not dream of going back to your vessel. The last words, I suppose, warn you how carefully in such a household you need to guard the secrets of the Starlight."

" Well, and what is this in the stylic writing ? "

Eveena glanced over it and coloured painfully, the tears gathering in her eyes.

" That," she said, pointing to the first cipher, " is my mother's signature."

" Then," I said, " it is meant for you, not for me."

" Nay," she answered. " Do you think I could take advantage of your not knowing the character ? " — and she read words quite as incomprehensible to me as the writing itself.

" Can a star mislead the blind ? I should veil myself in crimson if I have trained a bird to snatch sugar from full hands. Must even your womanhood reverse the clasps of your childhood ? "

" It chimes midnight twice," I said — a Martial phrase meaning, ' I am as much in the dark as ever.' " Do not translate it, carissima. I can read in your face that it is unjust — reproachful where you deserve no reproach."

" Nay, when you so wrong my mother I must tell you

68 Across the Zodiac.

exactly what she means : — ' Can a child of the Star take advantage of one who relies on her to explain the customs of a world unknown to him ? I blush to think that my child can abuse the tenderness of one who is too eager to indulge her fancies.'

" You see she is quite right. You do trust me so absolutely, you are so strangely over-kind to me, it is shameful I should vex you by fretting because you are forced to do what you might well have done at your own pleasure."

" My own, I was more than vexed ; chiefly perhaps for your sake, but not by you. "Where any other woman would have stung the sore by sending fresh sparks along the wire, you thought only to spare me the pain of seeing you pained. But what do the last words mean ? No " — for I saw the colour deepen on her half-averted face — " better leave unread what we know to be written in error."

But the less agreeable a supposed duty, the more resolute was Eveena to fulfil it.

" They were meant to recall a saying familiar in every school and household," she said : —

" ' Sandal loosed and well-clasped zone — Childhood spares the woman grown. Change the clasps, and woman yet Pays with interest childhood's debt.'

"This" — tightening and relaxing the clasp of her zone — "is the symbol of stricter or more indulgent household rule." Then bending so as to avert her face, she unclasped her embroidered sandal and gave it into my hand ; — "and this is what, I suppose, you would call its sanction." " There is more to be said for the sandal than I sup-

A Prince s Present. 69

posed, bambina, if it have helped to make you what you are. But you may tell Zulve that its work and hers are done."

Kneeling before her, I kissed, with more studied reverence than the sacred stone of the Caaba, the tiny foot on which I replaced its covering.

" Baby as she thinks and I call you, Eveena, you are fast unteaching me the lesson which, before you were born and ever since, the women of the Earth have done their utmost to impress indelibly upon my mind — the lesson that woman is but a less lovable, more petulant, more deeply and incurably spoilt child. Your mother's reproach is an exact inversion of the truth. No one could have acted with more utter unselfishness, more devoted kindness, more exquisite delicacy than you have shown in this miserable matter. I could not have believed that even you could have put aside your own feelings so completely, could have recognised so promptly that I was not in fault, have thought so ex- clusively of what was best and safe for me in the first place, and next of what was kind and just and generous to your rivals. I never thought such reasonableness and justice possible to feminine nature ; and if I cannot love you more dearly, you have taught me how deeply to admire and honour you. I accept the situation, since you will have it so ; be as just and considerate hence- forward as you have been to-night, and trust me that it shall bring no shadow between us — shall never make you less to me than you are now."

" But it must," she insisted. " I cannot now be other than one wife among many ; and what place I hob 1 among them is, remember, for you and you alone to

yo Across the Zodiac.

fix. No rule, no custom, obliges you to give any prefer- ence in form or fact to one, merely because you chanced to marry her first."

" Such, nevertheless, did not seem to be the practice in your father's house. Your mother was as distinctly wife and mistress as if his sole companion."

" My father," she replied, " did not marry a second time till within my own memory ; and it was natural and usual to give the first place to one so much older and more experienced. I have no such claim, and when you see my companions you may find good reason to think that I am the least fit of all to take the first place. Nor," she added, drawing me from the room, " do I wish it. If only you will keep in your mind one little place for the memory of our visit to your vessel and your pro- mise respecting it, I shall be more than content."

Eveena's humble, unconscious self-abnegation was rendering the conversation intolerably painful, and even the embarrassing situation now at hand was a welcome interruption. Eveena paused before a door opening from the gallery into one of the rooms looking on the peristyle.

" You will find them there," she said, drawing back.

" Come with me, then," I answered ; and as she shrank away, I tightened my clasp of her waist and drew her forward. The door opened, and we found ourselves in presence of six veiled ladies in pink and silver, all of them, with one exception, a little taller and less slight than my bride. Eveena, with the kindness which never failed under the most painful trial or the most powerful impulses of natural feeling, extricated her- self gently from my hold, took the hand of the first, and

A Prince s Present. ji

brought her up to me. The girl was evidently startled at the first sight of her new possessor, and alarmed by a figure so much larger and more powerful than any she had ever seen, exceeding probably the picture drawn by her imagination.

" This," said Eveena gently and gravely, " is Eunane, the prettiest and most accomplished scholar in her Nursery."

As I was about to acknowledge the introduction with the same cold politeness with which I should have bowed to a strange guest on Earth, Eveena took my left hand in her own and laid it on the maiden's veil, recallino- to me at once the proprieties of the occasion and the justice she had claimed for her unoffending and unin- tentional rivals ; but at the same time bringing back in full force a remembrance she could not have forgotten, but whose effect upon myself the ideas to which she was habituated rendered her unable to anticipate. To accept in her presence a second bride, by the same cere- monial act which had so lately asserted my claim to herself, was intensely repugnant to my feelings, and only her own self-sacrificing influence could have overcome my reluctance. My hesitation was, I fear, perceptible to Eunane ; for, as I removed her veil and head-dress, her expression and a colour somewhat brighter than that of mere maiden shyness indicated disappointment or mortified pride. She was certainly very beautiful, and perhaps, had I now seen them both for the first time, I might have acquiesced in the truth of Eveena's self- depreciation. As it was, nothing could associate with the bright intelligent face, the clear grey eyes and light brown hair, the lithe active form instinct with nervous

/ -

Across the Zodiac.

energy, that charm which from our first acquaintance their expression of gentle kindness, and, later, the devoted affection visible in every look, had given to Eveena's features.

It is, I suppose, hardly natural to man to feel actual unkindness towards a young and beautiful girl who has given no personal offence. Having once admitted the justice of Eveena's plea, and feeling that she would be more pained by the omission than by the fulfilment of the forms which courtesy and common kindness imperatively demanded, I kissed Eunane's brow and spoke a few words to her, with as much of tenderness as I could feel or affect for Eveena's rival, after what had passed to endear Eveena more than ever. The latter waited a little, to allow me spontaneously to perform the same ceremony with the other girls ; but seeing my hesitation, she came forward again and pre- sented severally four others — Enva (" Snow " = Blanche), Leenoo ("Bose"), Eirale, Elfe, all more or less of the usual type of female beauty in Mars, with long full tresses varying in tinge from flax to deep gold or the lightest brown ; each with features almost faultless, and with all the attraction (to me unfailing) possessed for men who have passed their youth by la beaute du Diable — the bloom of pure graceful girlhood. Eive, the sixth of the party, standing on the right of the others, and therefore last in place according to Martial usage, was smaller and slighter than Eveena herself, and made an individual impression on my attention by a manifest timidity and agitation greater than any of the rest had evinced. As I removed her veil I was struck by the total unlikeness which her face and form presented to

A Prince s Present. 73

those I had just saluted. Her hair was so dark as by- contrast to seem black ; her complexion less fair than those of her companions, though as fair as that of an average Greek beauty ; her eyes of deepest brown ; her limbs, and especially the hands and feet, marvellously perfect in shape and colour, but in the delicacy and minuteness of their form suggesting, as did all the pro- portions of her tiny figure, the peculiar grace of child- hood ; an image in miniature of faultless physical beauty. In Eive alone of the bevy I felt a real interest ; but the interest called forth by a singularly pretty child, in whose expression the first glance discerns a character it will take long to read, rather than that commanded by the charms of earliest womanhood.

When I had completed the ceremonial round, there was a somewhat awkward silence, which Eveena at last broke by suggesting that Eunane should show us through the house, with which she had made the earliest ac- quaintance. This young girl readily took the lead thus assigned to her, and by some delicate manoeuvre, whose authorship I could not doubt, I found her hand in mine as we made our tour. The number of chambers was much greater than in Esmo's dwelling, the garden of the peristyle larger and more elaborately arranged, if not more beautiful. The ambau were more numerous than even the domestic service of so large a mansion appeared to require. The birds, whose duties lay out- side, were by this time asleep on their perches, and we forbore to disturb them. The central chamber of the seraglio, if I may so call it, the largest and midmost of those in the rear of the garden, devoted as of course to the ladies of the household, was especially magnificent.

VOL. II. F

74 Across tJie Zodiac.

When we stood in its midst, shy looks askance from all the six betrayed their secret ambition; though Ei\\'"s was but momentary, and so slight that I felt I might have unfairly suspected her of presumption. I left this room, however, in silence, and assigned to each of my maiden brides, in order as they had been presented to me, the rooms on the left ; and then, as we stood once more in the peristyle, having postponed all further arrangements, all distribution of household duties, to the morrow (assigning, however, to Eunane, whose native energy and forwardness had made early acquaintance with the dwelling and its dumb inhabitants, the charge of providing and preparing with their assistance our morning meal), I said, " I have let the business of the evening zyda actually encroach on midnight, and must detain you from your rest no longer. Eveeca, you know, I still have need of you."

She was standing at a little distance, next to Eunane ; and the latter, with a smile half malicious, half trium- phant, whispered something in her ear. There was a suppressed annoyance in Eveena's look which provoked me to interpose. On Earth I should never have been fool enough to meddle in a woman's quarrel. The weakest can take her own part in the warfare of taunt and innuendo, better and more venomously than could dervish, priest, or politician. But Eveena could no more lower herself to the ordinary level of feminine malice than I could have borne to hear her do so ; and it was intolerable that one whose sweet humility com- manded respect from myself should submit to slight or sneer from the lips and eyes of petulant girls. Eunane

A Prince's Present. 75

started as I spoke, using that accent which gives its most peremptory force to the Martial imperative.

"Eepeat aloud what you have chosen to say to Eveena in my presence."

If the first to express the ill-will excited by Eveena's evident influence, though exerted in their own behalf, it was less that Eunane surpassed her companions in malice than that they fell short of her in audacity. Her school-mates had found her their most daring leader in mischief, the least reluctant scapegoat when mischief was to be atoned. But she was cowed, partly perhaps by her first collision with masculine authority, partly, I fear, by sheer dread of physical force visibly greater than she had ever known by repute. Perhaps she was too much frightened to obey. At any rate, it was from Eveena, despite her pleading looks, that I extorted an answer. She yielded at last only to that formal im- perative which her conscience would not permit her to disobey, and which for the first time I now employed in addressing her.

"Eunane only repeated," Eveena said, with a reluct- ance so manifest that one might have supposed her to be the offender, " a school-girl's proverb : —

' AVare the wrath that stands to cool : Then the sandal shows the rule.' "

The smile that had accompanied the whisper — though not so much suggestive of a woman's malignity as of a child's exultation in a companion's disgrace — gave point and sting to the taunt. It is on chance, I suppose, that the effect of such things depends. Had the saying been thrown at any of Eunane's equals, I should probably

76 Across the Zodiac.

have been inclined to laugh, even if I felt it necessary to reprimand. But, angered at a hint which placed Eveena on their own level, I forgot how far the speaker's experience and inexperience alike palliated the imperti- nence. That the insinuation shocked none of those around me was evident. Theirs were not the looks of women, however young and thoughtless, startled by an affront to their sex ; but of children amazed at a child's folly in provoking capricious and irresponsible power. The angry quickness with which I turned to Eunane received a double, though doubly unintentional, rebuke, equally illustrative of Martial ideas and usages. The culprit cowered like a child expecting a brutal blow. A gentle pressure on my left arm evinced the same fear in a quarter from which its expression wounded me deeply. That pressure arrested not, as was intended, my hand, but my voice ; and when I spoke the fright- ened girl looked up in surprise at its measured tones.

" Wrong, and wrong thrice over, Eunane. It is for me to teach you the bad taste of bringing into your new home the ideas and language of school. Mean- while, in no case would you learn more of my rule than concerned your own fault. Take in exchange for your proverb the kindliest I have learned in your language : —

' Whispered warnings reach the heart ; Veil the blush and spare the smart.'

But, happily for you, yourtaunt had not truth enough to sting ; and I can tell the story about which you are unduly curious as frankly as you please. — Let me speak now, Eveena, that I may spare the need to speak again and in another tone. — That Eveena seemed to have put us both in a false position only convinced me that she

A Prince s Present. 77

had a motive she knew would satisfy me as fully as her- self. When I learned what that motive was, I was greatly surprised at her unselfishness and courage. If you threw me your veil to save me from drowning, how would you feel if my first words to you were : — ' No one must think I could not swim, therefore even the household must believe you, in unveiling, guilty of an unpardonable fault ' ? . . . Answer me, Eunane."

"I should let you sink next time," she replied, with a pretty half-dubious sauciness, showing that her worst fears at least were relieved.

" Quite right ; but you are less generous than Eveena. To hide how I had acted on her advice, she would have had you suppose her guilty. That you might not laugh at my authority, and ' find a dragon in the esve's nest,' she would have had me treat her as guilty."

" But I deserved it, A girl has no right to break the seal in the master's absence," interposed Eveena, much more distressed than gratified by the vindication to which she was so well entitled.

" Let your tongue sleep, Eveena. So [with a kiss] I blot your first miscalculation, Eunane. Earth [the Evening Star of Mars] light your dreams."

It wras with visible reluctance that Eveena followed me into the chamber we had last left ; and she expos- tulated as earnestly as her obedience would permit against the fiat that assigned it to her.

" Choose what room you please, then," I said ; " but understand that, so far as my will and my trust can make you, you are the mistress here."

"Well, then," she answered, "give me the little octagon beside your own : " — the smallest and simplest,

yS Across the Zodiac.

but to my taste the prettiest, room in the house. "I should like to he near you still, if I may ; hut, believe me, I shall not be frozen (hurt) because you think another hand better able to steer the carriage, if mine may sometimes rest in yours."

Leading her into the room she had chosen, and having installed her among the cushions that were to form her couch, I silenced decisively her renewed protest.

" Let me answer you on this point, once and for ever, Eveena. To me this seems matter of right, not of favour or fitness. But favour and fitness here go with right. I could no more endure to place another before or beside you than I could break the special bond between us, and deny the hope of which the Serpent " (laying my hand on her shoulder-clasp, which, by mere accident, was shaped into a faint resemblance to the mystic coil) " is the emblem ; the hope that alone can make such love as ours endurable, or even possible, to creatures that must die. She who knelt with me before the Emerald Throne, who took with me the vows so awfully sanc- tioned, shall hold the first place in my home as in my heart till the Serpent's promise be fulfilled."

Both were silent for some time, for never could we refer to that Vision — whether an objective fact, or an impression communicated from one spirit to the other by the occult force of intense sympathy — save by such allusion ; and the remembrance never failed to affect us both with a feeling too deep for words. Eveena spoke again —

" I am sorry you have so bound yourself ; perhaps only because you knew me first. And it shames me to receive fresh proof of your kindness to-night."

A Princes Present. 79

" And why, my own ? "

" Do not make me feel," she said, " that — though the measured sentences you have taught me to call scolding seemed the sharpest of all penances — there is a heavier yet in the silence which withholds forgiveness."

" What have I yet to forgive, Madonna ? "

But Eveena could read my feelings in spite of my words, and knew that the pain she had given was too recent to allow me to misconceive her penitence.

" I ought to say, my interference. It was your right to rule as you chose, and my meddling was a far worse offence than Eunane's malice. But it was not that you felt too deeply to reprove."

" True ! Eunane hurt me a little ; but I expected no such misjudgment from you. By the touch that proved your alarm I know that I gave no cause for it."

" How so ? " she asked in surprise.

" You laid your hand instinctively on my left arm, the one your people use. Had I made the slightest angry gesture, you would have held back my right. Had I deserved that Eveena should think so ill of me — think me capable of doing such dishonour to her presence and to my own roof, which should have protected an equal enemy from that which you feared for a helpless girl ? Eor what you would have checked was such a blow as men deal to men who can strike back; and the hand that had given it would have been unfit to clasp man's in friendship or woman's in love. You yourself must have shrunk from its touch."

She caught and held it fast to her lips.

" Can I forget that it saved my life ? I don't under- stand you at all, but I see that I have frozen your heart.

80 Across the Zodiac.

I did fancy for one moment you would strike, as pas- sionate men and women often do strike provoking girls, perhaps forgetting your own strength ; and I knew you would be miserable if you did hurt her — in that way. The next moment I was ashamed, more than you will believe, to have wronged you so. Like every man, from the head of a household to the Arch-Judge or the Campta, you must rule by fear. But your wrath will ' stand to cool ; ' and you will hate to make a girl cry as you would hate to send a criminal to the electric-rack, the lightning-stroke, or the vivisection-table. And, whatever you had done, do you fancy that I could shrink from you ? I said, ' If you weary of your flower-bird you must strike with the hammer ; ' and if you could do so, do you think I should not feel for your hand to hold it to the last ? "

" Hush, Eveena ! how can I bear such words ? You might forgive me for any outrage to you : I doubt your easily forgetting cruelty to another. I have not a heart like yours. As I never failed a friend, so I never yet forgave a foe. Yet even I might pardon one of those girls an attempt to poison myself, and in some circum- stances I might even learn to like her better afterwards. But I doubt if I could ever touch again the hand that had mixed the poison for another, though that other were my mortal enemy."

( 8i )

CHAPTER XIX.

A COMPLETE ESTABLISHMENT.

Before I slept Eveena had convinced me, much to my own discomfiture,how very limited must be any authority that could be delegated to her. In such a household there could be no second head or deputy, and an attempt to devolve any effective charge on her would only involve her in trouble and odium. Even at the break- fast, spread as usual in the centre of the peristyle, she entreated that we should present ourselves separately. Eunane appeared to have performed very dexterously the novel duty assigned to her. The ambau had obeyed her orders with wTell-trained promptitude, and the carvee, in bringing fruit, leaves, and roots from the outer garden, had more than verified all that on a former occasion Eveena had told me of their cleverness and quick comprehension of instructions. Eunane's face brightened visibly as I acknowledged the neatness and the tempting appearance of the meal she had set forth. She was yet more gratified by receiving charge for the future of the same duty, and authority to send, as is usual, by an amba the order for that principal part of each day's food which is supplied by the confectioner. By reserving for Eveena the place among the cushions

82 Across the Zodiac.

immediately on my left, I made to the assembled house- hold the expected announcement that she was to be regarded as mistress of the house ; feminine punctilious- ness on points of domestic precedence strikingly con- trasting the unceremonious character of intercourse among men out of doors. The very ambau recognise the mistress or the favourite, as dogs the master of their Earthly home.

The ladies were at first shy and silent, Eunane only giving me more than a monosyllabic answer to my remarks, and even Eunane never speaking save in reply to me. A trivial incident, however, broke through this reserve, and afforded me a first taste of the petty domes- tic vexations in store for me. The beverage most to my liking was always the carcard — juice flavoured with roasted kernels, something resembling coffee in taste. On this occasion the carcard and another favourite dish had a taste so peculiar that I pushed both aside almost untouched. On observing this, the rest — Enva, Leenoo, Elfe, and Eirale — took occasion to criticise the articles in question with such remarks and grimaces as ill-bred children might venture for the annoyance of an inexperienced sister. I hesitated to repress this out- break as it deserved, till Eunane's bitter mortification was evident in her brightening colour and the doubtful, half-appealing glance of tearful eyes. Then a rebuke, such as might have been appropriately addressed yester- day to these rude school-girls by their governess, at once silenced them. As we rose, I asked Eveena, who, with more courtesy than the rest of us, had finished her portion —

" Is there any justice in these reproaches ? I cer-

A Complete Establishment. S3

tainly don't like the carcarfi to-day, Imt it does not follow that Eunane is in fault."

The rest, Eunane included, looked their annoyance at this appeal ; but Eveena's temper and kindness were proof against petulance.

"The carcara is in fault," she said; "but I don't think Eunane is. In learning cookery at school she had her materials supplied to her ; this time the carve has probably given her an unripe or overripe fruit which has spoiled the whole."

" And do you not know ripe from unripe fruit ? " I inquired, turning to Eunane.

" How should she ? " interposed Eveena. " I doubt if she ever saw them growing."

" How so ? " I asked of Eunane.

" It is true," she answered. " I never went beyond the walls of our playground till I came here; and though there were a few flower-beds in the inner gar- dens, there were none but shade trees among the turf and concrete yards to which we were confined."

" I should have known no better," observed Eveena ; " but being brought up at home, I learned to know all the plants in my father's grounds, which were more various, I believe, than usual."

" Then," I said, " Eunane has a new life and a mul- titude of new pleasures before her. Has this peristyle given you your first sight of flowers beyond those in the beds of your Nursery ? And have you never seen anything of the world about you ? "

" Never," she said. " And Eveena's excuse for me is, I believe, perfectly true. The carve must have been stupid, but I knew no better."

84 Across the Zodiac.

"Well," I rejoined, "you must forgive the bird, as we must excuse you for spoiling our breakfast. I will contrive that you shall know more of fruits and flowers before long. In the meantime, you will probably have a different if not a wider view from this roof than from that of your Nursery."

After all, Eunane's girlhood, typical of the whole life of many Martial women, had not, I suppose, been more dreary or confined than that of children in London, Canton, or Calcutta. But this incident, reminding me how dreary and limited that life was, served to excuse in my eyes the pettiness and poverty of the characters it had produced. A Martial woman's whole experience may well be confined within a few acres, and from the cradle to the grave she may see no more of the world than can be discerned from the roof of her school or her husband's home.

Eunane, with the assistance of the aniban, busied herself in removing the remains of the meal. The other five, putting on their veils, scampered up the inclined plane to the roof, much like children released from table or from tasks. Turning to Eveena, who still remained beside me, I said —

" Get your veil, and come out with me ; I have not yet an idea where we are, and scarcely a notion what the grounds are like."

She followed me to my apartment, out of which opened the one she had chosen, and as the window closed behind us she spoke in a tone of appeal —

" Do not insist on my accompanying you. As you bade me always speak my thought, I had much rather you would take one of the others."

A Complete Establisltment. 85

" You professed," I said, " to take especial pleasure in a walk with me, and this time I will be careful that you are not overtired."

" Of course I should like it," she answered ; " but it would not be just. Please let me this time remain to take my part of the household duties, and make myself acquainted with the house. Choose your companion among the others, whom you have scarcely noticed yet."

Preferring not only Eveena's company, but even my own, to that of any of the six, and feeling myself not a little dependent on her guidance and explanations, I remonstrated. But finding that her sense of justice and kindness would yield to nothing short of direct command, I gave way.

" You forget my pleasure," I said at last. " But if you will not go, you must at least tell me which I am to take. I will not pretend to have a choice in the matter."

" Well, then," she answered, " I should be glad to see you take Eunane. She. is, I think, the eldest, appa- rently the most intelligent and companionable, and she has had one mortification already she hardly deserved."

"And is much the prettiest," I added maliciously. But Eveena was incapable of even understanding so direct an appeal to feminine jealousy.

" I think so," she said ; " much the prettiest among us. But that will make no difference under her veil."

" And must she keep down her veil," I asked, " in our own grounds ? "

Eveena laughed. " Wherever she might be seen by any man but yourself."

86 Across the Zodiac.

" Call her then," I answered.

Eveena hesitated. But having successfully carried her own way on the main question, she would not renew her remonstrances on a minor point ; and finding her about to join the rest, she drew Eunane apart. Eunane came up to me alone, Eveena having busied herself in some other part of the house. She approached slowly as if reluctant, and stood silent before me, her manner by no means expressive of satisfaction.

" Eveena thought," I said, " that you would like to accompany me ; but if not, you may tell her so ; and tell her in that case that she must come."

" But I shall be glad to go wherever you please," replied Eunane. " Eveena did not tell me why you sent for me, and "

" And you were afraid to be scolded for spoiling the breakfast ? You have heard quite enough of that."

"You dropped a word last night," she answered, "which made me think you would keep your displeasure till you had me alone."

" Quite true," I said, " if I had any displeasure to keep. But you might spoil a dozen meals, and not vex me half as much as the others did."

"Why ? " she asked in surprise. " Girls and women always spite one another if they have a chance, especially one who is in disfavour or disgrace with authority."

" So much the worse," I answered. " And now — you know as much or as little of the house as any of us ; find the way into the grounds."

A narrow door, not of crystal as usual, but of metal painted to resemble the walls, led directly from one corner of the peristyle into the grounds outside. I had

A Complete Establishment. &j

inferred on my arrival, by the distance from the road to the house, that their extent was considerable, but I was surprised alike by their size and arrangement. On two sides they were bounded by a wall about four hundred yards in length — that parting them from the road was about twice as long. They were laid out with few of the usual orchard plots and beds of different fruits and vegetables, but rather in the form of a small park, with trees of various sorts, among which the fruit trees were a minority. The surface was broken by natural rising grounds and artificial terraces; the soil was turfed in the manner I have previously described, with minute plants of different colours arranged in bands and patterns. Here and there was a garden consisting of a variety of flower-beds and flowering shrubs ; broad con- crete paths winding throughout, and a beautiful silver stream meandering hither and thither, and filling several small ponds and fountains. That the grounds imme- diately appertaining to the house were not intended as usual for the purposes of a farm or kitchen-garden was evident. The reason became equally apparent when, looking towards the north, where no wall bounded them, I saw — over a gate in the middle of a dense hedge of flowering shrubs, which, with a ditch beyond it, formed the limit of the park in that direction — an extensive farm divided by the usual ditches into some twenty- five or thirty distinct fields, and more than a square mile in extent. This, as Eunane's native inquisitiveness and quickness had already learnt, formed part of the estate attached to the mansion and bestowed upon me by the Campta. It was admirably cultivated, contain- ing orchards, fields rich with various thriving crops, and

88 Across the Zodiac.

pastures grazed by the Unicorn and other of the domestic birds and beasts kept to supply Martial tables with milk, eggs, and meat; producing nearly every commodity to which the climate was suited, and, as a very short observation assured me, capable of yielding a far greater income than would suffice to sustain in luxury and splendour a household larger than that enforced upon me. We walked in this direction, my companion talk- ing fluently enough when once I had set her at ease, and seemingly free from the shyness and timidity which Eveena had at first displayed. She paused when we reached a bridge that spanned the ditch dividing the grounds from the farm, aware that, save on special in- vitation, she might not, even in my company, go beyond the former. I led her on, however, till soon after we had crossed the ditch I saw a man approaching us. On this, I desired Eunane to remain where she was, seating her at the foot of a fruit tree in one of the orchard plots, and proceeded to meet the stranger. After exchanging the usual salute, he came immediately to the point.

" I thought," he said, " that you would not care your- self to undertake the cultivation of so extensive an estate. Indeed, the mere superintendence would occupy the whole of one man's attention, and its proper culti- vation would be the work of six or eight. I have had some little experience in agriculture, and determined to ask for this charge."

" And who has recommended you ? " I said. " Or have you any sort of introduction or credentials to me ? "

He made a sign which I immediately recognised. Caution, however, was imposed by the law to which that sign appealed.

A Complete Establishment. 89

" You can read," I said, " by starlight ? "

" Better than by any other," he rejoined with a smile.

One or two more tokens interchanged left me no doubt that the claim was genuine, and, of course, irre- sistible.

" Enough," I replied. " You may take entire charge on the usual terms, which, doubtless, you know better than I."

" You trust me then, absolutely ? " he said, in a tone of some little surprise.

" In trusting you," I replied, " I trust the Zinta. I am tolerably sure to be safe in hands recommended by them."

" You are right," he said, " and how right this will prove to you," and he placed in my hand a small cake upon which was stamped an impression of the signet that I had seen on Esmo's wrist. When he saw that I recognised it, he took it back, and, breaking it into fragments, chewed and swallowed it.

" This," he said, " was given me to avouch the follow- ing message: — Our Chiefs are informed that the Order is threatened with a novel danger. Systematic per- secution by open force or by law has been attempted and defeated ages ago, and will hardly be tried again. What seems to be intended now is the destruction of our Chiefs, individually, by secret means — means which it is supposed we shall not be able to trace to the insti- gators, even if we should detect their instruments."

" But," I remarked, " those who have warned you of the danger must know from whom it proceeds, and those who are employed in such an attack must run not only the ordinary risk of assassins, but the further

VOL. II. G

90 Across the Zodiac.

risk entailed by the peculiar powers of those they assail."

" Those powers," he answered, " they do not under- stand or recognise. The instruments, I presume, will be encouraged by an assurance that the Courts are in their favour, and by a pledge in the last resort that they shall be protected. The exceptional customs of our Order, especially their refusal to send their chil- dren into the public Nurseries, mark out and identify them ; and though our places of meeting are concealed and have never been invaded, the fact that we do meet and the persons of those who attend can hardly be concealed."

" But," I asked, " if a charge of assassination is once made and proved, how can the Courts refuse to do justice ? Can the instigators protect the culprit with- out committing themselves ? "

" They would appeal, I do not doubt, to a law, passed many ages ago with a special regard to ourselves, but which has not been applied for a score of centu- ries, putting the members of a secret religious society beyond the pale of legal protection. That we shall ultimately find them out and avenge ourselves, you need not doubt. But in the meantime every known dissentient from the customs of the majority is in danger, and persons of note or prominence especially so. Next to Esmo and his son, the husband of his daughter is, perhaps, in as much peril as any one. No open attempt on your life will be adventured at present, while you retain the favour of the Carnpta. But you have made at least one mortal and powerful enemy, and you may possibly be the object of well-

A Complete Establishment. 9 1

considered and persistent schemes of assassination. On the other hand, next to our Chief and his son, you have a paramount claim on the protection of the Order ; and those who with me will take charge of your affairs have also charge to watch vigilantly over your life. If you will trust me beforehand with knowledge of all your movements, I think your chief peril will lie in the one sphere upon which we cannot intrude — your own household ; and Clavelta directs your own special attention to this quarter. Immediate danger can scarcely threaten you as yet, save from a woman's hand."

" Poison ? "

" Probably," he returned coolly. " But of the details of the plot our Council are, I believe, as absolutely ignorant as of the quarter from which it proceeds."

"And how," I inquired, "can it be that the witness who has informed you of the plot has withheld the names, without which his information is so imperfect, and serves rather to alarm than to protect us ? "

"You know," he replied, "the kind of mysterious perception to which we can resort, and are probably aware how strangely lucid in some points, how strangely darkened in others, is the vision that does not depend on ordinary human senses ? "

As we spoke we had passed Eunane once or twice, walking backwards and forwards along the path near which she sat. As my companion was about to con- tinue, we were so certainly within her hearing that I checked him.

" Take care," I said ; " I know nothing of her except the Campta's choice, and that she is not of us."

92 Across the Zodiac.

He visibly started.

" I thought," he said, " that the witness of our conver- sation was one at least as reliable as yourself. I forgot how it happened that you have diverged from the pru- dence which forbids our brethren to admit to their households aliens from the Order and possible spies on its secrets."

" Of whom do you speak as Clavelta ? " I asked. " I was not even aware that the Order had a single head."

" The Signet," replied my friend in evident surprise, " should have distinguished the Arch-Enlightener to duller sight than yours."

We had not spoken, of course, till we were again beyond hearing ; but my companion looked round care- fully before he proceeded —

" You will understand the better, then, how strong is your own claim upon the care of your brethren, and how confidently you may rely upon their vigilance and fidelity."

" I should regret," I answered, " that their lives should be risked for mine. In dangers like those against which you could protect me, I have been accustomed from boy- hood to trust my own right hand. But the fear of secret assassination has often unnerved the bravest men, and I will not say that it may not disturb me."

" For you," he answered, " personally we should care as for one of our brethren exposed to especial danger. For him who saved the descendant of our Founder, and who in her right, after her father and brother, would be the guardian, if not the head, of the only remaining family of his lineage, one and all of us are at need bound to die."

A Complete Establishment. 93

After a few more words we parted, and I rejoined Eunane, and led her back towards the house. I had learnt to consider taciturnity a matter of course, except where there was actual occasion for speech ; but Eunane had chattered so fluently and frankly just before, that her absolute silence might have suggested to me the possibility that she had heard and was pondering things not intended for her knowledge, had I been less pre- occupied. Enured to the perils of war, of the chase, of Eastern diplomacy, and of travel in the wildest parts of the Earth, I do not pretend indifference to the fear of assassination, and especially of poison. Cromwell, and other soldiers of equal nerve and clearer conscience, have found their iron courage sorely shaken by a peril against which no precautions were effective and from which they could not enjoy an hour's security. The incessant continuous strain on the nerves is, I suppose, the chief element in the peculiar dread with which brave men have regarded this kind of peril; as the best troops cannot endure to be under fire in their camp. Weigh- ing, however, the probability that girls who had been selected by the Sovereign, and had left their Nursery only to pass directly into my house, could have been already bribed or seduced to become the instruments of mur- derous treachery, I found it but slight ; and before we reached the house I had made up my mind to discard the apprehensions or precautions recommended to me on their account. Far better, if need be, to die by poison than to live in hourly terror of it. Better to be murdered than to suspect of secret treason those with whom I must maintain the most intimate relations, and whose sex and years made it intolerable to believe them

94 si cross the Zodiac.

criminal. I dismissed the thought, then ; and helieving that I had prohably wronged them in allowing it to dwell for a moment in my mind, I felt perhaps more tenderly than before towards them, and certainly indis- posed to name to Eveena a suspicion of which I was myself ashamed. Perhaps, too, youth and beauty weighed in my conclusion more than cool reason would have allowed. A Martial proverb says —

" Trust a foe, and you may rue it ; Trust a friend, and perish through it. Trust a woman if you will ; — Thrice betrayed, you'll trust her still."

As to the general warning, I was wishful to consult Eveena, and unwilling to withhold from her any secret of my thoughts ; but equally averse to disturb her with alarms that were trying even to nerves seasoned by the varied experience of twenty years against every open peril.

( 95 )

CHAPTER XX.

LIFE, SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC.

As we approached the house I caught sight of Eveena's figure among the party gathered on the roof. She had witnessed the interview, but her habitual and con- scientious deference forbade her to ask a confidence not volunteered ; and she seemed fully satisfied when, on the first occasion on which we were alone, I told her simply that the stranger belonged to the Zinta and had been recommended by her father himself to the charge of my estate. Though reluctant to disturb her mind with fears she could not shake off as I could, and which would make my every absence at least a season of terror, the sense of insecurity doubtless rendered me more anxious to enjoy whenever possible the only society in which it was permissible to be frank and off my guard. No man in his senses would voluntarily have accepted the position which had been forced upon me. The Zveltau never introduce aliens into their households. Their leading ideas and fundamental principles so deeply affect the conduct of existence, the motives of action, the bases of all moral reasoning — so completely do the inferences drawn from them and the habits of thought to which they lead pervade and tinge the mind, conscience, and even language —

96 Across the Zodiac.

that though it may he easy to " live in the light at home and walk with the blind abroad," yet in the familiar intercourse of household life even a cautious and reserved man (and I was neither) must betray to the keen instinctive perceptions of women whether he thought and felt like those around him, or was trans- lating different thoughts into an alien language. This difficulty is little felt between unbelievers and Christians. The simple creed of the Zinta, however, like that of the Prophet, affects the thought and life as the complicated and subtle mj'steries of more elaborate theologies, more refined philosophic systems rarely do.

One of Eveena's favourite quotations bore the un- mistakable stamp of Zveltic mysticism : —

" Symbols that invert the sense Form the Seal of Providence ; Contradiction gives the key, Time unlocks the mystery."

The danger in which my relation to the Zinta and its chief involved me, and the presence of half a dozen rivals to Eveena — rivals also to that regard for the Star which at first I felt chiefly for her sake — likely as they seemed to impair the strength and sweetness of the tie between us, actually worked to consolidate and endear it. To enjoy, except on set occasions, without constant liability to interruption, Eveena's sole society was no easy matter. To conceal our real secret, and the fact that there was a secret, was imperative. Avowedly exclusive confidence, conferences from which the rest of the household were directly shut out, would have suggested to their envious tempers that Eveena played the spy on them, or influenced and advised the

Life, Social and Domestic. 97

exercise of my authority. To be alone with her, there- fore, as naturally and necessarily I must often wish to be, required manoeuvres and arrangements as delicate and difficult, though as innocent, as those employed by engaged couples under the strict conventions of Euro- pean household usage ; and the comparative rarity of such interviews, and the manner in which they had often to be contrived beforehand, kept alive in its earliest freshness the love which, if not really dimi- nished, generally loses somewhat of its first bloom and delicacy in the unrestrained intercourse of marriage. Absolutely and solely trusted, assured that her com- pany was eagerly sought, and at least as deeply valued as ever — compelled by the ideas of her race to accept the situation as natural and right, and wholly incapable of the pettier and meaner forms of jealousy — Eveena was fully content and happy in her relations with me. That, on the whole, she was not comfortable, or at least much less so than during our suddenly abbreviated honeymoon, was apparent; but her loss of brightness and cheerfulness was visible chiefly in her weary and downcast looks on any occasion when, after being absent for some hours from the house, I came upon her un- awares. In my presence she was always calm and peaceful, kind, and seemingly at ease ; and if she saw or heard me on my return, though she carefully avoided any appearance of eagerness to greet me sooner than others, or to claim especial attention, she ever met me with a smile of welcome as frank and bright as a young bride on Earth could give to a husband returning to her sole society from a long day of labour for her sake. In so far as compliance was possible I was compelled

98 Across the Zodiac.

to admit the wisdom of Eveena's plea that no open distinction should be made in her favour. Except in the simple fact of our affection, there was no assignable reason for making her my companion more frequently than Eunane or Eivc. Except that I could trust her completely, there was no distinction of age, social rank, or domestic relation to afford a pretext for exempting her from restraints which, if at first I thought them senseless and severe, were soon justified by experience of the kind of domestic control which just emanci- pated school-girls expected and required. Nor would she accept the immunity tacitly allowed her. It was not that any established custom or right bounded the arbitrary power of domestic autocracy. The right of all but unbounded wrong, the liberty of limitless caprice, is unquestionably vested in the head of the household. But the very completeness of the despotism rendered its exercise impossible. Force cannot act where there is no resistance. The sword of the Plantagenet could cleave the helmet but not the quilt of down. I could do as I pleased without in- fringing any understanding or giving any right to complain.

"But," said Eveena, "you have a sense of justice which has nothing to do with law or usage. Even your language is not ours. You think of right and wrong, where we should speak only of what is or is not punish- able. You can make a favourite if you will pay the price. Could you endure to be hated in your own home, or I to know that you deserved it ? Or, if you could, could you bear to see me hated and my life made miserable ? "

Life, Social and Domestic. 99

" They dare not ! " I returned angrily ; fearing that they had dared, and that she had already felt the spite she was so careful not to provoke.

" Do you think that feminine malice cannot contrive to envenom a dozen stings that I could not explain if I would, and you could not deal with if I did ? "

" But," I replied, " it seems admitted that there is no such thing as right or custom. As Enva said, I have bought and paid for them, and may do what I please within the contract ; and you agree that that is just what any other man in this world would do."

" Yes," returned Eveena, " and I watched your face while Enva spoke. How did you like her doctrine ? Of course you may do as you please — if you can please. You may silence discontent, you may suppress spiteful innuendos and even sulky looks, you may put down mutiny, by sheer terror. Can you ? You may com- mand me to go with you whenever you go out ; you may take the same means to make me complain of unkindness as to make them conceal it ; you may act like one of our own people, if you can stoop to the level of their minds. But we both know that you can do nothing of the kind. How could you bear to be driven into unsparing and undeserved severity, who can hardly bring yourself to enforce the discipline necessary to peace and comfort on those who will only be ruled by fear and would like you better if they feared you more ? Did you hear the proverb Leenoo muttered, very un- justly, when she left your room yesterday, 'A favourite wears out many sandals ' ? No ! You see the very phrase wounds and disgusts you. But you would find it a true one. Can you take vengeance for a fault you

ioo Across the Zodiac.

have yourself provoked ? Can you decide without inquiry, condemn without evidence, punish without hearing ? Men do these things, of course, and women expect them. But you — I do not say you would be ashamed so to act — you cannot do it, any more than you can breathe the air of our snow-mountains."

" At all events, Eveena, I no more dare do it in your presence than I dare forswear the Faith we hold in common."

But whatever Eveena might exact or I concede, the distinction between the wife who commanded as much respect as affection, and the girls who could at best be pets or playthings, was apparent against our will in every detail of daily life and domestic intercourse. It was alike impossible to treat Eveena as a child and to rule Enva or Eirale as other than children. It was as unnatural to use the tone of command or rebuke to one for whom my unexpressed wishes were absolute law, as to observe the form of request or advice in directing or reproving those whose obedience depended on the con- sequences of rebellion. It only made matters worse that the distinction corresponded but too accurately to their several deserts. No faults could have been so irritating to Eveena's companions as her undeniable faultlessness.

The ludicrous aspect of my relation to the rest of the household was even more striking than I had expected. That I should find myself in the absurd position of a man entrusted with the direct personal government of half-a-dozen young ladies was even " more truly spoke than meant." One at least among them might singly have made in time a not unlovable wife, and all, per-

Life, Social and Domestic. 101

haps, might severally and separately have been reduced to conjugal complaisance. Collectively, they were, as Eveena had said, a set of school-girls, and school-girls used to stricter restraint and much sharper discipline than those of a French or Italian convent. They would have made life a burden to a vigorous Eng- lish schoolmistress, and imperilled the soul of any Lady- Abbess whose list of permissible penances ex- cluded the dark cell and the scourge. Fortunately for both parties, I had the advantage of governess and Superior in the natural awe which girls feel for the authority of manhood — till they have found out of what soft fibre men are made — and in the artificial fear inspired by domestic usage and tradition. For I was soon aware that even on its ridiculous side the relation was not to be trifled with. The simple indifference a man feels towards the escapades of girlhood was not applicable to women and wives, who yet lacked womanly sense and the feeling of conjugal duty. This serious aspect of their position soon contracted the indulgence naturally conceded to youth's heedlessness and animal spirits. These, displayed at first only in the energy and eagerness of their every movement within the narrow limits of conventional usage, broke all bounds when, after one or two half-timid, half-venturous ex- periments on my patience, they felt that they had, at least for the moment, exchanged the monotony, the mechanical routine, the stern repression of their life in the great Xurseries, not for the harsh household dis- cipline to which they naturally looked forward, but for the " loosened zone " which to them seemed to promise absolute liberty. When not immediately in my

102 Across the Zodiac.

presence or Eveena's, their keen enjoyment of a life so new, the sudden development of the brighter side of their nature under circumstances that gave play to tin; vigorous vitality of youth, gave as much pleasure to me as to themselves. But in contact with myself or Eveena they were women, and showed only the wrong side of the varied texture of womanhood. To the master they were slaves, each anxious to attract his notice, win his preference ; before the favourite, spiteful, envious of her and of each other, bitter, malicious, and false. Eor Eveena's sake, it was impossible to look on with indolent indifference on freaks of temper which, childish in the form they assumed, were envenomed by the deliberate dislike and unscrupulous cunning of jealous women.

But even on the childish side of their character and conduct, they soon displayed a determination to test 1 >y actual experiment the utmost extent of the liberty allowed, and the nature and sufficiency of its limits. Eunane was always the most audacious trespasser and representative rebel. Fortunately for her, the daring which had bewildered and exasperated feminine guar- dians rather amused and interested me, giving some variety and relief to the monotonous absurdity of the situation. Nothing in her conduct was more remark- able or more characteristic than the simplicity and good temper with which she generally accepted as of course the less agreeable consequences of her out- breaks ; unless it were the sort of natural dignity with which, when she so pleased, the game played out and its forfeit paid, the naughty child subsided into the lively but rational companion, and the woman simply ignored the scrapes of the school-girl.

Life, Social and Domestic. 103

As her character seemed to unfold, Eive's indivi- duality became as distinctly parted from the rest as Eunane's, though in an opposite direction. Compara- tively timid and indolent, without their fulness of life, she seemed to me little more than a child ; and she fell with apparent willingness into that position, accepting naturally its privileges and exemptions. She alone was never in the way, never vexatious or exacting. Con- tent with the notice that naturally fell to her share, she obtained the more. Never intruding between Eveena and myself, she alone was not wholly unwel- come to share our accidental privacy when, in the peri- style or the grounds, the others left us temporarily alone. On such occasions she would often draw near and crouch at my feet or by Eveena's side, curling her- self like a kitten upon the turf or among the cushions, often resting her little head upon Eveena's knee or mine ; generally silent, but never so silent as to seem to be a spy upon our conversation, rather as a favourite child privileged, in consideration of her quietude and her supposed harmlessness and inattention, to remain when others are excluded, and to hear much to which she is supposed not to listen. Having no special duties of her own in the household, she would wait upon and assist Eveena whenever the latter would accept her attendance. "When the whole party were assembled, it was her wont to choose her place not in the circle, still less at my side — Eveena's title to the post of honour on the left being uncontested, and Eunane generally occupying the cushions on my right. But Eive\ lying at our feet, would support herself on her arm between my knee and Eunane's, content to attract my hand to

104 si cross the Zodiac.

play with her curls or stroke her head. Under such encouragement she would creep on to my lap and rest there, but seldom took any part in conversation, satis- fied with the attention one pays half-consciously to a child. A word that dropped from Enva, however, on one occasion, obliged me to observe that it was in Eveena's absence that Eive always seemed most fully aware of her privileges and most lavish of her childlike caresses. The kind of notice and affection she obtained did not provoke the envy even of Leenoo or Eirale. She no more affected to imitate Eveena's absolute devo- tion than she ventured on Eunane's reckless petulance. She kept my interest alive by the faults of a spoiled child. Her freaks were always such as to demand im- mediate repression without provoking serious displea- sure, so that the temporary disgrace cost her little, and the subsequent reconciliation strengthened her hold on my heart. But with Eveena, or in her presence, Eive's waywardness was so suppressed or controlled that Eveena's perceptible coolness towards her — it was never coldness or unkindness — somewhat surprised me.

Eew Martialists, when wealthy enough to hand over the management of their property to others, care to in- terfere, or even to watch its cultivation. This, how- ever, to me was a subject of as much interest as any other of the many peculiarities of Martial society, com- merce, and industry, which it concerned me to investi- gate and understand ; and when not otherwise employed, I spent great part of my day in watching, and now and then directing, the work that went on during the whole of the sunlight, and not unfrequently during the night, upon my farm. Davilo, the superintendent, had en-

Life, Social and Domestic. 105

gaged no fewer than eight subordinates, who, with the assistance of the ambau, the carvee, and the electric machines, kept every portion of the ground in the most perfect state of culture. The most valuable part of the produce consisted of those farinaceous fruits, growing on trees from twenty to eighty feet in height, which form the principal element of Martial food. Between the tropics these trees yield ripe fruit twice a year, during a total period of about three of our months — perhaps for a hundred days. Various gourds, growing chiefly on canes, hanging from long flexile stalks that spring from the top of the stem at a height of from three to eight feet, yield juice which is employed partly in flavouring the various loaves and cakes into which the flour is made, partly in the numerous beverages (never allowed to ferment, and consequently requiring to be made fresh every day), of which the smallest Martial household has a greater variety than the most luxurious palace of the East. The best are made from hard-skinned fruits, whose whole pulp is liqui- fied by piercing the rind before the fruit is fully ripe, and closing the orifice with a wax-like substance, almost exactly according to a practice common in different parts of Asia. The drinks are made, of course, at home. The farinaceous fruits are sold to the confectioners, who take also a portion of the milk and all the meat sup- plied by the pastures. Many choice fruits grow on shrubs, ranging from the size of a large black currant tree to that of the smallest gooseberry bush. Vines growing along the ground bear clustering nuts, whose kernels are sometimes as hard as that of a cocoa-nut, sometimes almost as soft as butter. The latter with

VOL. II. H

106 Across the Zodiac.

the juicy fruits, are preserved if necessary for a whole year in storehouses dug in the ground and lined with concrete, in which, by chemical means, a temperature a little above the freezing-point is steadily maintained at very trivial cost. The number of dishes producible by the mixture of these various materials, with the occa- sional addition of meat, fish, and eggs, is enormous ; and it is only when some particular compound is in special favour with the master of the house that it makes its appearance more than perhaps once in ten days upon the same table. The invention of the con- fectioners is exquisite and inexhaustible ; and every table is supplied with a variety of dainties sufficient for a feast in the most hospitable and wealthy house- hold of Europe. Many of the smaller fruit-trees and shrubs yield two crops in the year. The vegetables, crisper, and of much more varied taste than the best Terrestrial salads, sometimes possessing a flavour as piquant as that of cinnamon or nutmeg, are gathered continuously from one end of the year to the other.

The vines, tough and fibrous, supply the best and strongest cordage used in Mars. For this purpose they are dried, stripped, combed, and put through an ela- borate process of manufacture, which, without weaken- ing the fibres, renders them smooth, and removes the knots in which they naturally abound. The twisted cord of the nut-vine is almost as strong as a metallic wire rope of half its measurement. There is another purpose for which these fibres in their natural state are employed. Simply dried and twisted, they form a scourge as terrible as the Eussian knout or African cow- hide, though of a different character — a scourge which,

Life, Social and Domestic. 107

even in its lightest form, reduces the wildest herd to instant order ; and which, as employed on criminals, is hardly less dreaded than that electric rack whereby Martial science inflicts on every nerve a graduated torture such as even ecclesiastical malignity has not invented on Earth — such as I certainly will not place in the hands of Terrestrial rulers.

All these crops are raised with marvellously little human labour, the whole work of ploughing and sowing being done by machinery, that of weeding and harvest- ing chiefly by the carvee. The ambau climb the trees and pick the fruit from the ends of the branches, which they are also taught to pinch in, so that none grow so long as to break with the weight of these creatures, as clever and agile as the smaller monkeys, but almost as large as an ordinary baboon. It must always be remembered that, size for size, and cccteris paribus, all bodies, animate and inanimate, on Mars weigh less than half as much as they would on Earth. Eunane's blunder about the carcard was not explained by any subsequent errors of the ambau or carvee, which always selected the ripe fruit with faultless skill, leaving the immature untouched, and throwing aside in small heaps to manure the ground the few that had been allowed to grow too ripe for use. The sums paid from time to time into my hands, received from the sales of produce, were far greater than I could possibly spend in gratifying any taste of my own ; and, as I presently found, the idea that the surplus might indulge those of the ladies never entered their minds.

Before we had been settled in our home for three days Eveena had made two requests which I was well

10S Across the Zodiac.

pleased to grant. First, she entreated that I would teach her one at least of the languages with which I was familiar — a task of whose extreme difficulty she had little idea. Compared with her native tongue, the complication and irregularities of the simplest language spoken on Earthare far more arbitrary and provoking than seems the most difficult of ancient or Oriental tongues to a Frenchman or Italian. In order to fulfil my promise that she should assist me in recording my observations and writing out my notes, I chose Latin. Unhappily for her, I found myself as impatient and unsuccessful as I was inexperienced in teaching ; and nothing but her ex- quisite gentleness and forbearance could have made the lessons otherwise than painful to us both. Well for me that the "right to govern wrong" was to her a simple truth — an inalienable marital privilege, to be met with that unqualified submission which must have shamed the worst temper into self-control. Eive on one occasion made a similar request ; but besides that I realised the convenience of a medium of communication under- stood by ourselves alone, I had no inclination to expose either my own temper or Eive's to the trial. Eveena's second request came naturally from one whose favourite amusement had been the raising and modification of flowers. She asked to be entrusted with the charge of the seeds I had brought from Earth, and to be per- mitted to form a bed in the peristyle for the purpose of the experiment. Though this disfigured the perfect arrangement of the garden, I was delighted to have so important and interesting a problem worked out by hands so skilful and so careful. I should probably have failed to rear a single plant, even had I been

Life, Social and Domestic. 109

familiar with those applications of electricity to the purpose which are so extensively employed in Mars. Eveena managed to produce specimens strangely altered, sometimes stunted, sometimes greatly im- proved, from about one-fourth of the seeds entrusted to her; and among those with which she was most brilliantly successful were some specimens of Turkish roses, the roses of the attar, which I had obtained at Stamboul. My admiration of her patience and plea- sure in her success deeply gratified her ; and it was a full reward for all her trouble when I suggested that she should send to her sister Zevle a small packet of each of the seeds with which she had succeeded. It happened, however, that the few rose seeds had all been planted ; and the flowers, though apparently perfect, produced no seed of their own, probably because they were not suited to the taste of the flower- birds, and Eveena somehow forgot or failed to employ the process of artificial fertilisation.

If anything could have fully reconciled my con- science to the household relations in which I was rather by weakness than by will inextricably entangled, it would have been the certainty that by the sacrifice Eveena had herself enforced on me, and which she persistently refused to recognise as such, she alone had suffered. True that I could not give, and could hardly affect for the wives bestowed on me by another's choice, even such love as the head of a Moslem house- hold may distribute among as many inmates. But to what I could call love they had never looked forward. But for the example daily presented before their own eyes they Avould no more have missed than they com-

1 10 Across the Zodiac.

prehendcd it. That they were happier than they had expected, far happier than they would have been in an ordinary home, happier certainly than in the schools they had quitted, I could not doubt, and they did not affect to deny. If my patience were not proof against vexations the more exasperating from their pettiness, and the sense of ridicule which constantly attached to them, I could read in the manner of most and understand from the words of Eunane, who seldom hesitated to speak her mind, whether its utterances were flattering or wounding, that she and her com- panions found me not only far more indulgent, but incomparably more just than they had been taught to hope a man could be. Of justice, indeed, as con- sisting in restraint on one's own temper and considera- tion for the temper of others, Martial manhood is incapable, or, at any rate, Martial womanhood never suspects its masters.

Moreover, though no longer blest with the spirits of youth, and finding little pleasure in what youth calls pleasure, I had escaped the kind of satiety that seems to attend lives more softly spent than mine had been ; and found a very real and unfading enjoyment in witnessing the keen enjoyment of these youthful natures in such liberty as could be accorded and such amusements as the life of this dull and practical world affords.

Among these, two at least are closely similar to the two favourite pleasures of European society. Music appears to have been carried, like most arts and sciences, to a point of mechanical perfection which, I should suppose, like much of the artificial accuracy

Life, Social and Domestic. 1 1 1

and ease which civilisation lias introduced, mars rather than enhances the natural gratification enjoyed by simpler ages and races. Almost deaf to music as distinguished from noise, I did not attempt to compre- hend the construction of Martial instruments or the nature of the concords they emitted. One only struck me with especial surprise by a peculiarity which, if I could not understand, I could not mistake. A number of variously coloured flames are made to synchronise with or actually emit a number of corresponding notes, dancing to, or, more properly, weaving a series of strangely combined movements in accord with the music, whose vibrations were directly and inseparably connected with their motion. But all music is the work of professional musicians, never the occupation of woman's leisure, never made more charming to the ear by its association with the movement of beloved hands or the tones of a cherished voice. Electric wires, connected with the vast buildings wherein instruments produce what sounds like fine choral singing as well as musical notes, enable the householder to turn on at pleasure music equal, I suppose, to the finest operatic performances or the grandest oratorio, and listen to it at leisure from the cushions of his own peristyle. This was a great though not wholly new delight to Eunane and most of her companions. Eor their sake only would Eveena ever have resorted to it, for though herself appreciating music not less highly, and educated to understand it much more thoroughly, than they, she could derive little gratification from that which was clearly incomprehensible if not disagreeable to me — could hardly enjoy a pleasure I could not share.

1 1 2 Across tlic Zodiac.

The theatre was a more prized and less common indulgence. It is little frequented by the elder Mar- tialists ; and not enjoying it themselves, they seldom sacrifice their hours to the enjoyment of their women. But it forms so important an aid to education, and tends so much to keep alive in the public memory impressions which policy will not permit to fade, that both from the State and from the younger portion of the community it receives an encouragement quite sufficient to reward the few who bestow their time and talent upon it. Great buildings, square or oblong in form, the stage placed at one end, the arched boxes or galleries from which the spectators look down thereon rising tier above and behind tier to the further ex- tremity, are constantly filled. There are no actors, and Martial feeling would hardly allow the appear- ance of women as actresses. But an art, somewhat analogous to, but infinitely surpassing, that displayed in the manipulation of the most skilfully constructed and most complicated magic lanterns, enables the conductors of the theatre to present upon the stage a truly living and moving picture of any scene they desire to exhibit. The figures appear perfectly real, move with perfect freedom, and seem to speak the sounds which, in fact, are given out by a gigantic hidden phonograph, into which the several parts have long ago been carefully spoken by male and female voices, the best suited to each character; and which, by the reversal of its motion, can repeat the original words almost for ever, with the original tone, accent, and expres- sion. The illusion is far more perfect than that ob- tained by all the resources of stage management and

Life, Social and Domestic. 1 1 3

all the skill of the actor's art in the best theatres of France. After the first novelty, the first surprise and wonder were exhausted, I must confess that these representations simply bored me, the more from their length and character. But even Eveena enjoyed them thoroughly, and my other companions prized an even- ing or afternoon thus spent above all other indulgences. A passage running along at the back of each tier admits the spectator to boxes so completely private as to satisfy the strictest requirements of Martial seclu- sion.

The favourite scenes represent the most striking incidents of Martial history, or realise the life, usages, and manners of ages long gone by, before science and invention had created the perfect but monotonous civilisation that now prevails. One of the most inte- resting performances I witnessed commenced with the exhibition of a striking scene, in which the union of all the various States that had up to that time divided the planet's surface, and occasionally waged war on one another, in the first Congress of the World, was realised in the exact reproduction of every detail which historic records have preserved. Afterwards was depicted the confusion, declining into barbarism and rapid degrada- tion, of the Communistic revolution, the secession of the Zveltau and their merely political adherents, the construction of their cities, fleets, and artillery, the terrible battles, in which the numbers of the Com- munists were hurled back or annihilated by the asphyx- iator and the lightning gun; and finally, the most remarkable scene in all Martial history, when the last representatives of the great Anarchy, squalid, miserable,

1 1 4 Across the Zodiac.

degraded, and debased in form and features, as well as indicating by their dress and appearance the utter ruin of art and industry under their rule, came into the presence of the chief ruler of the rising State — sur- rounded by all the splendour which the "magic of property," stimulating invention and fostering science, had created — to entreat admission into the realm of restored civilisation, and a share in the blessings they had so deliberately forfeited and so long striven to deny to others.

1 1

CHAPTER XXI.

PR I VA TE A UDIENCES.

I spent my days between mist and mist, according to the Martial saying, not infrequently in excursions more or less extensive and adventurous, in which I could but seldom ask Eveena's company, and did not care for any other. Comparatively courageous as she had learned to be, and free from all affectation of pretty feminine fear, Eveena could never realise the practical immunity from ordinary danger which a strength virtually double that I had enjoyed on Earth, and thorough familiarity with the dangers of travel, of mountaineering, and of the chase, afforded me. When, therefore, I ventured among the hills alone, followed the fishermen and watched their operations, sometimes in terribly rough weather, from the little open surface-boat which I could manage myself, I preferred to give her no definite idea of my intentions. Davilo, however, protested against my exposure to a peril of which Eveena was happily as yet unaware.

" If your intentions are never known beforehand," he said, " still your habit of going forth alone in places to which your steps might easily be dogged, where you might be shot from an ambush or drowned by a sudden attack from a submarine vessel, will soon be pretty generally understood, if, as I fear, a regular watch is set

1 1 6 Across the Zodiac.

upon your life. At least let me know what your inten- tions are before starting, and make your absences as irregular and sudden as possible. The less they are known beforehand, even in your own household, the better."

" Is it midnight still in the Council Chamber ? " I asked.

" Very nearly so. She who has told so much can tell us no more. The clue that placed her in mental rela- tions with the danger did not extend to its authorship. We have striven hard to find in every conceivable direc- tion some material key to the plot, some object which, having been in contact with the persons of those we suspect, probably at the time when their plans were arranged, might serve as a link between her thoughts and theirs ; but as yet unsuccessfully. Either her vision is darkened, or the connection we have sought to establish is wanting. But you know who is your unsparing personal enemy ; and, after the Sovereign himself, no man in this world is so powerful ; while the Sovereign himself is, owing to the restraints of his posi- tion, less active, less familiar with others, less acquainted with what goes on out of his own sight. Again I say we can avenge ; but against secret murder our powers only avail to deter. If we would save, it must be by the use of natural precautions."

What he said made me desirous of some conversation with Eveena before I started on a meditated visit to the Palace. If I could not tell her the whole truth, she knew something; and I thought it possible on this occasion so far to enlighten her as to consult with her how the secret of my intended journeys should in future

Private Audiences. 1 1 7

be kept. But I found no chance of speaking to her until, shortly before my departure, I wa3 called upon to decide one of the childish disputes which constantly disturbed my temper and comfort. Mere fleabites they were ; but fleas have often kept me awake a whole night in a Turkish caravanserai, and half-a-dozen mos- quitos inside an Indian tent have broken up the sleep earned on a long day's march or a sharply contested battlefield. I need only say that I extorted at last from Eveena a clear statement of the trifle at issue, which flatly contradicted those of the four participants in the squabble. She began to suggest a means of proving the truth, and they broke into angry clamour. Silencing them all peremptorily, I drew Eveena into my own chamber, and, when assured that we were un- heard, reproved her for proposing to support her own word by evidence.

" Do you think," I said, " that any possible proof would induce me to doubt you, or add anything to the assurance I derive from your word ? "

"But," she urged, "that cannot be just to others. They must feel it very hard that your love for me makes you take all I say for truth."

" Not my love, but my knowledge. ' Be not right- eous overmuch.' Don't forget that they Jcnoio the truth as well as you."

I would hear no more, and passed to the matter I had at heart. . . .

Earnestly, and in a sense sincerely, as upon my second audience I had thanked the Campta for his munificent gifts, no day passed that I would not thank- fully have renounced the wealth he had bestowed if I

1 1 8 Across the Zodiac.

could at the same time have renounced what was, in intention and according to Martial ideas, the most gracious and most remarkable of his favours. On the present occasion I thought for a moment that such renun- ciation might have been possible.

The Prince had, after our first interview, observed with regard to every point of my story on which I had been carefully silent a delicacy of reserve very unusual among Martialists, and quite unintelligible to his Court and officers. To-day the conversation in public turned again upon my voyage. Endo and another studiously directed it to the method of steering, and the intentional diminution of speed in my descent, corresponding to its gradual increase at the commencement of the journey — points at which they hoped to find some opening to the mystery of the motive force. The Prince relieved me from some embarrassment by requesting me as usual to attend him to his private cabinet.

He said : — " I have not, as you must be aware, pressed you to disclose a secret which, for some reason or other, you are evidently anxious to preserve. Of course the exclusive possession of a motive power so marvellous as that employed in your voyage is of almost incalculable pecuniary value, and it is perfectly right that you should use your own discretion with regard to the time and the terms of its communication."

" Pardon me," I interposed, " if I interrupt you, Prince, to prevent any misconception. It is not with a view to profit that I have carefully avoided giving any clue whatever to my secret. Your munificence would render it most ungrateful and unjust in me to haggle over the price of any service I could render you ; and I should

Private Audiences. 119

Le greedy indeed if I desired greater wealth than you have bestowed. If I may say so without offending, I earnestly wish that you would permit me, by resigning your gifts, to retain in my own eyes the right to keep my secret without seeming undutiful or unthankful."

" I have said," he replied, " that on that point you misconceive our respective positions. No one supposes that you are indebted to us for anything more than it was the duty of the Sovereign to give, as a mark of the universal admiration and respect, to our guest from another world ; still less could any imagine that on such a trifle could be founded any claim to a secret so in- valuable. You will offend me much and only if you ever again speak of yourself as bound by personal obli- gation to me or mine. But as we are wishful to buy, so I cannot understand any reluctance on your part to sell your secret on your own terms."

" I think, Prince," I replied, " that I have already asked you what you would think of a subject of your own, who should put such a power into the hands of enemies as formidable to you as you would be to the races of the Earth."

" And I thiuk," he rejoined with a smile, " that I reminded you how little my judgment would matter to one possessed of such a power. I have gathered from your conversation how easily we might eoncpier a world as far behind us in destructive powers as in general civilisation. But why should you object ? You can make your own terms both for yourself and for any of your race for whom you feel an especial interest."

" A traitor is none the less a despicable and loathsome wretch because his Prince cannot punish him. I am

1 20 Aci'oss the Zodiac.

bound by no direct tie of loyalty to any Terrestrial sovereign. I was born the subject of one of the greatest monarchs of the Earth ; I left his country at an early age, and my youth was passed in the service of less powerful rulers, to one at least of whom I long owed the same military allegiance that binds your guards and officers to yourself. But that obligation also is at an end. Nevertheless, I cannot but recognise that I owe a certain fealty to the race to which I belong, a duty to right and justice. Even if I thought, which 1 do not think, that the Earth would be better governed and its inhabitants happier under your rule, I should have no right to give them up to a conquest I know they would fiercely and righteously resist. If — pardon me for saying it — you, Prince, would commit no com- mon crime in assailing and slaughtering those who neither have wronged nor can wrong you, one of them- selves would be tenfold more guilty in sharing your enterprise."

" You shall ensure," he replied, " the good government of your own world as you will. You shall rule it with all the authority possessed by the Kegents under me, and by the laws which you think best suited to races very different from our own. You shall be there as great and absolute as I am here, paying only an obedience to me and my successors which, at so immense a dis- tance, can be little more than formal."

" Is it to acquire a merely formal power that a Prince like yourself would risk the lives of your own people, and sacrifice those of millions of another race ? "

" To tell you the truth/' lie replied, " I count on com- manding the expedition myself, and perhaps I care more

Private Audiences. 1 2 1

for the adventure than for its fruits. You will not expect me to be more chary of the lives of others than of my own ? "

" I understand, and as a soldier could share, perhaps, a feeling natural to a great, a capable, and an ambitious Prince. But alike as soldier and subject it is my duty to resist, not to aid, such an ambition. My life is at your disposal, but even to save my life I could not betray the lives of hundreds of millions and the future of a whole world."

" I fail to understand you fully," he said, abandoning with a sigh a hope that had evidently been the object of long and eager day-dreams. " But in no case would I try to force from you what you will not give or sell ; and if you speak sincerely — and I suppose you must do so, since I can see no motive but those you assign that could induce you to refuse my offer — I must believe in the existence of what I have heard of now and then but deemed incredible — men who are governed by care for other things than their own interests, who believe in right and wrong, and would rather suffer injustice than commit it."

" You may be sure, Prince," I replied, perhaps imprudently, " that there are such men in your own world, though they are perhaps among those who are least known and least likely to be seen at your Court."

" If you know them," he said, " you will render me no little service in bringing them to my knowledge."

" It is possible," I ventured to observe, " that their distinguishing excellences are connected with other distinctions which might render it a disservice to them

VOL. II. I

122 Across the Zodiac.

to indicate their peculiar character, I will not say to yourself, but to those around you."

" I hardly understand you," he rejoined. " Take, however, my assurance that nothing you say here shall, without your own consent, be used elsewhere. It is no light gratification, no trifling advantage to me, to find one man who has neither fear nor interest that can induce him to lie to me ; to whom I can speak, not as sovereign to subject, but as man to man, and of whose private conversation my courtiers and officials are not yet suspicious or jealous. You shall never repent any confidence you give to me."

My interest in and respect for the strange character so manifestly suited for, so intensely weary of, the grandest position that man could fill, increased with each successive interview. I never envied that greatness which seems to most men so enviable. The servitude of a constitutional King, so often a puppet in the hands of the worst and meanest of men — those who prostitute their powers as rulers of a State to their interests as chiefs of a faction — must seem pitiable to any rational manhood. But even the autocracy of the Sultan or the Czar seems ill to compensate the utter isolation of the throne ; the lonely grandeur of one who can hardly have a friend, since he can never have an equal, among those around him. I do not wonder that a tinge of inelancholo-mania is so often perceptible in the chiefs of that great House whose Oriental absolutism is only " tempered by assassination." But an Earthly sovereign may now and then meet his fellow-sovereigns, whether as friends or foes, on terms of frank hatred or loyal openness. His domestic relations, though never secure

Priva te A udiences. 1 2 3

unci simple as those of other men, may relieve him at times from the oppressive sense of his sublime solitude ; and to his wife, at any rate, he may for a few minutes or hours be the husband and not the king. But the absolute Euler of this lesser world had neither equal friends nor open foes, neither wife nor child. How natural then his weariness of his own life ; how inevit- able his impatient scorn of those to whom that life was devoted! A despot not even accountable to God — a Prince who, till he conversed with me, never knew that the universe contained his equal or his like — it spoke much, both for the natural strength and soundness of his intellect and for the excellence of his education, that he was so sane a man, so earnest, active, and just a ruler. His reign was signalised by a better police, a more even administration of justice, a greater efficiency, judgment, and energy in the execution of great works of public utility, than his realm had knowrn for a thousand years ; and his duty was done as diligently and conscientiously as if he had knowm that conscience was the voice of a supreme Sovereign, and duty the law of an unerring and unescapable Lawgiver. Alone among a race of utterly egotistical cowards, he had the courage of a soldier, and the principles, or at least the instincts, worthy of a Child of the Star. With him alone could I have felt a moment's security from savage attempts to extort by terror or by torture the secret I refused to sell ; and I believe that his generous absti- nence from such an attempt was as exasperating as it was incomprehensible to his advisers, and chiefly con- tributed to involve him in the vengeance which bailled greed and humbled personal pride had leagued to wreak

1 24 Across the Zodiac,

upon myself, as on those with whose welfare and safety my own were inextricably intertwined. It was a for- tunate, if not a providential, combination of circum- stances that compelled the enemies of the Star, primarily on my account, to interweave with their scheme of murderous persecution and private revenge an equally ruthless and atrocious treason against the throne ami person of their Monarch.

My audience had detained me longer than I had expected, and the evening mist had fairly closed in before I returned. Entering, not as usual through the grounds and the peristyle, but by the vestibule and my own chamber, and hidden by my