and, through lack of these precautions, a life's earnings may very well
be lost in a dozen hours."

"I have no fear for mine," I said coldly.

"Of course not, because you know me to be your friend. But had another
man been appointed to this vice-royalty, you might have been sadly
shorn, Deucalion. It is not many fellows who can resist a snug hoard
ready and waiting in the very coffers they have come to line."

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

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

"The Gods will choose my fate."

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

"We shall not agree on this. You have the power now, and can employ it
as you choose. If I thought it would be of any use, I should like to