nd there seems little chance of our finding agreement. You
have changed, Tatho, with the years, and perhaps I have changed also.
These alterations creep imperceptibly into one's being as time advances.
Let us part now, and, forgetting these present differences, remember
only our friendship of twenty years agone. That for me, at any rate, has
always had a pleasant savour when called up into the memory."

Tatho bowed his head. "So be it," he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So there remained to me in my day, hours to gaze (if I would) upon the
quays, the harbours, the palaces, and the pyramids of the splendid city
before me which I had seen grow stone by stone