peed and cleverness, that no fewer
than seven of these agile fellows came through scathless with their
tidings, and of the others it was said that quite three were known to
have survived.

Still, about this we had no means of knowing at the time, and pushed
on in fancy that our coming was quite unheralded. The slaves on the
galley's row-banks were for the most part savages from Europe, and the
smell of them was so offensive that the voyage lost all its pleasures;
and as, moreover, the wind carried with it an infinite abundance of
small grit from some erupting fire mountain, we were anxious to linger
as little as possible. Besides, if I may confess to such a thing without
being unduly degraded, although by my priestly training I had been
taught stoicism, and knew that all the future was in the hands of the
Gods, I was frailly human still to have a very vast curiosity as to
what would be the form of my own reception at Atlantis. I could imagine
myself taken a formal prisoner on landing, and set on a formal trial
to answer for my cure of the colony of Yucatan; I could imagine myself
stepping ashore unknown and unnoticed, and after a due lapse, being
sent for by the Empress to take up new duties; but the manner of my real
welcome was a thing I did not even guess at.

We came in sight of the peak of the sacred mountain, with its glare of
eternal fires which stand behind the city, one morning with the day's
break, and the whips of the boatswains cracked more vehemently, so that
those offensive slaves should give the galley a final spurt. The wind
was adverse, and no sail could be spread, but under oars alone we made
a pretty pace, and the sides of the sacred mountain grew longer, and
presently the peaks of the pyramids in the city, the towers of the
higher buildings, began to show themselves as though they floated upon
the gleaming water. It was twenty years since I had seen Atlantis
last, and my heart glowed with the thought of treading again upon her
paving-stones.

The splendid city grew out of the sea as we approached, and to every
throb of the oars, the shores leaped nearer. I saw the temple where I
had been admitted first to manhood; I saw the pyramid in whose heart
I had been initiated to the small mysteries; and then (as the lesser
objects became discernible) I made out the house where a father and a
mother had reared me, and my eyes became dim as the memories rose.

We drew up outside the white walls of the harbo