we have come to speak with your Kings in the Temple of
Poseidon--does that word sound right?' he whispered anxiously.

'Quite,' said the learned gentleman. 'It's very odd I can understand
what you say to them, but not what they say to you.'

'The Queen of Babylon found that too,' said Cyril; 'it's part of the
magic.'

'Oh, what a dream!' said the learned gentleman.

The white-robed priest had been joined by others, and all were bowing
low.

'Enter,' he said, 'enter, Children of the Sun, with your High Ji-jimmy.'

In an inner courtyard stood the Temple--all of silver, with gold
pinnacles and doors, and twenty enormous statues in bright gold of men
and women. Also an immense pillar of the other precious yellow metal.

They went through the doors, and the priest led them up a stair into a
gallery from which they could look down on to the glorious place.

'The ten Kings are even now choosing the bull. It is not lawful for me
to behold,' said the priest, and fell face downward on the floor outside
the gallery. The children looked down.

The roof was of ivory adorned with the three precious metals, and the
walls were lined with the favourite oricalchum.

At the far end of the Temple was a statue group, the like of which no
one living has ever seen.

It was of gold, and the head of the chief figure reached to the roof.
That figure was Poseidon, the Father of the City. He stood in a great
chariot drawn by six enormous horses, and round about it were a hundred
mermaids riding on dolphins.

Ten men, splendidly dressed and armed only with sticks and ropes, were
trying to capture one of some fifteen bulls who ran this way and that
about the floor of the Temple. The children held their breath, for the
bulls looked dangerous, and the great horned heads were swinging more
and more wildly.

Anthea did not like looking at the bulls. She looked about the gallery,
and noticed that another staircase led up from it to a still higher
storey; also that a door led out into the open air, where there seemed
to be a balcony.

So that when a shout went up and Robert whispered, 'Got him,' and she
looked down and saw the herd of bulls being driven out of the Temple by
whips, and the ten Kings following, one of them spurring with his
stick a black bull that writhed and fought in the grip of a lasso, she
answered the boy's agitated, 'Now we shan't see anything more,' with--

'Yes we can, there's an outside balcony.'

So they crowde