ot done before since I rode away after
killing Deleroy with the sword Wave-Flame, and I wondered why I had been
born, and almost hoped that soon I might die and go to seek the reason.

Back into the litter I crept and there hid my face and wept like a
child. Truly I, the prosperous merchant of London town who might have
lived to become its mayor and magistrate and win nobility, was now an
outcast adventurer of the humblest. Well, so God had decreed, and there
was no more to say.

That night we encamped upon a hilltop past which rushed a river in the
vale below and were troubled with heat and insects that hummed and bit,
for to these as yet I was not accustomed, and ate of the food that we
had brought with us, dried flesh and corn.

Next morning with the light we started on again, up and down mountains
and through more forests, following the course of the river and the
shores of a lake. So it went on until on the third evening from high
land we saw the sea beneath us, a different sea from that which we had
left, for it seemed that we had been crossing an isthmus, not so wide
but that if any had the skill, a canal might be cut across it joining
those two great seas.

Now it was that our real travels began, for here, after staring at the
stars and brooding apart for a long while, Kari turned southwards. With
this I had nothing to do who did not greatly care which way he turned.
Nor did he speak to me of the matter, except to say that his god and
such memory as remained to him through his time of madness told him that
the land of his people lay towards the south, though very far away.

So southwards we went, following paths through the forests with the
ocean on our right hand. After a week of this wearisome marching we came
to another tribe of natives of whose talk those with us could understand
enough to tell them our story. Indeed the rumour that a white god
had appeared in the land out of the sea had already reached them, and
therefore they were prepared to worship me. Here our people left us,
saying that they dared not go further from their own country.

The scene of the departure was strange, since every one of them came and
rubbed his forehead in the dust before me and then went away, walking
backwards and bowing. Still their going did not make a great difference
to us, since the new tribe was much as the old one, though if anything,
rather less clothed and more dirty. Also it accepted me as a god without
questi