three Polos, who for
twenty-four years had been wandering in the East, and who, when they set
out on their homeward journey, a journey beset with untold difficulties
and dangers, took the precaution to conceal in their garments, as above
told, the wealth which they had accumulated while they were at the court
of the Great Khan of Tartary. It reads like a romance, a story out of
"The Arabian Nights' Entertainments." But it is all true, and the
archives of Venice corroborate pretty nearly all the details herein set
forth. Indeed, as a prophet is not without honor save in his own country
and among his own kindred, it must be said that the later generation of
Venetians found less difficulty in believing the tales of the three
travellers than did those who first heard them. In telling these tales,
they had frequent occasion to use the word "millions," a word not then
common among the Venetians, as to say that the Great Khan had revenues
amounting to ten or fifteen _millions_ of gold, and so on. And the
people gave Marco, who seems to have been the story-teller of the party,
the nickname of Messer Marco Millioni. Curiously enough, this name
appears in the public records of old Venice.

Of the final exit of the elders of the Polo family, Nicolo and Maffeo,
we have no trustworthy account. As they were well stricken in years when
they returned from their long sojourn in Cathay, we may suppose that
they did not live long after their return to Venice. But the younger
Marco had a busy and stirring life. At that time the republics of Venice
and Genoa were rivals for the ruling of the seas and the monopoly of
maritime trade everywhere. A Venetian galley could not meet one from
Genoa without a fight, and the fleets of the two states were continually
at war.

Marco, being one of the representatives of the noble Venetian families
who were required to come to the support of the state with at least one
galley, entered the naval service of Venice in command of a war galley,
and was engaged in the great battle between Venice and Genoa near
Curzola, off the Dalmatian coast, in 1298, three years after his return
from Cathay. The Venetians were beaten ignominiously, and 7,000 of them
were taken prisoners and carried to Genoa. It was a lucky thing for the
world that Marco Polo was thus put into enforced idleness, and that he
had for a companion in confinement an educated gentleman, one
Rusticiano, of Pisa. Otherwise, most likely we never woul