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Updated: May 12, 2025
It seemed an age since the fisherman had gone, but presently the sound of voices interrupted the sea's murmur. Cautiously stealing a glance through a chink imagine my feelings on perceiving half a dozen of Ar-hap's soldiers coming down the beach straight towards us! Then my heart was bitter within me, and I tasted of defeat, even with Heru in my arms.
Meanwhile it turned hot with a supernatural, heavy sort of heat altogether, I overheard passersby exclaiming, out of the common, and after wandering for an hour through gardens and endless streets of thatched huts, I was glad enough to throw myself down in the shadow of some trees on the outskirts of the great central pile of buildings, a whole village in itself of beam-built towers and dwelling-place, suggesting by its superior size that it might actually be Ar-hap's palace.
When she saw me stride into the hall she rose swiftly from Ar-hap's side, clasped her pretty hands, and giving a cry of joy would have rushed towards me, but the king laid a mighty paw upon her, under which she subsided with a shiver as though the touch had blanched all the life within. "Good morning, your majesty," I said, walking boldly up to the lower step of the dais.
Force was out of the question; stealth was utterly impractical; as for cajolery, apparently the sole remaining means of winning back the Princess why, one might as well try the persuasion of a penny flute upon a hungry eagle as seek to rouse Ar-hap's sympathies for bereaved Hath in that way.
Secretary for the Navy, or on the way to get a senator to push a new patent medicine for me, I rejoined my guide outside, and together we crossed the wide courtyard, entered the great log-built portals of Ar-hap's house, and immediately afterwards found ourselves in a vast hall dimly lit by rays coming in through square spaces under the eaves, and crowded on both sides with guards, courtiers, and supplicants.
First I learned that Ar-hap's men, with the abducted Heru, had passed through this very port two days before, and by this time were probably in the main town, which, it appeared, was only about twelve hours' rowing up the salt-water estuary outside. Here was news! Heru, the prize and object of my wild adventure, close at hand and well.
Besides, I am come to fetch her back, if it may be, and that spoils the look of sacrifice." "You to fetch her back, and from Ar-hap's arms? My word, Sir Spirit, you must know some potent charms; or, what is less likely, my countrymen must have amazingly improved in pluck since I left them. Have you a great army at hand?"
I could not, however, trust his mood completely, and as I did not want to end so jovial a friendship with a quarrel, I hurried through our breakfast of dry bread, with hard-boiled lizard eggs, and then settling my reckoning with one of the brass buttons from my coat, which he immediately threaded, with every evidence of extreme gratification, on a string of trinkets hanging round his neck, asked him the way to Ar-hap's capital.
Si also did me another service, presenting me to the porter's wife, who kept a kind of boarding-house at the gates of Ar-hap's palace for gentlemen and ladies with grievances.
As Ar-hap's men came shouting over the barricade I threw myself down upon that incredible carpet and cried from the bottom of my heart, "I wish I wish I were in New York!" Yes! A moment of thrilling suspense and then the corners lifted as though a strong breeze were playing upon them. Another moment and they had curled over like an incoming surge.
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