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When they brought her up here from the boats to dry her wet clothes, she cried and called in her grief for just such a one as you, saying he alone who struck down our men at her feast could rescue her " "What! Heru here in this room but yesterday! How did she look? Was she hurt? How had they treated her?" My eagerness gave me away.
But Heru was not there and little I cared for twittering finches or sighing damsels. With hasty feet I rushed down the hall out into the cool, sweet air of the planet morning. There I met one whom I knew, and he told me he had been among the crowd and had heard the woodmen had gone no farther than the river gate, that Heru was with them beyond a doubt. I would not listen to more. "Good!"
I remember seeing him there on hands and knees, and then the liquor I had had would not be denied. In vain I drew my hands across my drooping eyelids, in vain I tried to master my knees that knocked together. The spell of the love-drink that Heru, blushing, had held to my lips was on me.
It was a moment of the keenest suspense, and just when it was at its height there came a strange sound of hurrying feet behind the outermost crowd, a murmur such as a great pack of wolves might make rushing through snow, while a soft long wail went up from the darkness. Whether Heru understood it or not I cannot say, but she hesitated a moment, then swept the cloth from the orb of her fate.
I shouted hoarsely, reeling back towards the palace, "Heru, 'tis well; the worst is past!" But the little princess was unconscious, and at her feet was poor Si, quite dead, still reclining with her head in her hands just as I had left her. Then my own senses gave out, and dropping down by them I remembered no more.
This was reassuring, but as to recovering the lady, that was another matter over which the good woman shook her head. It was ill coming between Ar-hap and his tribute, she said; still, if I wanted to see Heru once again, this was my opportunity, and, for the rest, that chance, which often favours the enamoured, must be my help.
"To leave out all about Heru I don't like that part at all." This with the prettiest little pout. "But, Polly dear, see how important she was to the narrative. I cannot quite do that." "Then you will say as little as you can about her?" "No more than the story compels me to." "And you are quite sure you like me much the best, and will not go after her again?" "Quite sure."
Every now and then the heavy clouds parted, changing the gloom to sudden fiery daylight as the great red eye in the west looked upon us through the crevice, and, taking advantage of those gleams, I would reel across to where, under a spout leading from a dried rivulet, I had placed a cup to collect the slow and tepid drops that were all now coming down the reed for Heru.
This latter was careening over as a dusky group of men lifted aboard to a heap of tumbled silks and stuffs in the stern such a sweet piece of insensible merchandise as no man, I at least of all, could mistake. It was Heru herself, and the rogues were ladling her on board like so much sandal-wood or cotton sheeting.
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.
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