They had not suspected my name, it was clear, for my stature and garb were nothing out of the ordinary; but if my bodily strength and fighting power had been sufficient to raise me to a vice-royalty like that of Yucatan, and let me endure alive in that government throughout twenty hard-battling years, why, it was likely that this rabble of savages would see something that was new and admirable in the practice of arms before the crude weight of their numbers could drag me down. Nay, I did not even despair of winning free altogether. I must find me a weapon from those that came up to battle, with which I could write worthy signatures, and I must attempt no standing fights. Gods! but what a glow the prospect did send through me as I stood there waiting.
A vainer man, writing history, might have said that always, before everything else, he held in mind the greater interests before the less. But for me--I prefer to be honest, and own myself human. In my glee at that forthcoming fight--which promised to be the greatest and most furious I had known in all a long life of battling--I will confess that Atlantis and her differing policies were clean forgot. I should go out an unknown man from the little cell of a temple, I should do my work, and then, whether I took freedom with me, or whether I came down at last myself on a pile of slain, these people would guess without being told the name, that here was Deucalion. Gods! what a fight we would have made!
But the door did not open wide to give me space for my first rush. It creaked gratingly outwards on its pivots, and a slim hand and a white arm slipped inside, beckoning me to quietude. Here was some woman. The door creaked wider, and she came inside.
“Silence, or they will hear you, and remember. At present those who brought you here are killed, and unless by chance some one blunders into this robbed shrine, you will not be found.”
“Then, if that is so, let me go out and walk amongst these people as one of themselves.”
“But, Nais, I am not known here. I am merely a man in very plain and mud-stained robe. I should be in no ways remarkable.”
A smile twitched her face. “My lord,” she said, “wears no beard; and his is the only clean chin in the camp.”