The Lost Continent quotes

Tatho shrugged his shoulders. “I acted only according to mine education.

At home, a loose tongue makes a loose head, and there are those whose trade it is to carry tales.

Still, what I say is this: The throne shakes, and Phorenice sees the need of sturdy props. So she has sent this proclamation.”

Its murderous tusks were gilded, its hairy neck was garlanded with flowers, and it trod on in the procession as though assisting at such pageantry was the beginning and end of its existence.

Its tameness seemed a fitting symbol of the masterful strength of this new ruler of Atlantis.

Simultaneously with the mammoth, there came into sight that other and greater wonder, the mammoth’s mistress, the Empress Phorenice. The beast took my eye at the first, from its very uncouth hugeness, from its show of savage power restrained;

She was clearly summing me up. I was frankly doing the like by her.

Gods! but those few short seconds made me see a woman such as I never imagined could have lived.

I know I have placed it on record earlier in this writing that, during all the days of a long official life, women have had no influence over me.

… these pressing attentions of theirs something of an impertinence, I set them to beat one another as a punishment, promising that if they did not do it with thoroughness, I would hand them on to the brander to be marked with stripes which would endure.

It is strange, but a common menial can often surpass even a rebellious general in power of ruffling one.

I had seen many strange sights that day, and undergone many new sensations; but of all the things which came to my notice, Phorenice’s manner of summoning the guests to her feast surprised me most. Nay, it did more; it shocked me profoundly;

It was the portent served out yearly by the chiefs of the Priests’ Clan on the Sacred Mountain, when they bade all the world take count of their sins.

It was the sacred reminder that from roaring, raging fire, and from the agony of monstrous earth tremors, man had been born, and that by these same agencies he would eventually be swallowed up⁠—he and the sins within his breast.

And here the Empress was prostituting its solemnities into a mere call to gluttony, and sign for ribald laughter and sensuous display.

Indeed, when Phorenice herself appeared, and all sent up their cries and made lawful obeisance, there was the same artificiality in the welcome. They meant well enough, it is true; but this was the new fashion.

Heartiness had come to be accounted a barbarism by this new culture.

A pair of posturing, smirking chamberlains took me in charge, and ushered me with their flimsy golden wands to the dais at the farther end. It appeared that I was to sit on Phorenice’s divan, and eat my meat out of her dish.

“You still keep to the old austere teachings,” she said.

“Our newer code bids us enjoy life first, and order other things so as not to meddle with our more immediate pleasure.”

And so the feast went on, the guests practising their gluttonies and their absurdities, and the guards standing to their arms round the circuit of the walls as motionless and as stern as the statues carven in the white stone beyond them.

I would have you remember that I was as firm on the throne of Atlantis as this pyramid stands upon its base when your worn-out priests came up to give their tottering benediction.”

The old man waved aside her interruption.

“Hear me out,” he said. “I am here with no trivial message. There is nothing paltry about the threat I can throw at you, Phorenice.

Not a soldier amongst the guards stepped from his rank. The place was hung in a terrible silence. It seemed as though no one within the hall dared so much as to draw a breath. All felt that the very air was big with fate.

Phorenice, with her head crouched forward, looked from one group to another.

Her face was working. “Have I no true servants,” she asked, “amongst all you pretty lip-servers?”

Phorenice glowered on the feasters for a while longer in silent fury, but saying no further word; and then her eyes turned on me, though softened somewhat.

“You may be an honest man, Deucalion,” she said, at length, “but you are a monstrous cold one. I wonder when you will thaw?”

And here she smiled. “I think it will be soon. But for now I bid you farewell. In the morning we will take this country by the shoulders, and see it in some new order.”

“That was an ungrateful blow,” I said. “But for my hand you’d have slipped and be the sport of a tiger’s paw this minute.”

“Oh, I must kill someone,” she panted, “before I am killed myself.”

“There will be time enough to think upon that some other day; but for now you are far enough off meeting further harm.”

A smile twitched her face.

“My lord,” she said, “wears no beard; and his is the only clean chin in the camp.”

I joined in her laugh. “A pest on my want of foppishness then. But I am forgetting somewhat. It comes to my mind that we still have unfinished that small discussion of ours concerning the length of my poor life.

And so we waited, sitting there together on that pavement so long unkissed by worshippers, and it was little enough we said aloud.

But there can be good companionship without sentences of talk.

But as the hours drew on, the night began to grow less quiet. From the distance someone began to blow on a horn or a shell, sending forth a harsh raucous note incessantly.

Still I could not help letting my thoughts travel with a grim gloating over the fine mound of dead I should build before these ragged, unskilled rebels pulled me down. And it was inevitable this should be so.

For of all the emotions that can ferment in the human heart, the joy of strife is keenest, and none but an old fighter, face to face with what must necessarily be his final battle, can tell how deep this lust is embroidered into the very foundations of his being.

But for the time Zaemon did not see me, being too much wrapped in his outcry, and so I was free to listen to the burning words which he spread around him, and to determine their effect on the hearers.

She turned on me with a hot look.

“A woman can change her mind, my lord. But it becomes you little to remind her of her fickleness.”

A man in the press beside me wrenched round with an effort, and stared at me searchingly through the darkness. “Oh!” he said. “A shaved chin. Who are you, friend, that you should cut a beard instead of curling it?

All were weaponed.

The naked carried arms in the hopes of meeting someone whom they could overcome and rob; those that had a possession walked ready to do a battle for its ownership.

There was no security, no trust;

The girl bowed her shoulders, and went away cowed, and Phorenice turned to me. “My lord,” she said,

“I am like a young bird in the nest that has suddenly found its wings. Wings have so many uses that I am curious to try them all.”

“May each new flight they take be for the good of Atlantis.”

The prisoner moistened her lips.

“I am a maiden, and I have a maiden’s modesty. I will die as you choose, but I will not do this indecency.”

“Well, I am a maiden too, and though because I am Empress also, questions of State have to stand before questions of my private modesty, I can have a sympathy for yours—although in truth it did not obtrude unduly when you were my fan-girl, Nais.

And as for that other woman who should have filled my mind, I will confess that the stress of the moment, and the fury of the engagement, had driven both her and her strait completely out beyond the marches of my memory.

Of such frail stuff are we made, even those of us who esteem ourselves the strongest.

Now it is a temptation few men born to the sword can resist, to throw themselves heart and soul into a fight for a fight’s sake, and it seems that women can be bitten with the same fierce infection. The attack slackened and halted.

Then again she kissed her own fingers and stretched them up, and I took up the virtue of that parting kiss on my fingertips and pressed it sacredly to my lips.

“Living, sleeping, or dead, always my darling,” she whispered.

And then, before I could answer, she whispered again: “Go, they are coming for me.”

Ylga’s breath was beginning to come in laboured pants. But when I offered to take her arm, and help her, as some return against what she had done for me, she repulsed me rudely enough.

“I am no poor weakling,” said she, “if that is your only reason for wanting to touch me.”

Presently, however, we came out through the trees, and the roughest part of our journey was done. We saw the ship riding to her anchors in shore a mile away, and a weird enough object she was under the faint starlight.

But quickly he got grave again.

Laughter and Zaemon were very rare playmates.

“Well, get you to bed, my King, and leave me to go into the Ark of Mysteries and prepare there with another of the Three the things that must be done.

… not bring them instant relief, they fell to yammering out the old confessions of the faith which they had learned in childhood, turning in this hour of their dreadful need to those old Gods, which, through so many dishonourable years, they had spurned and deserted.

It was a curious criticism on the balance of their real religion, if one had cared to make it.

Louder grew the crash of falling masonry;

All was being ordered by the Three who were Their trusted servants, in Their good time.

The work of the Gods may be done slowly, but it is done exceeding sure.

But at last, when all the people of the city were numb with terror, and incapable of further emotion (save only for Phorenice who still had nerve enough to show no concern), what had been threatened came to pass.

The most venomous part of the shaking was done, and no more buildings fell, but enough lay sprawled over the roadway to make walking into a climb, and the sweat rolled from me as I laboured along my way.

There was no difficulty about passing the gate. There was no gate. There was no wall.

The Gods had driven their plough through it, and it lay flat, and proud Atlantis stood as defenceless as the open country.

“

How we poor women are made the chattels of you men!

But, for myself, I seem to like the traffic well enough. You should not have let me stand in the way of Atlantis’ good, Deucalion.

“You are as you were, dear, that first night I saw you—the most beautiful woman in all the world.”

“I am pleased you like me,” she said, and took the cup of broth I offered her.

“My hair seems to have grown; but it needs combing, sadly. I had a fancy, dear, once, that you liked ruddy hair best, and not a plain brown.”

A change of robe also I found there and took it instead of my squalid rags.

If a man is in truth a king, he owes these things to the dignity of his office.

But, if the din of the fighting was any guide, mine was a narrowing kingdom.

But Phorenice stood on a spur of the rock below them urging on the charges, and with an insane valour company after company marched up to hurl themselves hopelessly against the defences.

They had no machines to batter the massive gates, and their attack was as pathetically useless as that of a child who hammers against a wall with an orange;

and meanwhile the terrible stones from above mowed them down remorselessly.

In her lust for this final conquest, she was minded to pour out troops till she had filled up the passes with the slain, so that at last she might march on to a level fight over the bridge of their poor bodies.

It was no part of Phorenice’s mood ever to count the cost.

She set down the object which was to be gained, and it was her policy that the people of Atlantis were there to gain it for her.

I did not see the fight, but I know it was good, from the time which passed before Phorenice’s hordes broke out on to the crest of the Mountain.

They died hard, that last remnant of the lesser Priests of Atlantis.

With a sour enough feeling I went up to the head of the pass, and then through the groves, and between the temples and colleges and houses which stood on the upper slopes of the Sacred Mountain, till I reached that boundary, beyond which in …