Our sails were set upon our homeward voyage, and across the gently undulating sea I watched their mountains sinking in the west. That country, which long ago I had been to in my dreams, had beauty even in reality. But now this flowery interlude was past, and I must again take up the Crook and Flail.
Ptah-kefer and I were sitting together on the deck, watching the silver furrow our ship was ploughing through the smooth water. He was wrapped in his cloak, for wind is not warming to old blood. I knew he was in the mood when his thought turned easily to words. And I asked him whether he was sorry to leave Minoas, and what he thought of these people whose lives we had shared for two months. He pretended to speak seriously, but there was laughter in his eyes as he said, “I fear the high-priest of Minoas has little respect for my double feather, for he thinks me a prodigious liar. He is a man of such small experience that not only does he fail to understand the complexities of the lands beyond the Earth, but, I suspect, he doubts whether such places exist. He treated me with the confidence of two mountebanks who would share the secrets of each other’s tricks; and when he questioned me of how I deluded my people and I told him I tried to end their delusions and not create them, in spite of his politeness I knew that he thought my sincerity the deepest guile. He might have been a conjurer, who, having told another how he could make a live quail-chick seem to grow out of a man’s ear, is naturally indignant because his fellow will not tell him how he makes a figurine turn into a bunch of feathers and three pomegranates.
“And I fear he thinks the priests of Kam emasculate, for he told me, in all kindliness, of a young woman of whose discretion he was sure, and who would be honoured to lie with a fellow-priest of his; and when I refused his offer, he gave me a little flask of yellow liquid, which he assured me would make even an old man as lusty as a ram. He told me that I should not take my vows of chastity so seriously, and that it was the duty of wise men such as we to propagate our kind—of course, discreetly. And when I assured him that I had taken no vows of chastity, and that in Kam we held that wisdom was not the fruit of virginity, he thought I but tried to cloak my impotence—and pitied me!
“Then he questioned me about my riches and about my lands. And I told him that in the palace I had two rooms, one where I slept and one where I kept the few things that I needed. But he would not believe that I had no vast hoarded wealth, and when I told him I had no need of it, he asked whether our priests were in such disrespect that none made sacrifice before our gods. I told him that our people gave a twelfth part of all the things they had in every year to the temple, as a gift. And he said, ‘And you a high-priest, and you are poor? I thought Kam was called the Land of Gold’. I told him the Land of Gold was to the south, but that much of this yellow metal was in Kam, and many other things that barter highly. And I explained how our tribute was used.
“I fear that he had made me impatient. For when he asked me what I thought of the ceremony at his temple, I answered, ‘I thought the singing was magnificent’. And as I said it, I regretted that I should have so insulted my host. But he was delighted by my words, and he said that the singers were far sweeter than when he first took office, and more people came to his temple than to any other in the country because of it, and the number of tribute bulls had multiplied exceedingly.
“Surely they are a strange people! I felt as unfamiliar as if I were living among beautiful monkeys and had forgotten how to swing by my tail. When I spoke the truth to them, they thought me a liar; and when I told them of wisdom, they thought me a fool; and when of my impatience I insulted them, they took it as a compliment.”