"It will matter something if I take you at your word. Come, friend Purple-jerkin, will you take the council with your legs and run while there is yet time, or stand up to be thrown at?""I stand here immoveable in the confidence of my initia-tion.""Then, by thunder, I will initiate you into the mysteries of a javelin-end, and your blood be on your head."The Martians were all craning their necks in hushed eagerness as I turned to the casting-place, and, poising the javelin, faced the magician. Would he run at the last moment? I half hoped so; for a minute I gave him the chance, then, as he showed no sign of wavering, I drew my hand back, shook the javelin back till it bent like a reed, and hurled it at him.
The Martians' heads turned as though all on one pivot as the spear sped through the air, expecting no doubt to see it recoil as others had done. But it took him full in the centre of his chest, and with a wild wave of arms and a flutter of purple raiment sent him backwards, and down, and over and over in a shapeless heap of limbs and flying raiment, while a low murmur of awed surprise rose from the spectators. They crowded round him in a dense ring, as An came flitting to me with a startled face.
"Oh, stranger," she burst out, "you have surely killed him!" but more astounded I had broken down his guard than grieved at his injury.
"No," I answered smilingly; "a sore chest he may have tomorrow, but dead he is not, for I turned the lance-point back as I spun it, and it was the butt-end I threw at him!""It was none the less wonderful; I thought you were a common man, a prince mayhap, come but from over the hills, but now something tells me you are more than that," and she lapsed into thoughtful silence for a time.
Neither of us were wishful to go back amongst those who were raising the bruised magician to his legs, but wandered away instead through the deepening twilight towards the city over meadows whose damp, soft fragrance loaded the air with sleepy pleasure, neither of us saying a word till the dusk deepened and the quick night descended, while we came amongst the gardened houses, the thousand lights of an unreal city rising like a jewelled bank before us, and there An said she would leave me for a time, meet-ing me again in the palace square later on, "To see Princess Heru read the destinies of the year.""What!" I exclaimed, "more magic? I have been brought up on more substantial mental stuff than this.""Nevertheless, I would advise you to come to the square,"persisted my companion. "It affects us all, and--who knows?
--may affect you more than any."
Therein poor An was unconsciously wearing the cloak of prophesy herself, and, shrugging my shoulders good-humouredly, I kissed her chin, little realising, as I let her fingers slip from mine, that I should see her no more.
Turning back alone, through the city, through ways twinkling with myriad lights as little lamps began to blink out amongst garlands and flower-decked booths on every hand, I walked on, lost in varying thoughts, until, fairly tired and hungry, I found myself outside a stall where many Martians stood eating and drinking to their hearts'
content. I was known to none of them, and, forgetting past experience, was looking on rather enviously, when there came a touch upon my arm, and--"Are you hungry, sir?" asked a bystander.
"Ay," I said, "hungry, good friend, and with all the zest which an empty purse lends to that condition.""Then here is what you need, sir, even from here the wine smells good, and the fried fruit would make a mouse's eye twinkle. Why do you wait?""Why wait? Why, because though the rich man's dinner goes in at his mouth, the poor man must often be content to dine through his nose. I tell you I have nothing to get me a meal with."The stranger seemed to speculate on this for a time, and then he said, "I cannot fathom your meaning, sir.
Buying and selling, gold and money, all these have no mean-ing to me. Surely the twin blessings of an appetite and food abundant ready and free before you are enough.""What! free is it--free like the breakfast served out this morning?""Why, of course," said the youth, with mild depreci-ation; "everything here is free. Everything is his who will take it, without exception. What else is the good of a co-herent society and a Government if it cannot provide you with so rudimentary a thing as a meal?"Whereat joyfully I undid my belt, and, without nicely examining the argument, marched into the booth, and there put Martian hospitality to the test, eating and drinking, but this time with growing wisdom, till I was a new man, and then, paying my leaving with a wave of the hand to the yellow-girted one who dispensed the common provender, I sauntered on again, caring little or nothing which way the road went, and soon across the current of my medita-tions a peal of laughter broke, accompanied by the piping of a flute somewhere close at hand, and the next minute I found myself amid a ring of light-hearted roisterers who were linking hands for a dance to the music a curly-headed fellow was ****** close by.
