“The King of the Ethiopians!” I said.  “Oh! friend Bes, I pray you to remember that we no longer stand in yonder court lying for our lives.”

“I speak no lie, O Shabaka, I before you am King of the Ethiopians.  Moreover, I laid that kingship down of my own will and should I so desire, can take it up again when I will, since the Ethiopians are faithful to their kings.”

“Why?” I asked, astonished.

“Master, for so I will still call you who am not yet upon the land of Egypt where you have promised me freedom, do you remember anything strange about the people of that tribe from among whom you and the Egyptian soldiers captured me by surprise, because they wished to drive you and your following from their country?”

Now I thought and answered,

“Yes, one thing.  I saw no women in their camp, nor any sign of children.  This I know because I gave orders that such were to be spared and it was reported to me that there were none, so I supposed that they had fled away.”

“There were none to fly, Master.  That tribe was a brotherhood which had abjured women.  Look on me now.  I am misshapen, hideous, am I not?  Born thus, it is said, because before my birth my mother was frightened by a dwarf.  Yet the law of the Ethiopians is that their kings must marry within a year of their crowning.  Therefore I chose a woman to be the queen whom I had long desired in secret.  She scorned me, vowing that not for all the thrones of all the world would she be mated to a monster, and that if it were done by force she would kill herself, a saying that went abroad throughout the land.  I said that she had spoken well and sent her in safety from the country, after which I too laid down my crown and departed with some who loved me, to form a brotherhood of women-haters further down the Nile, beyond the borders of Ethiopia.  There the Egyptian force of which you were in command, attacked us unprepared, and you made me your slave.  That is all.”

“But why did you do this, Bes, seeing that maidens are many and all would not have thought thus?”

“Because I wished for that one only, Master; also I feared lest I should become the father of a breed of twisted dwarfs.  So I who was a king am now a slave, and yet, who knows which way the Grasshopper will jump?  One day from a slave I may again grow into a king.  And now let us seek that wherein kings are as slaves and slaves as kings—­sleep.”

So we lay down and slept, I thanking the gods that my bed was not yonder in the boat upon the great river.

When I woke refreshed, though after all I had gone through on the yesterday my brain still swam a little, the light was pouring through the carved work of the shuttered windows.  By it I saw Bes seated on the floor engaged in doing something to his bow, which, as I have said, had been restored to us with our other weapons, and asked him sleepily what it was.