Manchurian Books

His coming
would, however, necessitate his sovereignty among us, in fulfilment
of an ancient Phoenician law, providing that the state, and every
satrapy therein, shall receive no service, either of blood or of
bond, nor enter into the marriage contract with an alien; from which
law only the royal house is exempt. Thus were the two needs of our
land to be served by the means to which we had recourse. For there
being no way to settle the difficulty, we vowed to leave the matter
to Chance, that great patient arbiter of destinies of which your
civilization takes no account, save to reduce it to slavery.
Accordingly each inhabitant of the island took a solemn oath to
await, with an open mind free from choice or prejudice, the
settlement of the event, certain that the gods would permit the
possible. Five days after this decision our watchers upon the hills
sighted a South African transport bound for the Azores to coal. A
hundred miles from our coast she was wrecked, and it was thought
that all on board had been lost.


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