The Ferry (9)

Listen, Klotho. There is something I should like to say to you in private without witnesses. You others step aside a moment. If you will give me a chance to run away I promise to give you this day a million dollars in coin of the realm.

You are absurd. Can you not get gold and dollars out of your head yet?

I will throw in the two bowls, if you like, that I got when I killed Kleakritos. kam

Drag him in, for apparently he will not embark of his own will.

I call you people to witness that my wall and my dockyards are unfinished. I could have completed them if I had lived five days longer.

Never mind. Some one else will build them.

Anyhow, this one thing it is perfectly reasonable to ask for.

What is that?

To come to life long enough to subdue the Persians, and impose taxes on the Lydians, and raise a huge monument to myself, inscribing on it how many great and warlike deeds I did in my lifetime.

My man, this is not asking for a single day any longer, but to spend about twenty years.