Out of Harm's Way 307
- which was still flourishing, although the signs of decay
were only too obvious. The modern town was not
even built with the idea of defying the centuries. It
was essentially flimsy and ramshackle, and the events
of the last few hours had given repeated evidence not
only of the state of social unrest which was likely at
any moment to lay the modern structure in ruins, but
of general lassitude and lack of energy on the part of
everybody with whom we came into contact.
Our little party obviously represented undreamed-of
possibilities of doing good business. But no one seemed
to want to fulfil even that last of human ambitions:
the acquiring of the good will of prosperous travellers.
“Don’t be downhearted,” laughed Lamus. ‘“ Your
trouble is that you are looking for permanence in the
wrong place. Do you see those two men?”
On the road below us were two goatherds, one driving
his flock up from the town after having been milked,
the other driving them down for that p ,
Lamus quoted two lines of Greek poetry. I did not
remember enough to be able to translate them, but
the words had an extraordinarily familiar ring. Lamus
translated.
““* The city Telepylus, where the shepherd who drives
his flock into the town salutes another who is driving
them out, and the other returns his salute. A man in
that country could earn double wages if he could do
without sleep, for they work much the same by night
as they do by day.’
‘That was written three thousand years ago, and even
the name of the woman who wrote that poem, albeit
it is one of the most famous poems in the world, is lost.
But there are the shepherds saluting each other to-day
as they did then. MANTA PEI said Heracleitus, ‘all
things flow.’ And everything that tries to escape that
law, that relies on its strength, that becomes nigid,
that endeavours to calla halt, is broken up by the
irresistible waves of time. We think steel stronger
than water; but we cannot build a ship to resist its