Page:Shen of the Sea.pdf/118



people of Shen Su were starving. A famine blighted all the land. Rice swamps yielded only empty husks. The millet fields were barren. The ti tan patches, for all their blossoms, produced no earth eggs—no potatoes. The chu groves gave no tender stalks And the people starved.

Every astrologer and wise man in the kingdom was summoned to King Ta Lang's palace. "Tell us, wise men, why we starve. Why is food denied us?" Thus the King questioned the graybeards, and they, the learned, consulted their charts, and sand trays, and crystal globes. One said: "The