nger than you think climbing down to each of these caves, and
then getting up again for the next."

Coppinger spread his coat on the ground, and wrapped the lump of sheets
with tender care, but would not allow it to be tied with a rope for fear
of breaking more of the edges. He insisted on carrying it himself too,
and did so for the larger part of the way to Santa Brigida, and it was
only when he was within an ace of dropping himself with sheer tiredness
that he condescended to let me take my turn. He was tolerably ungracious
about it too. "I suppose you may as well carry the stuff," he snapped,
"seeing that after all it's your own."

Personally, when we got to the fonda, I had as good a dinner as was
procurable, and a bottle of that old Canary wine, and turned into bed
after a final pipe. Coppinger dined also, but I have reason to believe
he did not sleep much. At any rate I found him still poring over the
find next morning, and looking very heavy-eyed, but brimming with
enthusiasm.

"Do you know," he said, "that you've blundered upon the most valuable
historical manuscript that the modern world has ever yet seen? Of
course, with your clumsy way of getting it out, you've done an infinity
of damage. For instance, those top sheets you shelled away and
spoiled, contained probably an absolutely unique account of the ancient
civilisation of Yucatan."

"Where's that, anyway?"

"In the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. It's all ruins to-day, but once it
was a very prosperous colony of the Atlanteans."

"Never heard of them. Oh yes, I have though. They were the people
Herodotus wrote about, didn't he? But I thought they were mythical."

"They were very real, and so was Atlantis, the continent where they
lived, which lay just north of the Canaries here."

"What's that crocodile sort of thing with wings drawn in the margin?"

"Some sort of beast that lived in those bygone days. The pages are full
of them. That's a cave-tiger. And that's some sort of colossal bat.
Thank goodness he had the sense to illustrate fully, the man who wrote
this, or we should never have been able to reconstruct the tale, or at
any rate we could not have understood half of it. Whole species have
died out since this was written, just as a whole continent has been
swept away and three civilisations quenched. The worst of it is, it was
written by a highly-educated man who somewhat naturally writes a very
bad fist. I've hammered at it all the night thr