ough, and have only
managed to make out a few sentences here and there"--he rubbed his hands
appreciatively. "It will take me a year's hard work to translate this
properly."

"Every man to his taste. I'm afraid my interest in the thing wouldn't
last as long as that. But how did it get there? Did your ancient
Egyptian come to Grand Canary for the good of his lungs, and write it
because he felt dull up in that cave?"

"I made a mistake there. The author was not an Egyptian. It was the
similarity of the inscribed character which misled me. The book was
written by one Deucalion, who seems to have been a priest or general--or
perhaps both--and he was an Atlantean. How it got there, I don't know
yet. Probably that was told in the last few pages, which a certain
vandal smashed up with his pocketknife, in getting them away from the
place where they were stowed."

"That's right, abuse me. Deucalion you say? There was a Deucalion in the
Greek mythology. He was one of the two who escaped from the Flood: their
Noah, in fact."

"The swamping of the continent of Atlantis might very well correspond to
the Flood."

"Is there a Pyrrha then? She was Deucalion's wife."

"I haven't come across her yet. But there's a Phorenice, who may be the
same. She seems to have been the reigning Empress, as far as I can make
out at present."

I looked with interest at illustrations in the margin. They were quite
understandable, although the perspective was all wrong. "Weird beasts
they seem to have had knocking about the country in those days. Whacking
big size too, if one may judge. By Jove, that'll be a cave-tiger trying
to puff down a mammoth. I shouldn't care to have lived in those days."

"Probably they had some way of fighting the creatures. However, that
will show itself as I get along with the translation." He looked at his
watch--"I suppose I ought to be ashamed of myself, but I haven't been to
bed. Are you going out?"

"I shall drive back to Las Palmas. I promised a man to have a round at
golf this afternoon."

"Very well, see you at dinner. I hope they've sent back my dress shirts
from the wash. O, lord! I am sleepy."

I left him going up to bed, and went outside and ordered a carriage to
take me down, and there I may say we parted for a considerable time.
A cable was waiting for me in the hotel at Las Palmas to go home for
business forthwith, and there was a Liverpool boat in the harbour which
I just managed to catch as she w