id
about this 'ere place as we have found. I have been about a deal, sir,
all round the world, and seen and heerd much more than you would think."

"Oh, of course you would see and hear a good deal, being aboard ship."

"Yes, gentlemen, and it set me thinking a deal, both as I was going up
and as I was coming back again with the empty tin. I thought a deal,
Mr Mark, sir."

"Perhaps it was the soup made you think so much, Dan," said Mark
sarcastically.

"Very like, sir," said the man with an innocent look.

"Well, what did you think?" asked Mark.

"I thought about that old fellow being so awful old, and that he must
have had to do with the building up of them stones."

"Nonsense! It must be two or three thousand years since those walls
were built."

"Daresay, sir, and he's been there ever since."

"Oh, that's impossible," said Dean.

"Ah, that's what you say, sir, but nothing is impossible out in a place
like this. Why, just look at him. Why, if you got him out in the
sunshine where you could see what a way inside his eyes were, you would
have found that he was always looking right backwards. He was a regular
old 'un, he was--lots older than he knew hisself. You heard what the
doctor said the other day about this being the place where King Solomon
sent his ships to find gold?"

"Yes, and it's quite possible," said Mark.

"Oh, you own to that, sir?"

"To be sure I do. He had ships built, and sent them round by Africa, or
else south down by the Red Sea."

"Yes, sir, that's right enough, sir. I have pretty well been both ways
myself, and seen plenty of big stones there. Up in North Africa and in
Egypt. I should say, sir, that that old chap will like as not been one
of them as dug out and melted the gold. He don't look a bit like the
regular natives, do he? He was hook-nosed, wasn't he, sir?"

"Yes, Dan."

"Not a bit like one of the regular natives, sir?"

"Not a bit."

"A lot of them seem as if their mothers used to sit upon their faces
when they was kids, to keep them warm and flatten their noses out."

"Well, yes. They are of another race, though--the regular niggers.
These Zulu sort of chaps like Mak are quite different."

"That's so, sir; and this old fellow, he was a regular hooked beaked
'un. Put me in mind of one of them big tortoises as you see in the
islands up by Mauritius."

"Never seen them, Dan."

"Well, you take my word for it, then, sir; they look as old as if they