k. Well, no sooner did Tweel hear the name Thoth than he set up a
clamor of twittering and squeaking. He pointed at himself and said
'Thoth! Thoth!' and then waved his arm all around and repeated it. Of
course he often did queer things, but we both thought we understood what
he meant. He was trying to tell us that his race called themselves
Thoth. Do you see what I'm getting at?"

"I see, all right," said Harrison. "You think the Martians paid a visit
to the earth, and the Egyptians remembered it in their mythology. Well,
you're off, then; there wasn't any Egyptian civilization fifteen
thousand years ago."

"Wrong!" grinned Jarvis. "It's too bad we _haven't_ an archeologist
with us, but Leroy tells me that there was a stone-age culture in Egypt
then, the pre-dynastic civilization."

"Well, even so, what of it?"

"Plenty! Everything in that picture proves my point. The attitude of the
Martian, heavy and weary--that's the unnatural strain of terrestrial
gravitation. The name Thoth; Leroy tells me Thoth was the Egyptian god
of philosophy and the inventor of _writing_! Get that? They must have
picked up the idea from watching the Martian take notes. It's too much
for coincidence that Thoth should be beaked and ibis-headed, and that
the beaked Martians call themselves Thoth."

"Well, I'll be hanged! But what about the nose on the Egyptian? Do you
mean to tell me that stone-age Egyptians had longer noses than ordinary
men?"

"Of course not! It's just that the Martians very naturally cast their
paintings in Martianized form. Don't human beings tend to relate
everything to themselves? That's why dugongs and manatees started the
mermaid myths--sailors thought they saw human features on the beasts. So
the Martian artist, drawing either from descriptions or imperfect
photographs, naturally exaggerated the size of the human nose to a
degree that looked normal to him. Or anyway, that's my theory."

"Well, it'll do as a theory," grunted Harrison. "What I want to hear is
why you two got back here looking like a couple of year-before-last
bird's nests."

Jarvis shuddered again, and cast another glance at Leroy. The little
biologist was recovering some of his accustomed poise, but he returned
the glance with an echo of the chemist's shudder.

"We'll get to that," resumed the latter. "Meanwhile I'll stick to Tweel
and his people. We spent the better part of three days with them, as you
know. I can't give every detail, but I'll