The Lost Continent Read online

  Produced by Judith Boss

  THE LOST CONTINENT

  C. J. Cutliffe Hyne

  CONTENTS

  PREFATORY: THE LEGATEES OF DEUCALION 1 MY RECALL 2 BACK TO ATLANTIS 3 A RIVAL NAVY 4 THE WELCOME OF PHORENICE 5 ZAEMON'S CURSE 6 THE BITERS OF THE CITY WALLS 7 THE BITERS OF THE WALLS (FURTHER ACCOUNT) 8 THE PREACHER FROM THE MOUNTAINS 9 PHORENICE, GODDESS 10 A WOOING 11 AN AFFAIR WITH THE BARBAROUS FISHERS 12 THE DRUG OF OUR LADY THE MOON 13 THE BURYING ALIVE OF NAIS 14 AGAIN THE GODS MAKE CHANGE 15 ZAEMON'S SUMMONS 16 SIEGE OF THE SACRED MOUNTAIN 17 NAIS THE REGAINED 18 STORM OF THE SACRED MOUNTAIN 19 DESTRUCTION OF THE ATLANTIS 20 ON THE BOSOM OF THE DEEP

  PREFATORY:

  THE LEGATEES OF DEUCALION

  We were both of us not a little stiff as the result of sleeping out inthe open all that night, for even in Grand Canary the dew-fall and thecomparative chill of darkness are not to be trifled with. For myself onthese occasions I like a bit of a run as an early refresher. But here onthis rough ground in the middle of the island there were not three yardsof level to be found, and so as Coppinger proceeded to go through somesort of dumb-bell exercises with a couple of lumps of bristly lava, Ifollowed his example. Coppinger has done a good deal of roughing it inhis time, but being a doctor of medicine amongst other things--he takesout a new degree of some sort on an average every other year--he isgreat on health theories, and practises them like a religion.

  There had been rain two days before, and as there was still a bit ofstream trickling along at the bottom of the barranca, we went down thereand had a wash, and brushed our teeth. Greatest luxury imaginable, atoothbrush, on this sort of expedition.

  "Now," said Coppinger when we had emptied our pockets, "there's preciouslittle grub left, and it's none the better for being carried in a localSpanish newspaper."

  "Yours is mostly tobacco ashes."

  "It'll get worse if we leave it. We've a lot more bad scrambling aheadof us."

  That was obvious. So we sat down beside the stream there at the bottomof the barranca, and ate up all of what was left. It was a ten-miletramp to the fonda at Santa Brigida, where we had set down our traps;and as Coppinger wanted to take a lot more photographs and measurementsbefore we left this particular group of caves, it was likely we shouldbe pretty sharp set before we got our next meal, and our next taste ofthe PATRON'S splendid old country wine. My faith! If only they knew downin the English hotels in Las Palmas what magnificent wines one couldget--with diplomacy--up in some of the mountain villages, the oldvintage would become a thing of the past in a week.

  Now to tell the truth, the two mummies he had gathered already quitesatisfied my small ambition. The goatskins in which they were sewn upwere as brittle as paper, and the poor old things themselves gave outdust like a puffball whenever they were touched. But you know whatCoppinger is. He thought he'd come upon traces of an old Guancheuniversity, or sacred college, or something of that kind, like the onethere is on the other side of the island, and he wouldn't be satisfiedtill he'd ransacked every cave in the whole face of the cliff. He'dplenty of stuff left for the flashlight thing, and twenty-eight morefilms in his kodak, and said we might as well get through with the jobthen as make a return journey all on purpose. So he took the crowbar,and I shouldered the rope, and away we went up to the ridge of thecliff, where we had got such a baking from the sun the day before.

  Of course these caves were not easy to come at, or else they would havebeen raided years before. Coppinger, who on principle makes out heknows all about these things, says that in the old Guanche days theyhad ladders of goatskin rope which they could pull up when they were athome, and so keep out undesirable callers; and as no other plan occursto me, perhaps he may be right. Anyway the mouths of the caves were ina more or less level row thirty feet below the ridge of the cliff, andfifty feet above the bottom; and Spanish curiosity doesn't go in muchwhere it cannot walk.

  Now laddering such caves from below would have been cumbersome, but alight knotted rope is easily carried, and though it would have been hardto climb up this, our plan was to descend on each cave mouth from above,and then slip down to the foot of the cliffs, and start again AB INITIOfor the next.

  Coppinger is plucky enough, and he has a good head on a height, butthere is no getting over the fact that he is portly and nearer fiftythan forty-five. So you can see he must have been pretty keen. Of courseI went first each time, and got into the cave mouth, and did what Icould to help him in; but when you have to walk down a vertical cliffface fly-fashion, with only a thin bootlace of a rope for support, itis not much real help the man below can give, except offer you his bestwishes.

  I wanted to save him as much as I could, and as the first three cavesI climbed to were small and empty, seeming to be merely store-places,I asked him to take them for granted, and save himself the rest. Buthe insisted on clambering down to each one in person, and as he decidedthat one of my granaries was a prison, and another a pot-making factory,and another a schoolroom for young priests, he naturally said he hadn'tmuch reliance on my judgment, and would have to go through the wholelot himself. You know what these thorough-going archaeologists are forimagination.

  But as the day went on, and the sun rose higher, Coppinger began clearlyto have had enough of it, though he was very game, and insisted on goingon much longer than was safe. I must say I didn't like it. You seethe drop was seldom less than eighty feet from the top of the cliffs.However, at last he was forced to give it up. I suggested marching offto Santa Brigida forthwith, but he wouldn't do that. There were threemore cave-openings to be looked into, and if I wouldn't do them for him,he would have to make another effort to get there himself. He tried tomake out he was conferring a very great favour on me by offering to takea report solely from my untrained observation, but I flatly refused tolook at it in that light. I was pretty tired also; I was soaked withperspiration from the heat; my head ached from the violence of the sun;and my hands were cut raw with the rope.

  Coppinger might be tired, but he was still enthusiastic. He tried tomake me enthusiastic also. "Look here," he said, "there's no knowingwhat you may find up there, and if you do lay hands on anything,remember it's your own. I shall have no claim whatever."

  "Very kind of you, but I've got no use for any more mummies done up ingoatskin bags."

  "Bah! That's not a burial cave up there. Don't you know the differenceyet in the openings? Now, be a good fellow. It doesn't follow thatbecause we have drawn all the rest blank, you won't stumble across agood find for yourself up there."

  "Oh, very well," I said, as he seemed so set on it; and away I stumbledover the fallen rocks, and along the ledge, and then scrambled up bythat fissure in the cliff which saved us the two-mile round which we hadhad to take at first. I wrenched out the crowbar, and jammed it downin a new place, and then away I went over the side, with hands smartingworse at every new grip of the rope. It was an awkward job swinging intothe cave mouth because the rock above overhung, or else (what came tothe same thing) it had broken away below; but I managed it somehow,although I landed with an awkward thump on my back, and at the same timeI didn't let go the rope. It wouldn't do to have lost the rope then:Coppinger couldn't have flicked it into me from where he was below.

  Now from the first glance I could see that this cave was of differentstructure to the others. They were for the most part mere dens, roundedout anyhow; this had been faced up with cutting tools, so that all theangles were clean, and the sides smooth and flat. The walls inclinedinwards to the roof, reminding me of an architecture I had seen beforebut coul
d not recollect where, and moreover there were several roomsconnected up with passages. I was pleased to find that the othercave-openings which Coppinger wanted me to explore were merely thewindows or the doorways of two of these other rooms.

  Of inscriptions or markings on the walls there was not a trace, though Ilooked carefully, and except for bats the place was entirely bare. Ilit a cigarette and smoked it through--Coppinger always thinks one isslurring over work if it is got through too quickly--and then I wentto the entrance where the rope was, and leaned out, and shouted down mynews.

  He turned up a very anxious face. "Have you searched it thoroughly?" hebawled back.

  "Of course I have. What do you think I've been doing all this time?"

  "No, don't come down yet. Wait a minute. I say, old man, do wait aminute. I'm making fast the kodak and the flashlight apparatus on theend of the rope. Pull them up, and just make me half a dozen exposures,there's a good fellow."

  "Oh, all right," I said, and hauled the things up, and got them inside.The photographs would be absolutely dull and uninteresting, but thatwouldn't matter to Coppinger. He rather preferred them that way. One hasto be careful about halation in photographing these dark interiors, butthere was a sort of ledge like a seat by the side of each doorway, andso I lodged the camera on that to get a steady stand, and snapped offthe flashlight from behind and above.

  I got pictures of four of the chambers this way, and then came to onewhere the ledge was higher and wider. I put down the camera, wedged itlevel with scraps of stone, and then sat down myself to recharge theflashlight machine. But the moment my weight got on that ledge, therewas a sharp crackle, and down I went half a dozen inches.

  Of course I was up again pretty sharply, and snapped up the kodak justas it was going to slide off to the ground. I will confess, too, I wasfeeling pleased. Here at any rate was a Guanche cupboard of sorts, andas they had taken the trouble to hermetically seal it with cement, theodds were that it had something inside worth hiding. At first therewas nothing to be seen but a lot of dust and rubble, so I lit a bit ofcandle and cleared this away. Presently, however, I began to find thatI was shelling out something that was not cement. It chipped away, inregular layers, and when I took it to the daylight I found that eachlayer was made up of two parts. One side was shiny stuff that lookedlike talc, and on this was smeared a coating of dark toffee-colouredmaterial, that might have been wax. The toffee-coloured surface wasworked over with some kind of pattern.

  Now I do not profess to any knowledge on these matters, and as aconsequence took what Coppinger had told me about Guanche habits andacquirements as more or less true. For instance, he had repeatedlyimpressed upon me that this old people could not write, and having thisin my memory, I did not guess that the patterns scribed through thewax were letters in some obsolete character, which, if left to myself,probably I should have done. But still at the same time I came tothe conclusion that the stuff was worth looting, and so set to workquarrying it out with the heel of my boot and a pocket-knife.

  The sheets were all more or less stuck together, and so I did not go infor separating them farther. They fitted exactly to the cavity in whichthey were stored, but by smashing down its front I was able to get atthe foot of them, and then I hacked away through the bottom layers withthe knife till I got the bulk out in one solid piece. It measured sometwenty inches by fifteen, by fifteen, but it was not so heavy as itlooked, and when I had taken the remaining photographs, I lowered itdown to Coppinger on the end of the rope.

  There was nothing more to do in the caves then, so I went down myselfnext. The lump of sheets was on the ground, and Coppinger was on allfours beside it. He was pretty nearly mad with excitement.

  "What is it?" I asked him.

  "I don't know yet. But it is the most valuable find ever made in theCanary Islands, and it's yours, you unappreciative beggar; at least whatthere is left of it. Oh, man, man, you've smashed up the beginning, andyou've smashed up the end of some history that is probably priceless.It's my own fault. I ought to have known better than set an untrainedman to do important exploring work."

  "I should say it's your fault if anything's gone wrong. You said therewas no such thing as writing known to these ancient Canarios, and Itook your word for it. For anything I knew the stuff might have beensomething to eat."

  "It isn't Guanche work at all," said he testily. "You ought to haveknown that from the talc. Great heavens, man, have you no eyes? Haven'tyou seen the general formation of the island? Don't you know there's notalc here?"

  "I'm no geologist. Is this imported literature then?"

  "Of course. It's Egyptian: that's obvious at a glance. Though howit's got here I can't tell yet. It isn't stuff you can read off likea newspaper. The character's a variant on any of those that have beendiscovered so far. And as for this waxy stuff spread over the talc,it's unique. It's some sort of a mineral, I think: perhaps asphalt. Itdoesn't scratch up like animal wax. I'll analyse that later. Why theyonce invented it, and then let such a splendid notion drop out of use,is just a marvel. I could stay gloating over this all day."

  "Well," I said, "if it's all the same for you, I'd rather gloat over ameal. It's a good ten miles hard going to the fonda, and I'm as hungryas a hawk already. Look here, do you know it is four o'clock already?It takes longer than you think climbing down to each of these caves, andthen getting up again for the next."

  Coppinger spread his coat on the ground, and wrapped the lump of sheetswith tender care, but would not allow it to be tied with a rope for fearof 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 wasonly when he was within an ace of dropping himself with sheer tirednessthat he condescended to let me take my turn. He was tolerably ungraciousabout 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 wasprocurable, and a bottle of that old Canary wine, and turned into bedafter a final pipe. Coppinger dined also, but I have reason to believehe did not sleep much. At any rate I found him still poring over thefind next morning, and looking very heavy-eyed, but brimming withenthusiasm.

  "Do you know," he said, "that you've blundered upon the most valuablehistorical manuscript that the modern world has ever yet seen? Ofcourse, with your clumsy way of getting it out, you've done an infinityof damage. For instance, those top sheets you shelled away andspoiled, contained probably an absolutely unique account of the ancientcivilisation of Yucatan."

  "Where's that, anyway?"

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

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

  "They were very real, and so was Atlantis, the continent where theylived, 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 fullof 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 wrotethis, or we should never have been able to reconstruct the tale, or atany rate we could not have understood half of it. Whole species havedied out since this was written, just as a whole continent has beenswept away and three civilisations quenched. The worst of it is, it waswritten by a highly-educated man who somewhat naturally writes a verybad fist. I've hammered at it all the night through, and have onlymanaged to make out a few sentences here and there"--he rubbed his handsappreciatively. "It will take me a year's hard work to translate thisproperly."

  "Every man to his taste. I'm afraid my interest in the thing wouldn'tlast as long as that. But how did it get there? Did your ancientEgyptian come to Grand Canary for the good of his lungs, and write itbecause he felt dull up in that cave?"

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

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

  "The swamping of the continent of Atlantis might very well correspond tothe 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 thesame. She seems to have been the reigning Empress, as far as I can makeout at present."

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

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

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

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

  I left him going up to bed, and went outside and ordered a carriage totake 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 forbusiness forthwith, and there was a Liverpool boat in the harbour whichI just managed to catch as she was steaming out. It was a close thing,and the boatmen made a small fortune out of my hurry.

  Now Coppinger was only an hotel acquaintance, and as I was up to theeyes in work when I got back to England, I'm afraid I didn't think verymuch more about him at the time. One doesn't with people one just meetscasually abroad like that. And it must have been at least a year laterthat I saw by a paragraph in one of the papers, that he had given thelump of sheets to the British Museum, and that the estimated worth ofthem was ten thousand pounds at the lowest valuation.

  Well, this was a bit of revelation, and as he had so repeatedlyimpressed on me that the things were mine by right of discovery, I wroterather a pointed note to him mentioning that he seemed to have beenmaking rather free with my property. Promptly came back a stilted letterbeginning, "Doctor Coppinger regrets" and so on, and with it the Englishtranslation of the wax-upon-talc MSS. He "quite admitted" my claim,and "trusted that the profits of publication would be a sufficientreimbursement for any damage received."

  Now I had no idea that he would take me unpleasantly like this, andwrote back a pretty warm reply to that effect; but the only answer I gotto this was through a firm of solicitors, who stated that all furthercommunications with Dr. Coppinger must be made through them.

  I will say here publicly that I regret the line he has taken over thematter; but as the affair has gone so far, I am disposed to follow outhis proposition. Accordingly the old history is here printed; the credit(and the responsibility) of the translation rests with Dr. Coppinger;and whatever revenue accrues from readers, goes to the finder of theoriginal talc-upon-wax sheets, myself.

  If there is a further alteration in this arrangement, it will beannounced publicly at a later date. But at present this appears to bemost unlikely.