Part 2

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

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

Of course I was up again pretty sharply, and snapped up the kodak just as it was going to slide off to the ground. I will confess, too, I was feeling pleased. Here at any rate was a Guanche cupboard of sorts, and as they had taken the trouble to hermetically seal it with cement, the odds were that it had something inside worth hiding. At first there was nothing to be seen but a lot of dust and rubble, so I lit a bit of candle and cleared this away. Presently, however, I began to find that I was shelling out something that was not cement. It chipped away, in regular layers, and when I took it to the daylight I found that each layer was made up of two parts. One side was shiny stuff that looked like talc, and on this was smeared a coating of dark toffee-coloured material, that might have been wax. The toffee-coloured surface was worked over with some kind of pattern.

Now I do not profess to any knowledge on these matters, and as a consequence took what Coppinger had told me about Guanche habits and acquirements as more or less true. For instance, he had repeatedly impressed upon me that this old people could not write, and having this in my memory, I did not guess that the patterns scribed through the wax were letters in some obsolete character, which, if left to myself, probably I should have done. But still at the same time I came to the conclusion that the stuff was worth looting, and so set to work quarrying 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 in for separating them farther. They fitted exactly to the cavity in which they were stored, but by smashing down its front I was able to get at the foot of them, and then I hacked away through the bottom layers with the knife till I got the bulk out in one solid piece. It measured some twenty inches by fifteen, by fifteen, but it was not so heavy as it looked, and when I had taken the remaining photographs, I lowered it down to Coppinger on the end of the rope.

There was nothing more to do in the caves then, so I went down myself next. The lump of sheets was on the ground, and Coppinger was on all fours 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 the Canary Islands, and it’s yours, you unappreciative beggar; at least what there is left of it. Oh, man, man, you’ve smashed up the beginning, and you’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 untrained man to do important exploring work.”

“I should say it’s your fault if anything’s gone wrong. You said there was no such thing as writing known to these ancient Canarios, and I took your word for it. For anything I knew the stuff might have been something to eat.”

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

“I’m no geologist. Is this imported literature then?”

“Of course. It’s Egyptian: that’s obvious at a glance. Though how it’s got here I can’t tell yet. It isn’t stuff you can read off like a newspaper. The character’s a variant on any of those that have been discovered 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. It doesn’t scratch up like animal wax. I’ll analyse that later. Why they once 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 a meal. It’s a good ten miles hard going to the fonda, and I’m as hungry as 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, 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 through, 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.”