章节正文
The Lost Continent
by C. J. Cutcliffe 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 in the open all that night, for even in Grand Canary
the dew-fall and the comparative chill of darkness are not to be
trifled with. For myself on these occasions I like a bit of a run
as an early refresher. But here on this rough ground in the middle
of the island there were not three yards of level to be found, and
so as Coppinger proceeded to go through some sort of dumb-bell
exercises with a couple of lumps of bristly lava, I followed his
example. Coppinger has done a good deal of roughing it in his
time, but being a doctor of medicine amongst other things--he takes
out a new degree of some sort on an average every other year--he is
great on health theories, and practises them like a religion.
There had been rain two days before, and as there was still a
bit of stream trickling along at the bottom of the barranca, we
went down there and had a wash, and brushed our teeth. Greatest
luxury imaginable, a toothbrush, on this sort of expedition.
"Now," said Coppinger when we had emptied our pockets,
"there's precious little grub left, and it's none the better for
being carried in a local Spanish newspaper."
"Yours is mostlytobacco ashes."
"It'll get worse if we leave it. We've a lot more bad
scrambling ahead of us."
That was obvious. So we sat down beside the stream there at
the bottom of the barranca, and ate up all of what was left. It
was a ten-mile tramp to the fonda at Santa Brigida, where we had
set down our traps; and as Coppinger wanted to take a lot more
photographs and measurements before we left this particular group
of caves, it was likely we should be pretty sharp set before we got
our next meal, and our next taste of the PATRON'S splendid
old country wine. My faith! If only they knew down in the English
hotels in Las Palmas what magnificent wines one could get--with
diplomacy--up in some of the mountain villages, the old vintage
would become a thing of the past in a week.
Now to tell the truth, the two mummies he had gathered already
quite satisfied my small ambition. The goatskins in which they
were sewn up were as brittle as paper, and the poor old things
themselves gave out dust like a puffball whenever they were
touched. But you know what Coppinger is. He thought he'd come
upon traces of an old Guanche university, or sacred college, or
something of that kind, like the one there is on the other side of
the island, and he wouldn't be satisfied till he'd ransacked every
cave in the whole face of the cliff. He'd plenty of stuff left for
the flashlight thing, and twenty-eight more films in his kodak, and
said we might as well get through with the job then 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 the cliff,
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 have been raided years before. Coppinger, who on principle
makes out he knows all about these things, says that in the old
Guanche days they had ladders of goatskin rope which they could
pull up when they were at home, and so keep out undesirable
callers; and as no other plan occurs to me, perhaps he may be
right. Anyway the mouths of the caves were in a more or less level
row thirty feet below the ridge of the cliff, and fifty feet above
the bottom; and Spanish curiosity doesn't go in much where it
cannot walk.
Now laddering such caves from below would have been cumbersome,
but a light knotted rope is easily carried, and though it would
have been hard to 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 INITIO for the next.
Coppinger is plucky enough, and he has a good head on a height,
but there is no getting over the fact that he is portly and
nearer fifty than forty-five. So you can see he must have been
pretty keen. Of course I went first each time, and got into the
cave mouth, and did what I could to help him in; but when you have
to walk down a vertical cliff face fly-fashion, with only a thin
bootlace of a rope for support, it is not much real help the man
below can give, except offer you his best wishes.
I wanted to save him as much as I could, and as the first three
caves I 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. But he insisted on clambering down to each one
in person, and as he decided that 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't much reliance on my
judgment, and would have to go through the whole lot himself. You
know what these thorough-going archaeologists are for imagination.
But as the day went on, and the sun rose higher, Coppinger began
clearly to have had enough of it, though he was very game, and
insisted on going on much longer than was safe. I must say I
didn't like it. You see the 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 off to Santa Brigida forthwith, but he
wouldn't do that. There were three more 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 to make out he was
conferring a very great favour on me by offering to take a report
solely from my untrained observation, but I flatly refused to look
at it in that light. I was pretty tired also; I was soaked with
perspiration 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 to make me enthusiastic also. "Look here," he said, "there's
no knowing what 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 in goatskin bags."
"Bah! That's not a burial cave up there. Don't you know the
difference yet in the openings? Now, be a good fellow. It doesn't
follow that because we have drawn all the rest blank, you won't
stumble across a good find for yourself up there."
"Oh, very well," I said, as he seemed so set on it; and away I
stumbled over the fallen rocks, and along the ledge, and then
scrambled up by that fissure in the cliff which saved us the
two-mile round which we had had to take at first. I wrenched out
the crowbar, and jammed it down in a new place, and then away I
went over the side, with hands smarting worse at every new grip of
the rope. It was an awkward job swinging into the cave mouth
because the rock above overhung, or else (what came to the 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 time I
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
different structure to the others. They were for the most part
mere dens, rounded out anyhow; this had been faced up with cutting
tools, so that all the angles were clean, and the sides smooth and
flat. The walls inclined inwards to the roof, reminding me of an
architecture I had seen before but could not recollect where, and
moreover there were several rooms connected up with passages. I
was pleased to find that the other cave-openings which Coppinger
wanted me to explore were merely the windows or the doorways of two
of these other rooms.
Of inscriptions or markings on the walls there was not a trace,
though I looked carefully, and except for bats the place was
entirely bare. I lit a cigarette and smoked it through--Coppinger
always thinks one is slurring over work if it is got through too
quickly--and then I went to the entrance where the rope was, and
leaned out, and shouted down my news.
He turned up a very anxious face. "Have you searched it
thoroughly?" he bawled 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 a minute. I'm making fast the kodak and the flashlight
apparatus on the end 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 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 staff 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
by C. J. Cutcliffe 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 in the open all that night, for even in Grand Canary
the dew-fall and the comparative chill of darkness are not to be
trifled with. For myself on these occasions I like a bit of a run
as an early refresher. But here on this rough ground in the middle
of the island there were not three yards of level to be found, and
so as Coppinger proceeded to go through some sort of dumb-bell
exercises with a couple of lumps of bristly lava, I followed his
example. Coppinger has done a good deal of roughing it in his
time, but being a doctor of medicine amongst other things--he takes
out a new degree of some sort on an average every other year--he is
great on health theories, and practises them like a religion.
There had been rain two days before, and as there was still a
bit of stream trickling along at the bottom of the barranca, we
went down there and had a wash, and brushed our teeth. Greatest
luxury imaginable, a toothbrush, on this sort of expedition.
"Now," said Coppinger when we had emptied our pockets,
"there's precious little grub left, and it's none the better for
being carried in a local Spanish newspaper."
"Yours is mostlytobacco ashes."
"It'll get worse if we leave it. We've a lot more bad
scrambling ahead of us."
That was obvious. So we sat down beside the stream there at
the bottom of the barranca, and ate up all of what was left. It
was a ten-mile tramp to the fonda at Santa Brigida, where we had
set down our traps; and as Coppinger wanted to take a lot more
photographs and measurements before we left this particular group
of caves, it was likely we should be pretty sharp set before we got
our next meal, and our next taste of the PATRON'S splendid
old country wine. My faith! If only they knew down in the English
hotels in Las Palmas what magnificent wines one could get--with
diplomacy--up in some of the mountain villages, the old vintage
would become a thing of the past in a week.
Now to tell the truth, the two mummies he had gathered already
quite satisfied my small ambition. The goatskins in which they
were sewn up were as brittle as paper, and the poor old things
themselves gave out dust like a puffball whenever they were
touched. But you know what Coppinger is. He thought he'd come
upon traces of an old Guanche university, or sacred college, or
something of that kind, like the one there is on the other side of
the island, and he wouldn't be satisfied till he'd ransacked every
cave in the whole face of the cliff. He'd plenty of stuff left for
the flashlight thing, and twenty-eight more films in his kodak, and
said we might as well get through with the job then 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 the cliff,
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 have been raided years before. Coppinger, who on principle
makes out he knows all about these things, says that in the old
Guanche days they had ladders of goatskin rope which they could
pull up when they were at home, and so keep out undesirable
callers; and as no other plan occurs to me, perhaps he may be
right. Anyway the mouths of the caves were in a more or less level
row thirty feet below the ridge of the cliff, and fifty feet above
the bottom; and Spanish curiosity doesn't go in much where it
cannot walk.
Now laddering such caves from below would have been cumbersome,
but a light knotted rope is easily carried, and though it would
have been hard to 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 INITIO for the next.
Coppinger is plucky enough, and he has a good head on a height,
but there is no getting over the fact that he is portly and
nearer fifty than forty-five. So you can see he must have been
pretty keen. Of course I went first each time, and got into the
cave mouth, and did what I could to help him in; but when you have
to walk down a vertical cliff face fly-fashion, with only a thin
bootlace of a rope for support, it is not much real help the man
below can give, except offer you his best wishes.
I wanted to save him as much as I could, and as the first three
caves I 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. But he insisted on clambering down to each one
in person, and as he decided that 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't much reliance on my
judgment, and would have to go through the whole lot himself. You
know what these thorough-going archaeologists are for imagination.
But as the day went on, and the sun rose higher, Coppinger began
clearly to have had enough of it, though he was very game, and
insisted on going on much longer than was safe. I must say I
didn't like it. You see the 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 off to Santa Brigida forthwith, but he
wouldn't do that. There were three more 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 to make out he was
conferring a very great favour on me by offering to take a report
solely from my untrained observation, but I flatly refused to look
at it in that light. I was pretty tired also; I was soaked with
perspiration 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 to make me enthusiastic also. "Look here," he said, "there's
no knowing what 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 in goatskin bags."
"Bah! That's not a burial cave up there. Don't you know the
difference yet in the openings? Now, be a good fellow. It doesn't
follow that because we have drawn all the rest blank, you won't
stumble across a good find for yourself up there."
"Oh, very well," I said, as he seemed so set on it; and away I
stumbled over the fallen rocks, and along the ledge, and then
scrambled up by that fissure in the cliff which saved us the
two-mile round which we had had to take at first. I wrenched out
the crowbar, and jammed it down in a new place, and then away I
went over the side, with hands smarting worse at every new grip of
the rope. It was an awkward job swinging into the cave mouth
because the rock above overhung, or else (what came to the 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 time I
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
different structure to the others. They were for the most part
mere dens, rounded out anyhow; this had been faced up with cutting
tools, so that all the angles were clean, and the sides smooth and
flat. The walls inclined inwards to the roof, reminding me of an
architecture I had seen before but could not recollect where, and
moreover there were several rooms connected up with passages. I
was pleased to find that the other cave-openings which Coppinger
wanted me to explore were merely the windows or the doorways of two
of these other rooms.
Of inscriptions or markings on the walls there was not a trace,
though I looked carefully, and except for bats the place was
entirely bare. I lit a cigarette and smoked it through--Coppinger
always thinks one is slurring over work if it is got through too
quickly--and then I went to the entrance where the rope was, and
leaned out, and shouted down my news.
He turned up a very anxious face. "Have you searched it
thoroughly?" he bawled 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 a minute. I'm making fast the kodak and the flashlight
apparatus on the end 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 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 staff 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
- welcome [´welkəm]
a.受欢迎的；可喜的 (初中英语单词) - sacred [´seikrid] a.神圣的；庄严的 (初中英语单词)
- destruction [di´strʌkʃən] n.破坏，毁灭 (初中英语单词)
- comparative [kəm´pærətiv] a.比较的 n.匹敌者 (初中英语单词)
- stream [stri:m] n.河 vi.流出；飘扬 (初中英语单词)
- mostly [´məustli] ad.主要地；多半；通常 (初中英语单词)
- tobacco [tə´bækəu] n.烟草(叶)；卷烟 (初中英语单词)
- obvious [´ɔbviəs] a.明显的；显而易见的 (初中英语单词)
- magnificent [mæg´nifisənt] a.壮丽的；豪华的 (初中英语单词)
- ambition [æm´biʃən] n.雄心，野心；企图 (初中英语单词)
- whenever [wen´evə] conj.&ad.无论何时 (初中英语单词)
- curiosity [,kjuəri´ɔsiti] n.好奇；奇事；珍品 (初中英语单词)
- descend [di´send] v.下来，下降 (初中英语单词)
- observation [,ɔbzə´veiʃən] n.观测；注意；意义 (初中英语单词)
- violence [´vaiələns] n.猛烈；暴力(行) (初中英语单词)
- knowing [´nəuiŋ] a.会意的，心照不宣的 (初中英语单词)
- structure [´strʌktʃə] n.结构，构造；组织 (初中英语单词)
- anxious [´æŋkʃəs] a.担忧的；渴望的 (初中英语单词)
- absolutely [´æbsəlu:tli] ad.绝对地；确实 (初中英语单词)
- doorway [´dɔ:wei] n.门口 (初中英语单词)
- sharply [´ʃɑ:pli] ad.锋利地；剧烈地 (初中英语单词)
- presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- daylight [´deilait] n.日光；黎明 (初中英语单词)
- consequence [´kɔnsikwəns] n.结果；后果；推断 (初中英语单词)
- instance [´instəns] n.例子，实例，例证 (初中英语单词)
- preacher [´pri:tʃə] n.讲道者，传教士 (高中英语单词)
- amongst [ə´mʌŋst] prep.其中之一 =among (高中英语单词)
- baking [´beikiŋ] n.&a.烘烤(的) (高中英语单词)
- decided [di´saidid] a.明显的；决定的 (高中英语单词)
- forthwith [fɔ:θ´wið] ad.立刻 (高中英语单词)
- offering [´ɔfəriŋ] n.提供；礼物；捐献 (高中英语单词)
- enthusiastic [inθju:zi´æstik] a.热情的，热心的 (高中英语单词)
- awkward [´ɔ:kwəd] a.笨拙的；为难的 (高中英语单词)
- explore [ik´splɔ:] v.勘探；探索；探查 (高中英语单词)
- cupboard [´kʌbəd] n.碗柜，食橱 (高中英语单词)
- cement [si´ment] n.水泥；接合剂 vt.粘结 (高中英语单词)
- profess [prə´fes] v.声称；讲授 (高中英语单词)
- barbarous [´bɑ:bərəs] a.野蛮的；不规范的 (英语四级单词)
- vertical [´və:tikəl] a.垂直的 n.垂直线 (英语四级单词)
- seeming [´si:miŋ] a.表面上的 n.外观 (英语四级单词)
- schoolroom [´sku:lru:m, -rum] n.教室 (英语四级单词)
- recollect [rekə´lekt] v.重新集合；恢复 (英语四级单词)
- crackle [´krækəl] v.劈啪地响 n.劈啪声 (英语四级单词)
- flatly [´flætli] ad.平淡地；断然地 (英语六级单词)
- fissure [´fiʃə] n.裂缝；分歧 (英语六级单词)
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