The Lost Continent   By: Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne (1866-1944)

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 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 mostly tobacco 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.