"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