The Lost Continent

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 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.
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