The Lost Continent | Page 2

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