"THE FATHER OF HORROR"
At the time when the President of the United States and his companions
were beginning to discover the refugees around Pike's Peak, Cosmo
Versál's Ark accompanied by the _Jules Verne_, whose commander had
decided to remain in touch with his friends, was crossing the submerged
hills and valleys of Languedoc under a sun as brilliant as that which
had once made them a land of gold.
De Beauxchamps remained aboard the Ark much of the time. Cosmo liked to
have him, with himself and Captain Arms, on the bridge, because there
they could talk freely about their plans and prospects, and the
Frenchman was a most entertaining companion.
Meanwhile, the passengers in the saloons and on the promenade decks
formed little knots and coteries for conversation, for reading, and for
mutual diversion, or strolled about from side to side, watching the
endless expanse of waters for the occasional appearance of some
inhabitant of the deep that had wandered over the new ocean's bottom.
These animals seemed to be coming to the surface to get bearings. Every
such incident reminded the spectators of what lay beneath the waves, and
led them to think and talk of the awful fate that had overwhelmed their
fellow men, until the spirits of the most careless were subdued by the
pervading melancholy.
King Richard, strangely enough, had taken a liking for Amos Blank, who
was frequently asked to join the small and somewhat exclusive circle of
compatriots that continually surrounded the fallen monarch. The
billionaire and the king often leaned elbow to elbow over the rail, and
put their heads companionably together while pointing out some object on
the sea. Lord Swansdown felt painfully cut by this, but, of course, he
could offer no objection.
Finally Cosmo invited the king to come upon the bridge, from which
passengers were generally excluded, and the king insisted that Blank
should go, too. Cosmo consented, for Blank seemed to him to have become
quite a changed man, and he found him sometimes full of practical
suggestions.
So it happened that when Captain Arms announced that the Ark was passing
over the ancient city of Carcassonne, Cosmo, the king, De Beauxchamps,
Amos Blank, and the captain were all together on the bridge. When
Captain Arms mentioned their location, King Richard became very
thoughtful. After a time he said musingly:
"Ah! how all these names, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Languedoc, bring back
to me the memory of my namesake of olden times, Richard I. of England.
This, over which we are floating, was the land of the Troubadours, and
Richard was the very Prince of Troubadours. With all his faults England
never had a king like him!"
"Knowing your devotion to peace, which was the reason why I wished you
to be of the original company in the Ark, I am surprised to hear you say
that," said Cosmo.
"Ah!" returned the King, "But Coeur de Lion was a true Englishman, even
in his love of fighting. What would he say if he knew where England lies
to-day? What would he say if he knew the awful fate that has come upon
this fair and pleasant land, from whose poets and singers he learned the
art of minstrelsy?"
"He would say, 'Do not despair,'" replied Cosmo. "' Show the courage of
an Englishman, and fight for your race if you cannot for your country.'"
"But may not England, may not all these lands, emerge again from the
floods?" asked the king.
"Not in our time, not in our children's time," said Cosmo Versál,
thoughtfully shaking his head.
"In the remote future, yes--but I cannot tell how remote. Tibet was once
an appanage of your crown, before China taught the West what war meant,
and in Tibet you may help to found a new empire, but I must tell you
that it will not resemble the empires of the past. Democracy will be its
corner stone, and science its law."
"Then I devote myself to democracy and science," responded King Richard.
"Good! Admirable!" exclaimed Amos Blank and De Beauxchamps
simultaneously, while Captain Arms would probably have patted the king
on the back had not his attention, together with that of the others,
been distracted by a huge whale blowing almost directly in the course of
the Ark.
"Blessed if I ever expected to see a sight like that in these parts!"
exclaimed the captain. "This lifting the ocean up into the sky is
upsetting the order of nature. I'd as soon expect to sight a cachalot on
top of the Rocky Mountains."
"They'll be there, too, before long," said Cosmo.
"I wonder what he's looking for," continued Captain Arms. "He must have
come down from the north. He couldn't have got in through the Pyrenees
or the Sierra Nevadas. He's just navigated right over the whole country
straight down from the English Channel."
The whale sounded at the approach of the Ark, but in a little while he
was blowing again off toward the south, and then the passengers caught
sight of him, and there was great excitement.
He seemed to be of enormous size, and he sent his fountain to an
extraordinary height in the air. On he went, appearing and disappearing,
steering direct for Africa, until, with glasses, they could see his
white plume blowing on the very edge of the horizon.
Not even the reflection that they themselves were sailing over Europe
impressed some of the passengers with so vivid a sense of their
situation as the sight of this monstrous inhabitant of the ocean taking
a view of his new domain.
At night Cosmo continued the concerts and the presentation of the
Shakespearian dramas, and for an hour each afternoon he had a
"conference" in the saloon, at which Theriade and Sir Athelstone were
almost the sole performers.
Their disputes, and Cosmo's efforts to keep the peace, amused for a
while, but at length the audiences diminished until Cosmo, with his
constant companions, the Frenchman, the king, Amos Blank, the three
professors from Washington, and a few other savants were the only
listeners.
But the music and the plays always drew immensely.
Joseph Smith was kept busy most of the time in Cosmo's cabin, copying
plans for the regeneration of mankind.
When they knew that they had finally left the borders of France and were
sailing above the Mediterranean Sea, it became necessary to lay their
course with considerable care. Cosmo decided that the only safe plan
would be to run south of Sardinia, and then keep along between Sicily
and Tunis, and so on toward lower Egypt.
There he intended to seek a way over the mountains north of the Sinai
peninsula into the Syrian desert, from which he could reach the ancient
valley of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf. He would then pass down
the Arabian Sea, swing round India and Ceylon, and, by way of the Bay of
Bengal and the plains of the Ganges and Brahmaputra, approach the
Himalayas.
Captain Arms was rather inclined to follow the Gulf of Suez and the
depression of the Red Sea, but Cosmo was afraid that they would have
difficulty in getting the Ark safely through between the Mt. Sinai peaks
and the Jebel Gharib range.
"Well, you're the commodore," said the captain at the end of the
discussion, "but hang me if I'd not rather follow a sea, where I know
the courses, than go navigating over mountains and deserts in the land
of Shinar. We'll land on top of Jerusalem yet, you'll see!"
Feeling sure of plenty of water under keel, they now made better speed
and De Beauxchamps retired into the _Jules Verne_, and detached it from
the Ark, finding that he could distance the latter easily with the
submersible running just beneath the surface of the water.
"Come up to blow, and take a look around from the bridge, once in a
while," the captain called out to him as he disappeared and the cover
closed over him. The _Jules Verne_ immediately sank out of sight.
They passed round Sardinia, and between the old African coast and
Sicily, and were approaching the Malta Channel when their attention was
drawn to a vast smoke far off toward the north.
"It's Etna in eruption," said Cosmo to the captain.
"A magnificent sight!" exclaimed King Richard, who happened to be on the
bridge.
"Yes, and I'd like to see it nearer," remarked Cosmo, as a wonderful
column of smoke, as black as ink, seemed to shoot up to the very zenith.
"You'd better keep away," Captain Arms said warningly. "There's no good
comes of fooling round volcanoes in a ship."
"Oh, it's safe enough," returned Cosmo. "We can run right over the
southeastern corner of Sicily and get as near as we like. There is
nothing higher than about three thousand feet in that part of the
island, so we'll have a thousand feet to spare."
"But maybe the water has lowered."
"Not more than a foot or two," said Cosmo. "Go ahead."
The captain plainly didn't fancy the adventure, but he obeyed orders,
and the Ark's nose was turned northward, to the delight of many of the
passengers who had become greatly interested when they learned that the
tremendous smoke that they saw came from Mount Etna.
Some of them were nervous, but the more adventurous spirits heartily
applauded Cosmo Versál's design to give them a closer view of so
extraordinary a spectacle. Even from their present distance the sight
was one that might have filled them with terror if they had not already
been through adventures which had hardened their nerves. The smoke was
truly terrific in appearance.
It did not spread low over the sea, but rose in an almost vertical
column, widening out at a height of several miles, until it seemed to
canopy the whole sky toward the north.
It could be seen spinning in immense rolling masses, the outer parts of
which were turned by the sunshine to a dingy brown color, while the main
stem of the column, rising directly from the great crater, was of pitchy
blackness.
An awful roaring was audible, sending a shiver through the Ark. At the
bottom of the mass of smoke, through which gleams of fire were seen to
shoot as they drew nearer, appeared the huge conical form of the
mountain, whose dark bulk still rose nearly seven thousand feet above
the sea that covered the great, beautiful, and historic island beneath
it.
They had got within about twenty miles of the base of the mountain, when
a shout was heard by those on the bridge, and Cosmo and the captain,
looking for its source, saw the _Jules Verne_, risen to the surface a
little to starboard, and De Beauxchamps excitedly signaling to them.
They just made out the words, "Sheer off!" when the Ark, with a groaning
sound, took ground, and they were almost precipitated over the rail of
the bridge.
"Aground again, by ----!" exclaimed Captain Arms, instantly signaling
all astern. "I told you not to go fooling round a volcano."
"This beats me!" cried Cosmo Versál. "I wonder if the island has begun
to rise."
"More likely the sea has begun to fall," growled Captain Arms.
"Do you know where we are?" asked Cosmo.
"We can't be anywhere but on the top of Monte Lauro," replied the
captain.
"But that's only three thousand feet high."
"It's exactly three thousand two hundred and thirty feet," said the
captain. "I haven't navigated the old Mediterranean a hundred times for
nothing."
"But even then we should have near seven hundred and fifty feet to
spare, allowing for the draft of the Ark, and a slight subsidence of the
water."
"Well, you haven't allowed enough, that's plain," said the captain.
"But it's impossible that the flood can have subsided more than seven
hundred feet already."
"I don't care how impossible it is--here we are! We're stuck on a
mountain-top, and if we don't leave our bones on it I'm a porpoise."
By this time the _Jules Verne_ was alongside, and De Beauxchamps shouted
up:
"I was running twenty feet under water, keeping along with the Ark, when
my light suddenly revealed the mountain ahead. I hurried up and tried to
warn you, but it was too late."
"Can't you go down and see where we're fast?" asked Cosmo.
"Certainly; that's just what I was about to propose," replied the
Frenchman, and immediately the submersible disappeared.
After a long time, during which Cosmo succeeded in allaying the fears of
his passengers, the submersible reappeared, and De Beauxchamps made his
report. He said that the Ark was fast near the bow on a bed of shelly
limestone.
He thought that by using the utmost force of the _Jules Verne_, whose
engines were very powerful, in pushing the Ark, combined with the
backing of her own engines, she might be got off.
"Hurry up, then, and get to work," cried Captain Arms. "This flood is on
the ebb, and a few hours more will find us stuck here like a ray with
his saw in a whale's back."
De Beauxchamps's plan was immediately adopted. The _Jules Verne_
descended, and pushed with all her force, while the engines of the Ark
were reversed, and within fifteen minutes they were once more afloat.
Without waiting for a suggestion from Cosmo Versál, the Frenchman
carefully inspected with his searchlight the bottom of the Ark where she
had struck, and when he came to the surface he was able to report that
no serious damage had resulted.
"There's no hole," he said, "only a slight denting of one of the plates,
which will not amount to anything."
Cosmo, however, was not content until he had made a careful inspection
by opening some of the manholes in the inner skin of the vessel. He
found no cause for anxiety, and in an hour the Ark resumed its voyage
eastward, passing over the site of ancient Syracuse.
By this time a change of the wind had sent the smoke from Etna in their
direction, and now it lay thick upon the water, and rendered it, for a
while, impossible to see twenty fathoms from the bridge.
"It's old Etna's dying salute," said Cosmo. "He won't have his head
above water much longer."
"But the flood is going down," exclaimed Captain Arms.
"Yes, and that puzzles me. There must have been an enormous absorption
of water into the interior, far greater than I ever imagined possible.
But wait until the nucleus of the nebula strikes us! In the meantime,
this lowering of the water renders it necessary for us to make haste, or
we may not get over the mountains round Suez before the downpour
recommences."
As soon as they escaped from the smoke of Etna they ran full speed ahead
again, and, keeping well south of Crete, at length, one morning they
found themselves in the latitude and longitude of Alexandria.
The weather was still superb, and Cosmo was very desirous of getting a
line on the present height of the water. He thought that he could make a
fair estimate of this from the known elevation of the mountains about
Sinai. Accordingly they steered in that direction, and on the way passed
directly over the site of Cairo.
Then the thought of the pyramids came to them all, and De Beauxchamps,
who had come aboard the Ark, and who was always moved by sentimental
considerations, proposed that they should spend a few hours here, while
he descended to inspect the condition in which the flood had left those
mighty monuments.
Cosmo not only consented to this, but he even offered to be a member of
the party. The Frenchman was only too glad to have his company. Cosmo
Versál descended into the submersible after instructing Captain Arms to
hover in the neighborhood.
The passengers and crew of the Ark, with expressions of anxiety that
would have pleased their subject if he had heard them, watched the
_Jules Verne_ disappear into the depths beneath.
The submersible was gone so long that the anxiety of those aboard the
Ark deepened into alarm, and finally became almost panic. They had never
before known how much they depended upon Cosmo Versál.
He was their only reliance, their only hope. He alone had known how to
keep up their spirits, and when he had assured them, as he so often did,
that the flooding would surely recommence, they had hardly been
terrified because of their unexpressed confidence that, let come what
would, his great brain would find a way out for them.
Now he was gone, down into the depths of this awful sea, where their
imaginations pictured a thousand unheard-of perils, and perhaps they
would never see him again! Without him they knew themselves to be
helpless. Even Captain Arms almost lost his nerve.
The strong good sense of Amos Blank alone saved them from the utter
despair that began to seize upon them as hour after hour passed without
the reappearance of the _Jules Verne_.
His experience had taught him how to keep a level head in an emergency,
and how to control panics. With King Richard always at his side, he went
about among the passengers and fairly laughed them out of their fears.
Without discussing the matter at all, he convinced them, by the simple
force of his own apparent confidence, that they were worrying themselves
about nothing.
He was, in fact, as much alarmed as any of the others, but he never
showed it. He started a rumor, after six hours had elapsed, that Cosmo
himself had said that they would probably require ten or twelve hours
for their exploration.
Cosmo had said nothing of the kind, but Blank's prevarication had its
intended effect, and fortunately, before the lapse of another six hours,
there was news from under the sea.
And what was happening in the mysterious depths below the Ark? What had
so long detained the submersible?
The point where the descent was made had been so well chosen that the
_Jules Verne_ almost struck the apex of the Great Pyramid as it
approached the bottom. The water was somewhat muddy from the sands of
the desert, and the searchlight streamed through a yellowish medium,
recalling the "golden atmosphere" for which Egypt had been celebrated.
But, nevertheless, the light was so powerful that they could see
distinctly at a distance of several rods.
The pyramid appeared to have been but little injured, although the
tremendous tidal wave that had swept up the Nile during the invasion of
the sea before the downpour began had scooped out the sand down to the
bed-rock on all sides.
Finding nothing of particular interest in a circuit of the pyramid, they
turned in the direction of the Great Sphinx.
This, too, had been excavated to its base, and it now stood up to its
full height, and a terrible expression seemed to have come into its
enigmatic features.
Cosmo wished to get a close look at it, and they ran the submersible
into actual contact with the forepart of the gigantic statue, just under
the mighty chin.
While they paused there, gazing out of the front window of the vessel, a
bursting sound was heard, followed by a loud crash, and the _Jules
Verne_ was shaken from stem to stern. Every man of them threw himself
against the sides of the vessel, for the sound came from overhead, and
they had an instinctive notion that the roof was being crushed down upon
them.
A second resounding crash was heard, shaking them like an earthquake,
and the little vessel rolled partly over upon its side.
"We are lost!" cried De Beauxchamps. "The Sphinx is falling upon us! We
shall be buried alive here!"
A third crash came over their heads, and the submersible seemed to sink
beneath them as if seeking to avoid the fearful blows that were rained
upon its roof.
Still, the stout curved ceiling, strongly braced within, did not yield,
although they saw, with affright, that it was bulged inward, and some of
the braces were torn from their places. But no water came in.
Stunned by the suddenness of the accident, for a few moments they did
nothing but cling to such supports as were within their reach, expecting
that another blow would either force the vessel completely over or break
the roof in.
But complete silence now reigned, and the missiles from above ceased to
strike the submersible. The searchlight continued to beam out of the
fore end of the vessel, and following its broad ray with their eyes,
they uttered one cry of mingled amazement and fear, and then stared
without a word at such a spectacle as the wildest imagination could not
have pictured.
The front of the Sphinx had disappeared, and the light, penetrating
beyond the place where it had stood, streamed upon the face and breast
of an enormous black figure, seated on a kind of throne, and staring
into their faces with flaming eyes which at once fascinated and
terrified them.
To their startled imaginations the eyes seemed to roll in their sockets,
and flashes of fire to dart from them. Their expression was menacing and
terrifying beyond belief. At the same time the aspect of the face was so
majestic that they cowered before it.
The cheekbones were high, massive, and polished until they shone in the
light; the nose and chin were powerful in their contours; and the brow
wore an intimidating frown. It seemed to the awed onlookers as if they
had sacrilegiously burst into the sanctuary of an offended god.
But, after a minute or two of stupefaction, they thought again of the
desperateness of their situation, and turned from staring at the strange
idol to consider what they should do.
The fact that no water was finding its way into the submersible somewhat
reassured them, but the question now arose whether it could be withdrawn
from its position.
They had no doubt that the front of the Sphinx, saturated by the water
after the thousands of years that it had stood there, exposed to the
desiccating influences of the sun and the desert sands, had suddenly
disintegrated, and fallen upon them, pinning their vessel fast under the
fragments of the huge head.
De Beauxchamps tried the engines and found that they had no effect in
moving the _Jules Verne_. He tried again and again by reversing to
disengage the vessel, but it would not stir. Then they debated the only
other means of escape.
"Although I have levium life-suits," said the Frenchman, "and although
the top of the _Jules Verne_ can probably be opened, for the door seems
not to have been touched, yet the instant it is removed the water will
rush in, and it will be impossible to pump out the vessel."
"Are your life-suits so arranged that they will permit of moving the
limbs?" demanded Cosmo.
"Certainly they are."
"And can they be weighted so as to remain at the bottom?"
"They are arranged for that," responded De Beauxchamps.
"And can the weights be detached by the inmates without permitting the
entrance of water?"
"It can be done, although a very little water might enter during the
operation."
"Then," said Cosmo, "let us put on the suits, open the door, take out
the ballast so that, if released, the submersible will rise to the
surface through its own buoyancy, and then see if we cannot loosen the
vessel from outside."
It was a suggestion whose boldness made even the owner and constructor
of the _Jules Verne_ stare for a moment, but evidently it was the only
possible way in which the vessel might be saved; and knowing that, in
case of failure, they could themselves float to the surface after
removing the weights from the bottom of the suits, they unanimously
decided to try Cosmo Versál's plan.
It was terribly hard work getting the ballast out of the submersible,
working as they had to do under water, which rushed in as soon as the
door was opened, and in their awkward suits, which were provided with
apparatus for renewing the supply of oxygen; but at last they succeeded.
Then they clambered outside, and labored desperately to release the
vessel from the huge fragments of stone that pinned it down. Finally,
exhausted by their efforts, and unable to make any impression, they gave
up.
De Beauxchamps approached Cosmo and motioned to him that it was time to
ascend to the surface and leave the _Jules Verne_ to her fate. But Cosmo
signaled back that he wished first to examine more closely the strange
statue that was gazing upon them in the still unextinguished beam of the
searchlight with what they might now have regarded as a look of mockery.
The others, accordingly, waited while Cosmo Versál, greatly impeded by
his extraordinary garment, clambered up to the front of the figure.
There he saw something which redoubled his amazement.
On the broad breast he saw a representation of a world overwhelmed with
a deluge and encircling it was what he instantly concluded to be the
picture of a nebula. Underneath, in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, with
which Cosmo was familiar, was an inscription in letters of gold, which
could only be translated thus:
I Come Again--
At the End of Time.
"Great Heavens!" he said to himself. "It is a prophecy of the Second
Deluge!"
[Illustration: "IT IS A PROPHECY OF THE SECOND DELUGE."]
He continued to gaze, amazed, at the figure and the inscription, until
De Beauxchamps clambered to his side and indicated to him that it was
necessary that they should ascend without further delay, showing him by
signs that the air-renewing apparatus would give out.
With a last lingering look at the figure, Cosmo imitated the others by
detaching the weights from below his feet, and a minute later they were
all shooting rapidly toward the surface of the sea, De Beauxchamps, as
he afterwards declared, uttering a prayer for the repose of the _Jules
Verne_.
The imaginary time which Amos Blank had fixed as the limit set by Cosmo
for the return from the depths was nearly gone, and he was beginning to
cast about for some other invention to quiet the rising fears of the
passengers, when a form became visible which made the eyes of Captain
Arms, the first to catch sight of it, start from their sockets. He
rubbed them, and looked again--but there it was!
A huge head, human in outline, with bulging, glassy eyes, popped
suddenly out of the depths, followed by the upper part of a gigantic
form which was no less suggestive of a monstrous man, and which
immediately began to wave its arms!
Before the captain could collect his senses another shot to the surface,
and then another and another, until there were seven of them floating
and awkwardly gesticulating within a radius of a hundred fathoms on the
starboard side of the vessel.
The whole series of apparitions did not occupy more than a quarter of a
minute in making their appearance.
By the time the last had sprung into sight Captain Arms had recovered
his wits, and he shouted an order to lower a boat, at the same time
running down from the bridge to superintend the operation. Many of the
crew and passengers had in the meantime seen the strange objects, and
they were thrown into a state of uncontrollable excitement.
"It's them!" shouted the captain over his shoulder, in response to a
hundred inquiries all put at once, and forgetting his grammar in the
excitement. "They've come up in diving-suits."
Amos Blank comprehended the situation at once; and while the captain was
getting out the boat, he explained matters to the crowd.
"The submersible must be lost," he said quietly, "but the men have
escaped, so there is no great harm done. It does great credit to that
Frenchman that he should have been prepared for such an emergency. Those
are levium suits, and I've no doubt that he has got hydrogen somewhere
inside to increase their buoyancy."
Within a quarter of an hour all the seven had been picked up by the
boat, and it returned to the Ark. The strange forms were lifted aboard
with tackle to save time; and as the first one reached the deck, it
staggered about on its big limbs for a moment.
Then the metallic head opened, and the features of De Beauxchamps were
revealed.
Before anybody could assist him he had freed himself from the suit, and
immediately he began to aid the others. In ten minutes they all stood
safe and sound before the astonished eyes of the spectators. Cosmo had
suffered from the confinement, and he sank upon a seat, but De
Beauxchamps seemed to be the most affected. With downcast look he said,
sadly shaking his head:
"The poor _Jules Verne_! I shall never see her again."
"What has happened?" demanded Captain Arms.
"It was the Father of Horror," muttered Cosmo Versál.
"The Father of Horror--what's that?"
"Why, the Great Sphinx," returned Cosmo, gradually recovering his
breath. "Didn't you know that that was what the Arabs always called the
Sphinx?
"It was that which fell upon the submersible--split right open and
dropped its great chin upon us as we were sailing round it, and pinned
us fast. But the sight that we saw when the Sphinx fell apart! Tell
them, De Beauxchamps."
The Frenchman took up the narrative, while, with breathless attention,
passengers and crew crowded about to listen to his tale.
"When we got to the bottom," he said, "we first inspected the Great
Pyramid, going all round it with our searchlight. It was in good
condition, although the tide that had come up the Nile with the invasion
of the sea had washed away the sands to a great depth all about. When we
had completed the circuit of the pyramid, we saw the Sphinx, which had
been excavated by the water so that it stood up to its full height.
"We ran close around it, and when we were under the chin the whole
thing, saturated by the water, which no doubt caused an expansion
within--you know how many thousand years the gigantic idol had been
sun-dried--dropped apart.
"The submersible was caught by the falling mass, and partly crushed. We
labored for hours and hours to release the vessel, but there was little
that we could do. It almost broke my heart to think of leaving the
_Jules Verne_ there, but it had to be done.
"At last we put on the levium floating-suits, opened the cover at the
top, and came to the surface. The last thing I saw was the searchlight,
still burning, and illuminating the most marvelous spectacle that human
eyes ever gazed upon."
"Oh, what was it? What was it?" demanded a score of voices in chorus.
"It is impossible to describe it. It was the secret of old Egypt
revealed at last--at the end of the world!"
"But what was it like?"
"Like a glimpse into the remotest corridors of time," interposed Cosmo
Versál, with a curious look in his eyes.
"Some of you may have heard that long ago holes were driven through the
Sphinx in the hope of discovering something hidden inside, but they
missed the secret. The old god kept it well until his form fell apart.
We were pinned so close to it that we could not help seeing it, even in
the excitement of our situation.
"It had always been supposed that the Sphinx was the symbol of
something--it _was_, and more than a symbol! The explorers away back in
the nineteenth century who thought that they had found something
mysterious in the Great Pyramid went wide of the mark when they
neglected the Sphinx."
"But what did you see?"
_"We saw the prophecy of the Second Deluge,"_ said Cosmo, rising to his
feet, his piercing eyes aflame. "In the heart of the huge mass,
approachable, no doubt, by some concealed passage in the rock beneath,
known only to the priests, stood a gigantic idol, carved out of black
marble.
"It had enormous eyes of some gem that blazed in the electric beam from
the searchlight, with huge golden ears and beard, and on its breast was
a representation of a drowning world, with a great nebula sweeping over
it."
"It might have been a history instead of a prophecy," suggested one of
the listening savants. "Perhaps it only told what had once happened."
"No," replied Cosmo, shaking his big head. "It was a prophecy. Under it,
in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, which I recognized, was an
inscription which could only be translated by the words, 'I come
again--at the end of time!'"
There was a quality in Cosmo Versál's voice which made the hearers
shudder with horror.
"Yes," he added. "It comes again! The prophecy was hidden, but science
had its means of revelation, too, if the world would but have listened
to its voice. Even without the prophecy I have saved the flower of
mankind."