"Hyne,.C.J.Cutcliffe.-.Lost.Continent.-.Lostc10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hyne C J Cutcliffe)

four o'clock already? It takes longer than you think climbing down
to each of these caves, and then getting up again for the next."

Coppinger spread his coat on the ground, and wrapped the lump
of sheets with tender care, but would not allow it to be tied with
a rope for fear of breaking more of the edges. He insisted on
carrying it himself too, and did so for the larger part of the way
to Santa Brigida, and it was only when he was within an ace of
dropping himself with sheer tiredness that he condescended to let
me take my turn. He was tolerably ungracious about it too. "I
suppose you may as well carry the stuff," he snapped, "seeing that
after all it's your own."

Personally, when we got to the fonda, I had as good a dinner
as was procurable, and a bottle of that old Canary wine, and turned
into bed after a final pipe. Coppinger dined also, but I have
reason to believe he did not sleep much. At any rate I found him
still poring over the find next morning, and looking very heavy-
eyed, but brimming with enthusiasm.

"Do you know," he said, "that you've blundered upon the most
valuable historical manuscript that the modern world has ever yet
seen? Of course, with your clumsy way of getting it out, you've
done an infinity of damage. For instance, those top sheets you
shelled away and spoiled, contained probably an absolutely unique
account of the ancient civilisation of Yucatan."

"Where's that, anyway?"

"In the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. It's all ruins to-day,
but once it was a very prosperous colony of the Atlanteans."

"Never heard of them. Oh yes, I have though. They were the
people Herodotus wrote about, didn't he? But I thought they were
mythical."

"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