I am an explorer, by name Harte Manville. My face is badly scarred, one eye is missing. My hair is grizzled, but I am still strong and active.
Ten long years ago I had first heard that some works by the storied races of the Gods still existed, deep in earth. While reading a tale by Brandoch Daha called "The Womb of Tanit" I had realized that mysterious and perhaps immortal life might still exist in the bowels of old Mother Earth. I understood from his words that some of my experiences which I had explained to myself as hallucinations induced by privation had been actual occurrences of immense significance. I mused that it was an infinite shame such sincere and top-rank research minds of earth had to disguise their work as fiction to get it before the general mind at all.
Overcome with curiosity as to Daha's reactions to my own experiences, I was curious too as to what he might have to tell a man who knew some of the truths of the underworld. How he might loosen up and talk when he met a man who knew which small parts of his stories were fiction and which great parts were not. I sought him out and called upon him. I was not wrong. Mr. Daha was very glad to see me.
During the course of our night-long conversation our discussion touched on the subjects of the secret surviving worship of the ancient Moon Goddess, Tanit, and details of my expedition to plumb the depths of the bottomless hole in the Cave of the Bats in Virginia. The fact that we both knew that immortal beings have existed, do now exist, and will continue to exist, brought up naturally enough the age-old question:
"What is the Secret which keeps such life from dying as other life does?"
I remember his words:
"There have been many things mistaken for the Secret of Life. The phrase should mean 'continue existence without aging'. All right, this time it does. But you will have to grasp with your head firmly, not sleepily, to see the big meaning that can lie in simple phrases.
"Since before the flood, there exist in legends stories of those creatures, the Gods, who were immortal. Also tales of those other kind, of scholars who learned the secrets of immortality; tales of magi, of genis, of peris, of fairies, of immortal witch-maids, of sorcerers, of enchanters. An enormous amount of smoke comes out of antiquity about 'the secret of life' which in modern words means 'how to exclude the poisons that cause age from the human body.' All that antique smoke indicates very strongly that once that true fire of wisdom from Prometheus existed; that storied Atlantis, full of immortals, was; that the Gods did tread earth, sinking ankle deep in solid rock.
"Let us go over that possibility between us. First, we will look at the beginning of life. Why is it young, and not old, like its mother? The womb of the mother holds the flesh of the baby, it is young, she is often aged. Why is this flesh not also old? Because, interposed between her body and the embryo are the walls of the womb. Everything that goes into the baby must pass through the food tube which passes through a large filtering organ called the placenta. Obviously some poison is removed. The baby's flesh is growing at a swift rate, the flesh of the aging mother is shrinking; it is more disintegrant than integrant."
He paused. We both had a drink, he lit a cigar; but before I could get going he started on.
"I once translated an ancient German work by Bokbe. It was a translation by him of a very old Arabian work, which was in turn from the Egyptian. God knows how old the original is. I will read you my translation."
He got up, pulled a pile of manuscripts from a drawer, and selecting one, began:
"After Atlantis sank beneath the blue roll of ocean sea, there still existed scattered about earth similar cities to Atlantis. These cities were not surface cities but were buried beneath the earth in great and deep caves to protect them from the deadly sun which they knew to be the cause of age! But now the cities were empty and dead of any intelligent life; their mighty corridors echoed to no laughing feet of the young immortal they had once bred into the storied races of the Gods. Instead, there slunk about their streets the pariahs, the lepers, the outcasts and criminals of the upper world, fled from the too frequent anger of the ignorant men of the surface. They had found a refuge in these secret lost cities.
