self, they are—if they are at all—beyond the inaccessible dunes."
"Inaccessible only to the ignorant, but not to those who know. They were not inaccessible to the scribe who wrote this parchment over three thousand years after the great emigration into the wilderness."
"Do you maintain then," I said still incredulously, "that the writer of parchment No. 2 actually set out on a desert journey and verified the truth, as set forth in parchment No. 1?"
"How he came possessed of the original papyrus he does not very clearly say, but, as soon as he had deciphered it, he started forth across the Libyan desert, and crossed those inaccessible dunes, using those landmarks which are clearly explained on the old Egyptian document, and which proved, in every instance, to be absolutely correct in indicating a way across the impassable wilderness."
"Well! but he never got there."
"That we do not know.… His MS. ends abruptly, and …"
"Like Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym, eh, old Girlie? It is a way narrators of adventure have."
"His is not a narration; he set out to verify certain facts. He verified them. We do not know what caused him to turn back in sight of goal."
"Hm! that turning back in sight of goal does not carry conviction to the mind of an obstinate Britisher."
"No!… Nothing would deter us, Mark, old chap, would it?" he said calmly. "We will not turn back."
"We?"
I jumped up in bewildered amazement, the object of Hugh's excitement, of his patient explanations to my dull intellect, suddenly dawning on me. I gave a long
