“You tell us, Lady Yva,” I said, “that you slept, or should have slept for two hundred and fifty thousand years.”  Here Bastin opened his eyes.  “If that was so, where was your mind all this time?”

“If by my mind you mean spirit, O Humphrey, I have to answer that at present I do not know for certain.  I think, however, that it dwelt elsewhere, perhaps in other bodies on the earth, or some different earth.  At least, I know that my heart is very full of memories which as yet I cannot unroll and read.”

“Great heavens, this is madness!” said Bickley.

“In the great heavens,” she answered slowly, “there are many things which you, poor man, would think to be madness, but yet are truth and perfect wisdom.  These things, or some of them, soon I shall hope to show you.”

“Do if you can,” said Bickley.

“Why not?” interrupted Bastin.  “I think the lady’s remarks quite reasonable.  It seems to me highly improbable if really she has slept for two hundred and fifty thousand years, which, of course, I can’t decide, that an immortal spirit would be allowed to remain idle for so long.  That would be wallowing in a bed of idleness and shirking its duty which is to do its work.  Also, as she tells you, Bickley, you are not half so clever as you think you are in your silly scepticism, and I have no doubt that there are many things in other worlds which would expose your ignorance, if only you could see them.”

At this moment Oro turned and called his daughter.  She went at once, saying: 

“Come, strangers, and you shall learn.”

So we followed her.

“Daughter,” he said, speaking in Orofenan, I think that we might understand, “ask these strangers to bring one of those lamps of theirs that by the light of it I may study these writings.”

“Perhaps this may serve,” said Bickley, suddenly producing an electric torch from his pocket and flashing it into his face.  It was his form of repartee for all he had suffered at the hands of this incomprehensible pair.  Let me say at once that it was singularly successful.  Perhaps the wisdom of the ages in which Oro flourished had overlooked so small a matter as electric torches, or perhaps he did not expect to meet with them in these degenerate days.  At any rate for the first and last time in my intercourse with him I saw the god, or lord—­the native word bears either meaning—­Oro genuinely astonished.  He started and stepped back, and for a moment or two seemed a little frightened.  Then muttering something as to the cleverness of this light-producing instrument, he motioned to his daughter to take it from Bickley and hold it in a certain position.  She obeyed, and in its illumination he began to study the engraved plates, holding one of them in either hand.

After a while he gave me one of the plates to hold, and with his disengaged hand pointed successively to the constellation of Orion, to the stars Castor, Pollux, Aldebaran, Rigel, the Pleiades, Sirius and others which with my very limited knowledge I could not recognise offhand.  Then on the plate which I held, he showed us those same stars and constellations, checking them one by one.