All this was so plausible that the Professors gave up their permit without a word but thanks.  They bundled their curiosities hurriedly into “the poor foreign devil’s” blanket, reserving a more careful packing till they were out of the preserves.  They wished my father a very good night, and all success with his quails in the morning; they thanked him again for the care he had taken of them in the matter of the landrails, and Panky even went so far as to give him a few Musical Bank coins, which he gratefully accepted.  They then started off in the direction of Sunch’ston.

My father gathered up the remaining quails, some of which he meant to eat in the morning, while the others he would throw away as soon as he could find a safe place.  He turned towards the mountains, but before he had gone a dozen yards he heard a voice, which he recognised as Panky’s, shouting after him, and saying—­

“Mind you do not forget the true reading of the Sunchild’s prayer.”

“You are an old fool,” shouted my father in English, knowing that he could hardly be heard, still less understood, and thankful to relieve his feelings.

CHAPTER V:  MY FATHER MEETS A SON, OF WHOSE EXISTENCE HE WAS IGNORANT; AND STRIKES A BARGAIN WITH HIM

The incidents recorded in the two last chapters had occupied about two hours, so that it was nearly midnight before my father could begin to retrace his steps and make towards the camp that he had left that morning.  This was necessary, for he could not go any further in a costume that he now knew to be forbidden.  At this hour no ranger was likely to meet him before he reached the statues, and by making a push for it he could return in time to cross the limits of the preserves before the Professors’ permit had expired.  If challenged, he must brazen it out that he was one or other of the persons therein named.

Fatigued though he was, he reached the statues as near as he could guess, at about three in the morning.  What little wind there had been was warm, so that the tracks, which the Professors must have seen shortly after he had made them, had disappeared.  The statues looked very weird in the moonlight but they were not chanting.

While ascending, he pieced together the information he had picked up from the Professors.  Plainly, the Sunchild, or child of the sun, was none other than himself, and the new name of Coldharbour was doubtless intended to commemorate the fact that this was the first town he had reached in Erewhon.  Plainly, also, he was supposed to be of superhuman origin—­his flight in the balloon having been not unnaturally believed to be miraculous.  The Erewhonians had for centuries been effacing all knowledge of their former culture; archaeologists, indeed, could still glean a little from museums, and from volumes hard to come by, and still harder to understand; but archaeologists were few, and even though they had made researches (which they may or may not have done), their labours had never reached the masses.  What wonder, then, that the mushroom spawn of myth, ever present in an atmosphere highly charged with ignorance, had germinated in a soil so favourably prepared for its reception?