“Oh months and months—I can’t count time.”
“Neither can I. Days pass—we grow tired and we sleep, only to wake to another day like the last, like every day here.”
“How far have you got with the translation, Dez?”
“Nearly to the end.”
“Splendid. What do you make of it?”
“Just what we expected—It is a very corrupted version of part of the Pentateuch.”
“How much of it?”
“Nearly all Genesis—a minute portion of Exodus—and Leviticus.”
Alan gave a satisfied sigh. “That’s splendid,” he remarked. Many months had passed since they had made the discovery that the language of the underworld was a patois Hebrew, and quickly and diligently they set to work to learn it. They first spelt the sounds and wrote them down, and then tried to translate them into Hebrew where it was at all possible.
Very shortly after the rescue of the high priest’s daughter and only child, as the maid proved to be, a house was placed at the boys’ disposal, and they gladly left the protection of Kaweeka, and lived together with a couple of servants, who looked after them. They were free to go out among the people, and they began to feel almost happy. With the aid of a few words they picked up they asked the high priest for “reading” and he had given them copies of the “Kadetha” which proved to be the Bible of these strange people.