“That is the story of Mellenda, and of how he left us, and of what befell the proud city of Manoa after his departure. When he will come back we know not; but some old prophecies obtain amongst the people according to which the time of his return is very near, if it is not indeed overpast.”
“His return!” said Jack. “You surely would not have us understand that you expect this venerable old fossil to return, in the flesh, to trouble himself about the present state of the descendants of his ungrateful people?”
Zonella stared.
“Why, of course we do!” she answered. “There is not a man or a woman—scarcely a child of a few years old—that has not been taught to believe in it.”
“I should think so,” Ulama exclaimed, almost indignantly. “We all know it will be so; we believe it absolutely.”
“But,” said Jack, “how long ago do you reckon all this took place?”
“About two thousand years,” Zonella replied, after a brief, but apparently careful, calculation, counting up on her fingers.
“Two thousand years! And you—you two sensible young people—tell us you expect to see this badly-treated, but respectable, old gentleman turn up again, just much as usual, I suppose, after two thousand years!”
“Why not?” Ulama asked. “We have Coryon and Sanaima, both said to be older than that.”
“Yes—but”—looking at Leonard—“I fancy that is like the Pharoahs of old, you know, where there was always a Pharoah on the throne, though kings were born and died. It would be easy to keep up a farce of that sort where, as here, the ‘High Priest,’ black or white, is so seldom visible—always in the background.”