"That can be if it is the fever, yes! he will remember again. But his head have been hurt, it is to be seen, that too may make forget, for months even a year!"
"Forty years?" suggested the Consul tentatively.
"Ah, you joke, my friend!" replied Santos, "that would not be possible, he is surely not that age himself?"
And laughing, as he thought, at the Consul's joke, the little man gave me a few instructions that I did not even hear, and left us.
And the Consul, without a word, handed me a newspaper, and a glance at it was enough to show that he at least had made no mistake, for it was dated September, 1900.
And now I was like to go crazy again, with the shock and bewilderment. Forty years! A lifetime lost. My friends would be dead, or old, old people who had long forgotten me. Of what use would all this wealth be to me an old and forgotten friendless man. Old! yes, I must be an old, old man myself. And yet, now the fever had gone, I felt strong and vigorous indeed, the doctor had said that I was exceptionally strong and that I was not forty and the Consul too had said I was a "young, strong man!"
Surely this was pure hallucination . . . but no! the paper was real enough. And turning it over I saw that indeed I had slept a lifetime, for although it was in my own tongue, all it referred to was absolutely strange to me. New inventions, places I had never heard of, nations even that were unknown to me; it was as though I read of a new world, as, uncomprehending, I glanced through this first newspaper that I had seen for forty years.
The Consul had sat watching me in silence. He saw my agitation, and realized something of what I felt, for putting out his hand and grasping mine he said, kindly: "It must be a blow . . . friends all dead, eh? Well, I'm your friend, anyhow . . . and you'll remember later. Why, man, you must get that forty years out of your mind you are surely younger than myself, and will be as strong as a bull in a week or two. Try and sleep, my friend; you'll remember better to-morrow!"
But well I knew that the memory of those lost years would never return to me. "Eat and forget forget!" The words were ringing in my ears even now, as though spoken but yesterday. I had but to close my eyes and the scene of deluge and destruction, there beneath the Snake, came as a vivid picture before them and the eyes and voice of the woman that had bade me forget were with me always. Those burning eyes! They blotted out every other vision even that of the woman that had waited. God help me, I could not even remember the semblance of her face always those eyes of flame came between us. And God help her! If she had waited all these years she would be an old, old woman but forty years! Surely she was dead!
When had it been, that awful sleep of mine that had blotted out nearly half a century, and left me, an anachronism, an outcast a "young, strong man" still, whilst my schoolmates must be old, toothless gossips or long since dead and forgotten? It must have been in the crater where I had fallen that all these years had passed!