“They,” replied Thoth, “are destined to wake only when the task of our race is on the eve of completion, to take part in our final triumph, and that is no less than the conquest of the whole earth.”
“Tell me,” she said, fascinated by a weird foreboding of horror, “how this can be?”
“The task imposed upon us by the supreme will,” he replied, “has been twofold. In the first place, we have had to make perfect mechanical contrivances, by which we can journey with incredible speed through the air. That this has been accomplished thou thyself hast been a witness; and for each of the sleepers a car has been prepared which surpasses in speed the flight of birds and the rush of the storm.”
Daphne recalled in all its sublimity her own aërial journey, and she could not doubt the truth of Thoth’s words.
Then he continued—“But a harder task was ours, and that also has been at length completed. We have now at our disposal the means of destroying every living being on the face of the earth. The day is near at hand when these sleepers are to become the messengers of death. The earth shall be made desolate, and in time repeopled from this city. In a few hundred years all the world shall be inhabited by many races and classes of men, all perfect in their kind, and all governed by the highest reason.”
Then Daphne cried out in horror—“Do ye intend to destroy all people living except those in this place?”
“That,” said he, “was the design of the first Thoth, and had the means been ready fifty years ago, such would have been the case undoubtedly. But, as I have explained to thee, I have formed the opinion that in his endeavour to exterminate love in the ruling class, the first Thoth made an error. Accordingly, we must save some of the best women of thy race, and if thou wilt thou shalt have the selection. Now thou canst judge of the truth of my promises, and I will make one promise more. Know that I have penetrated deeper than my ancestor into the mysteries of life and death, and thou and I can live in all the fulness of life for hundreds of years. Thus thou shalt be as a goddess ruling over the earth. Tell me, Daphne, if the prospect does not surpass thy dreams?”
He spoke with all the enthusiasm of a man who is on the eve of accomplishing a most honourable deed.
But Daphne answered him, glowing with indignation and anger—
“Thy projects seem to me abominable, and unutterably loathsome.”