I: “Easier said than done.”
Hopkins: “There’s no chance to skip out up here in this everlasting daylight.”
I: “Pshaw! That isn’t it. Think of the journey back; think of the ice pack.”
Hopkins: “If we could only wireless back for a relief expedition.”
I: “If.”
We turned back, gloomy and dispirited. When we reached Radiumopolis we found King Hlmath Bjornsen thundering from the Capitol and Goritz—gone.
CHAPTER XIV
Goritz’s Death and the Gold Makers
I skip the coronation and enthronement of King Hlmath Bjornsen of Krocker Land in Radiumopolis, because the King asked me to do so in my last interview with him. He wishes to reserve its features for his great book. He thinks that the ceremonies, taken in connection with many other considerations prove that the Krocker Land culture ties together a number of ancestral ethnic cults, and that there is good reason to believe that the mixture of semi-savage practices, the archaic or nepionic status of society, the advanced language, the peculiar acquisitions of the patrician class, their specialized though limited knowledge, the vitality of the serpent-monster worship taken in connection with the biological fact of a partial, at any rate, survival of Mesozoic conditions in limited topographic basins, as seen in the Saurian Sea, in the chain of swamps beyond the Pool of Oblation, and especially in the undeniable and formidable fact of the existence of the Crocodilo-Python, an animal quite unlike any known saurian, indicate what he terms the concatenated debris of a series of overlaid civilizations and that its complete interpretation will carry us back to the probable origin of Homo sapiens and the Garden of Eden, restricted of course to a purely naturalistic conception. (Erickson took a long breath, and then—he was off again.)
The geological features of this polar pit, its stepped or terraced conformation, the extraordinary igneous activity revealed beneath it and the disclosure herein of immense endomorphic radium deposits, combined with unparalleled meteorological phenomena are also reserved by the Professor, the King, for personal and elaborate treatment. With the especial opportunities now available the Prof—the King (It’s difficult for me to be consistent in alluding to my old friend) will prosecute inquiry, so far as his official duties permit, but through me, Mr. Link, he most fervently implores scientific recognition of the facts so far recorded in this narrative, and immediate scientific interposition in his behalf and cooperation for his assistance. (Erickson again paused and allowed the full meaning of his elongated statements to penetrate my purely secular mind.)