"You speak wisely, Priest, but the Power you name may use instruments to accomplish its decrees.I am such an instrument.""Quite so," said Bastin, "just like anybody else.You have more knowledge of the truth than I thought.But pray, how did you destroy the world?""Using my wisdom to direct the forces that are at work in the heart of this great globe, I drowned it with a deluge, causing one part to sink and another to rise, also changes of climate which completed the work.""That's quite right," exclaimed Bastin delightedly."We know all about the Deluge, only you are not mentioned in connection with the matter.A man, Noah, had to do with it when he was six hundred years old.""Six hundred?" said Oro."That is not very old.I myself had seen more than a thousand years when I lay down to sleep.""A thousand!" remarked Bastin, mildly interested."That is unusual, though some of these mighty men of renown we know lived over nine hundred."Here Bickley snorted and exclaimed:
"Nine hundred moons," he means.
"I did not know Noah," went on Oro."Perhaps he lived after my time and caused some other local deluge.Is there anything else you wish to ask me before I leave you that I may study this map writing?""Yes," said Bastin."Why were you allowed to drown your world?""Because it was evil, Priest, and disobeyed me and the Power Iserve."
"Oh! thank you," said Bastin, "that fits in exactly.It was just the same in Noah's time.""I pray that it is not just the same now," said Oro, rising.
"To-morrow we will return, or if I do not who have much that Imust do, the lady my daughter will return and speak with you further."He departed into the cave, Yva following at a little distance.
I accompanied her as far as the mouth of the cave, as did Tommy, who all this time had been sitting contentedly upon the hem of her gorgeous robe, quite careless of its immemorial age, if it was immemorial and not woven yesterday, a point on which Ihad no information.
"Lady Yva," I said, "did I rightly understand the Lord Oro to say that he was a thousand years old?""Yes, O Humphrey, and really he is more, or so I think.""Then are you a thousand years old also?" I asked, aghast.
"No, no," she replied, shaking her head, "I am young, quite young, for I do not count my time of sleep.""Certainly you look it," I said."But what, Lady Yva, do you mean by young?"She answered my question by another.
"What age are your women when they are as I am?""None of our women were ever quite like you, Lady Yva.Yet, say from twenty-five to thirty years of age.""Ah! I have been counting and now I remember.When my father sent me to sleep I was twenty-seven years old.No, I will not deceive you, I was twenty-seven years and three moons." Then, saying something to the effect that she would return, she departed, laughing a little in a mischievous way, and, although Idid not observe this till afterwards, Tommy departed with her.
When I repeated what she had said to Bastin and Bickley, who were standing at a distance straining their ears and somewhat aggrieved, the former remarked:
"If she is twenty-seven her father must have married late in life, though of course it may have been a long while before he had children."Then Bickley, who had been suppressing himself all this while, went off like a bomb.
