Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1902-04-30
Yet, though I was tired beyond

Yet, though I was tired beyond
words, for long enough sleep would
not visit me. YEARLY stared out over
the oily sun-lit waters. No blur Of
LAID met the eye. The ring of ocean
was unbroken on every side, and over.
head the vault of heaven remained I'M
changed. The bosom of the deep was
Uttered with the poor wreckage of
Atlantis, to remind one, if there had
been a need, that what had come
about was fact, and not some horrid
dream. Trees, squared timber, a
smashed and upturned boat of hides,
and here and there the rounded corpse
of a man or beast shouldered over the
swells, and kept convoy with our ark
as she drifted on in charge of the gods
and the current.
But sleep came to me at last, and
dropped off into Inconsistencies,
holding the hand of Nais in mine, and
when next 1 woke found her open
eyed also and watching me tenderly.
We were finely rested, both of us, and
rest and strength bring one compla-
accept the station which the high gods
had made for us without repining,
and so we went below again into the
belly of the ark to eat and drink and
maintain strength for the new life
which lay before us.
A wonderful vessel was this ark,
now we were able to see it at leisure
and intimately. Although for the first
time now in all it's centuries of life
it swan upon the waters, it showed no
leak or sun-crack. Inside, even it's
floor was bone-dry. That it was built
from some wood, one could see by the
grainings, but nowhere could one find
suture or joint. The living timbers
had been put in place and then grown
together by an art which we have lost
to-day, but which the ancients knew
with much perfection; and afterwards
some treatment, which is also a Sc
cret of those forgotten builders, had
made the wood as hard as metal and
impervious to all attacks of the
weather.
In the gloomy cave of it's belly were
stored many matters. At one end, in
great tanks on either side of central
alley, was a prodigious store of grain.
Sweet water was in other tanks at
the other end. In another place were
drugs, and simples, and essences of
the life of beasts; all these things
being for use while the ark roamed
under the guidance of the gods on
the bosom of the deep. On all the
walls of the ark, and on all the par
titions of the tanks and the other
woodwork, there were carved in the
rude art of bygone times representa-
tions of all the beasts which lived in
Atlantis; and on these looked with
hunters interest, as some of them
were strange to me, and had died out
with the men who had perpetuated
them in these sculptures. There was
a good store of weapons, and the tools
for handicrafts.
Now for many weeks our life en-
dured in this ark as the gods drove it
about here and there across the face
of the waters. We had no government
over direction; we could not by so
much as a hair's-breadth day in
crease her speed. The high gods that
had chosen the two of us to be the
only ones saved out of all Atlantis, had
sole control of our fate, and into their
hands we cheerfully resigned our fu-
ture direction.
OF that land which we reached in
due time, and where we made our
abiding-place, and where our children
were born, I shall tell of in it's place;
but since this chronicle has proceeded
so far in an exact order of the events
as they came to pass, it is necessary
first to narrate how we came by the
sheets on which it is written.
In great Golfer, in the center Of
the ark's floor, the whole of the mys-
teries learned during the study of
ages were set down in accurate writ
ing. I read through some of them
during the days which passed, and the
awfulness of the powers over which
they gave control appalled, me. had
seen some of these powers let loose
in Atlantis, and was a witness of her
DuI HoIt NCIC pO"
far higher than those; here was the
great secret of life and death which
Phorenice also had found, and for
which she had been destroyed; and
there were other things also of which
I cannot even bring my style to scribe.
The thought of being custodian of
these writings was more than I could
endure, and the more the matter rest
ed in my mind, the more intolerable
became the burden. And at last took
hot irons, and with them scared the
wax on the sheets till every letter of
the old writings was obliterated. If
I did wrong, the high gods in their
infinite justice will give me punish
ment; if it is well that these great
secrets should endure on earth, they
in their infinite power will dictate
them afresh to some fitting scribes;
but I destroyed them there as the
ark swayed with us over the waves;
and later, when we came to land,
rewrote upon the sheets the matters
which led to great Atlantis being
dragged to her death-throes.
Nais, that I love so tenderly-
tTranslator's Note. - The remaining
sheets are too broken to be legible.]
THE END.