of seaweed unknown to me, which writhed and moved about the statuary like a thing alive. Some of it seemed actually to be coiling and uncoiling about the throat of a beautiful maiden, exquisitely carved in a pinkish marble, standing near us on the stairs. While I was charmed with the statuary, I must admit from the outset that this strange marine growth made me shudder. It was too uncannily alive. Even as we walked up the steps it recoiled from our footsteps to make way for us, but on looking back I noted that it returned again to its original resting place and seemed, in fact, to be following us up to the top!
At the head of the flight we found a pair of magnificent bronze doors, fortunately wide open. Oddly enough, both were heavily embossed with the figure of a winged animal not unlike the Egyptian Sphinx, part woman, part beast, and part bird. Although the doors were open, there was a tangle of that disgusting marine growth across the threshold, and Dr. Tyrrel with a gesture of impatience drew his knife to hack a way into the place; but even as he reached out to seize the stuff it recoiled and parted of its own accord, thereby giving us ready access.
Behind the bronze doors was a magnificent hall or foyer—I do not know-how else to describe it. Half way down on our right was an open doorway leading into another and more spacious hall. Light from the ocean surface filtered into the place through the crystal roofs, but its intensity had been so greatly dimmed by the depth that we could not see clearly for more than twenty feet ahead of us.
Keeping well to the right so that we should not lose our way, we suddenly came face to face with the wall of the temple, noting with a gasp of admiration that its surface was covered with beautiful murals, apparently done in gold leaf with backgrounds of silver and a substance which might be ivory. Following the murals to the very foot of the walls, I noted that the floor on which we were walking had been done in the most delicate and intricate of mosaics.
We feasted our eyes on these beauties for several minutes, and then began following the wall at our right. I was in the act of commenting, mentally, on the absence of any furnishings or statuary in the hall proper, when suddenly there loomed before us in the greenish gloom a sizable marble cubicle. Coming nearer we saw that this was only the first of a series, mortised to the walls and standing about as high as our waists. A farther approach showed us that they were in reality a row of marble bins (to use a prosaic term). But what bins they were! What beauty, what contents! Pounds and pounds of jewels in every hue of the rainbow!
In one cubicle I buried my arms up to the elbow in the finest of rubies. From another I saw Dr. Tyrrel hold up a double handful of glittering emeralds. And diamonds!—a king's ransom in those alone.
My natural cupidity had seized hold of me, and I was for taking some of the gems with us, but I noted that Dr. Tyrrel—always the scholar—had tossed his jewels back into place; and then I shamefacedly followed his example. As we wandered farther down the hall, he informed me in the sign language we had developed for undersea work that he had concluded this was a mortuary chapel built on one of the Atlantean hilltops. If such it proved to be, he pointed out, we should soon come upon human remains, as the Atlanteans were credited by ancient chroniclers with having developed an amazing method of preserving their dead.
He was walking to one side and a little ahead of me as he imparted this
