time. He sat silent for a while staring into the flickering flame.
"Say, MacNeal," he spoke at length; "what do you know about a theory that says once on a time this old world of ours revolved on its axis in a different plane? I've heard it said the earth tipped up about seventy degrees. What d'you know about it?"
That was a queer thing for Chris Bonner to ask. He was simon-pure prospector and I had never known him to get far away from the subject of mining and prospecting. He had been hunting gold from Panama to the Arctic Circle for the past thirty years.
"No more than you do, probably," I answered his question. "I've heard of that theory, too. I'd say it is any man's guess."
"This theory holds that the North Pole used to be where the Equator is now," he said. "Do you believe that?"
"I don't know anything about it, Chris," I replied. "But I do know that they have found things up this way that are now generally recognized as being peculiarly tropical in nature."
"What, for instance?"
"Palms and ferns, a species of parrot, saber-tooth tigers; and also mastodons, members of the elephant family. All fossils and parts of skeletons, you understand?"
"No human beings, MacNeal? Any skeletons or fossils of those up this way?"
"Never heard of it. Prehistoric people are being found in England and France, however."
"Huh," he said.
He pondered, puffing at his pipe, his eyes on the fire. He looked perplexed about something.
"Look here, MacNeal," he said suddenly. "Say a man dies. He's dead, ain't he?"
"No doubt about it," I laughed, wondering.
"Couldn't come to life again, eh?"
"Hardly. Not if he were really dead. I've heard of cases of suspended animation. The heart, apparently, quits beating for one, two or possibly ten minutes. It doesn't in fact, though; it's simply that its beating can't be detected. When a man's heart stops beating he's dead."
Bonner nodded.
"'Suspended animation,'" he muttered, more to himself than to me. "That must be it. That's the only thing that'll explain it; nothing else will. If it could cover a period of ten minutes, why not a period of twenty or even a hundred thousand years—"
"If you'd like to turn in and get some rest, Chris, I'll fix you up," I broke in.
He caught the significance of my tone and grinned.
"You think I'm crazy, eh?" he said. "I'm not. It's a wonder, though, considering what I've seen and what I—here, let me show you something!"
He thrust a hand into his lean pack and brought forth an object that at first glance I thought to be a butcher's knife.
He handed it to me and I at once saw that it was not a butcher's knife as I knew such knives. It was a curious sort of knife, and one for which a collector of antique would have paid good money.
It was a very dark color, almost black; corroded, it seemed to me, as if it had lain for a long time in a damp cellar. It was in one piece, the handle about five inches long and the blade perhaps ten inches. Both edges of the blade were sharp and the end was pointed like a dagger. And it certainly wasn't steel. I scratched one side of the blade with my thumb nail and exposed a creamy yellow under the veneer of black.
"Part of that's blood you scraped away, MacNeal," Bonner said. "Now what's that knife made of?"
I examined the yellow spot closely. The knife was made of ivory. Not the kind of ivory I was acquainted with, however; it was a very much coarser grain than any ivory I had ever seen.
"That came out of a mastodon's tusk, MacNeal," Bonner said.
I looked at him. He was nodding, seriously. He apparently believed what he said, at any rate.
"Nice curio, Chris," I commented,
