Beyond the Great South Wall: The Secret of the AntarcticSavile, Frank (Frank Mackenzie)
Science
Beyond the Great South Wall: The Secret of the Antarctic
Savile, Frank (Frank Mackenzie)
Antarctica -- Fiction; Fantasy fiction; Science fiction
We hasted therefore to bring our surgeon, and water with a little
wine. With difficulty he swallowed it and revived, though but
slightly. He gazed upon us as one affrighted, and shuddered, placing
his hand upon his breast as if holding there what he would fain
conceal. By which, I take it, he imagined us Spaniards, and expected
their deviltries, as well he might. But we spoke to him gently, and
tended him, taking sails to make him a couch to lie upon. Yet he
rallied but little, murmuring we knew not what, nor could Da Suhares
understand him, though he had knowledge of some few words of Mexican.
“Then the poor wretch raised his finger slowly and pointed towards us,
and afterward held up his open hand many times, which we took to mean
that he had been of a numerous company; making gesture also to our
ship which swung, heaved to, some quarter of a mile away, he swept his
hands abroad wildly towards the waste of waters, implying doubtless
that his was one of a great fleet of vessels.
“As in a flash came to me then the tale which was at that time a
by-word in the South Seas, of the great expedition of the natives
which had set sail from the coasts of Southern Mexico, the which was
witnessed by the Spanish forces advancing from the north, yet could in
no way be prevented of them. Mayax is the name of the land whence they
sailed, and the fiendish warfare of the Spaniards—ravishers of women
and slaughterers of babes as they be—had so prevailed by terror upon
these simple folk, that they had committed themselves to the deep to
escape their villainies, and had vanished, forty sail or more, no man
knew whither.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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