Drug addicts -- Fiction; Fantasy fiction; Magicians -- Fiction
"This matter I consider worth jotting down--as to whether it has
any bearing on the case at hand, further developments will show. At
Alexandria, where I spent some weeks seeking further clues as to the
identity of the man known as the Scorpion, I made the acquaintance,
through my friend Ahmed Shah, of the noted Egyptologist Professor
Ezra Schuyler of New York. He verified the statement made by various
laymen, concerning the legend of the 'ocean-man.' This myth, handed
down from generation to generation, stretches back into the very
mists of antiquity and is, briefly, that some day a man shall come
up out of the sea and shall lead the people of Egypt to victory over
all others. This legend has spread over the continent so that now
all black races consider that it deals with the coming of a universal
emperor. Professor Schuyler gave it as his opinion that the myth
was somehow connected with the lost Atlantis, which, he maintains,
was located between the African and South American continents and
to whose inhabitants the ancestors of the Egyptians were tributary.
The reasons for his connection are too lengthy and vague to note
here, but following the line of his theory he told me a strange and
fantastic tale. He said that a close friend of his, Von Lorfmon of
Germany, a sort of free-lance scientist, now dead, was sailing off the
coast of Senegal some years ago, for the purpose of investigating and
classifying the rare specimens of sea-life found there. He was using
for his purpose a small trading-vessel, manned by a crew of Moors,
Greeks and negroes.
"Some days out of sight of land, something floating was sighted,
and this object, being grappled and brought aboard, proved to be _a
mummy-case of a most curious kind_. Professor Schuyler explained to me
the features whereby it differed from the ordinary Egyptian style, but
from his rather technical account I merely got the impression that it
was a strangely shaped affair carved with characters neither cuneiform
nor hieroglyphic. The case was heavily lacquered, being watertight and
airtight, and Von Lorfmon had considerable difficulty in opening it.
However, he managed to do so without damaging the case, and a most
unusual mummy was revealed. Schuyler said that he never saw either
the mummy or the case, but that from descriptions given him by the
Greek skipper who was present at the opening of the case, the mummy
differed as much from the ordinary man as the case differed from the
conventional type.
"Examination proved that the subject had not undergone the usual
procedure of mummification. All parts were intact just as in life, but
the whole form was shrunk and hardened to a wood-like consistency.
Cloth wrappings swathed the thing and they crumbled to dust and
vanished the instant air was let in upon them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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