Unfortunately, in the haste and confusion of my departure from the Sunken World, I had made one oversight. I had forgotten the copy of Homer’s lost “Telegonus,” which I had hoped to exhibit in verification of my story! Scattered lines of the poem, to be sure, did keep trailing through my mind with a wild, ringing majesty--but they were the merest fragments, and to recite them would have been to brand myself as a madman. Yet I had little other evidence to display. Aelios could not help me, for she could not speak English; and in spite of her exceptional beauty, there would have been nothing to prove that she had not been born above seas. And as for the four members of the submarine crew, they refused stanchly to leave the vessel; and, besides, they likewise could not speak English, and their fantastic Atlantean garb would no doubt have marked them also as lunatics. And so there was nothing to do but wait, wait for days and days, haunting the naval offices, making myself a laughing stock and a nuisance, yet repeating my pleas so insistently that in the end they had to be heeded. But meanwhile I was losing time--time which I knew to be all-important. Even now Atlantis might be in a death-grip with the waters; and the difference of a few hours might bridge the gap between safety and disaster. Would not my fellows make haste? was the question I kept asking and asking; and all the while they remained inactive and unmoved. Every day, with tears in her eyes, Aelios would inquire when the rescuing expedition was to set out; and every day I would nod sadly, and sigh, “Perhaps tomorrow.” But tomorrow would bring little hope; and even when at last an investigation was undertaken, it was careless and dilatory--and it was long before I could convince the bewildered inspectors that I was actually one of the company of the lost X-111. It was long, indeed, before I could even find any one to identify me. In a land where my acquaintances had been legion, I was apparently unknown; and my old friends had either been dispersed or else I had slipped out of their minds. Even Alma Huntley failed to reply to my letters; and it was months before I learned that, having long given me up as lost, she had left two years before for the Pacific Coast as the bride of the Reverend David Mosely. But though my messages to Alma never reached their destination, a letter to my old friend, Frank Everett, survived many forwardings and found its goal; and not only did Everett hasten to me from New York, but he summoned others of our former group, whose testimony combined with the evidence of finger-prints and handwriting to identify me beyond dispute.