"Yes! Yes!" he said as he saw how the top section repeated the prayer written in the middle one. But it didn't appear as though the writing had evolved directly from the pictographic symbols. All of a sudden, he was hit by the implications of what he'd stumbled across.
"My God! So many millennia ago, somehow, a Phoenician scribe came from the surface… he did this… he carved a translation from an ancient hieroglyphic language. But how did he get down here?" Dr. Burrows puffed his cheeks and blew out a breath. "And this unknown ancient race… who were they? Who in tarnation were they?"
His mind was bombarded with possibilities, but one, perhaps the most far-fetched, loomed far above the others. "The Atlanteans… the Lost City of Atlantis!" He caught his breath, his heart pounding with the supposition.
He babbled breathlessly to himself, quickly switching his attention to the lower block of writing, comparing it with the Phoenician words above.
"By Jove, I think I've done it. It is… it's the same prayer!" he began shouting. And he immediately spotted the similarities between the hieroglyphs at the top of the tablet and the forms of the letters at the bottom. There was no question in his mind that the pictograms had evolved into the letters.
And, using the Phoenician writing, he should have no trouble translating the lower inscription. He now had the key that enabled him to translate all the other tablets he'd found in the cavern and recorded in his journal.
"I can do this!" he announced triumphantly, flipping back through his sketches. "I can read their language! My very own Rosetta Stone. No… wait…" He held up his finger as it struck him. "The Burrows Stone! " He jumped to his feet and turned to the darkness, holding the journal jubilantly above his head. "The Dr. Burrows Stone."
"You poor schmucks, all you in the British Museum, at Oxford and Cambridge… and shabby old Professor White and your cronies from London University who bloody nicked my Roman dig from me… I AM VICTORIOUS… I WILL BE REMEMBERED!" His words echoed all around the crevasse. "I may even have the secret of Atlantis here in my hands… AND IT'S ALL MINE, YOU POOR SAPS!"
He heard the clacking again and snatched up the light orb.
"What the…"
There, where the food stick had landed, something large was moving. His hand shaking, he directed the light at it.
"No!" he gasped.
It was the size of a small family car, with six jointed legs protruding at angles around it and a huge domed carapace for its main body. It was yellowy-white in color and moved ponderously. Dr. Burrows could see its dusty mandibles grinding against each other as it ate the food he had chucked aside. Its antennae twitching exploratively, it advanced very slowly toward him. He took a step back.
"I… just… don't… believe… it." Dr. Burrows exhaled. "What in the world are you… an oversized dust mite?" he said, mentally correcting himself almost as he spoke. He knew only too well that mites were not insects, but arachnids, the same as spiders.
Whatever it was, it had stopped, evidently a little wary of him, its antennae syncopating like two dancing chopsticks. He could see no evidence of any eyes on its head, and its carapace looked as thick as tank armor. But as he examined this more closely, he could also see that it was battered, with slash-like indentations all over its dull surface, and that there were vicious-looking gouges all along its edges, where it appeared to have been shattered.
Despite the creature's size and appearance, Dr. Burrows somehow knew it wasn't a danger to him. It wasn't attempting to come any nearer, perhaps more apprehensive of him than he was of it.
"You've been through the wars, haven't you?" Dr. Burrows said, holding his light orb toward it. It clattered its mandibles as if in agreement. For a moment, Dr. Burrows looked up from the gargantuan creature to peer around.
"This place is just so… rich.. It's a veritable gold mine!" He sighed, and then delved into his shoulder bag. "There you are, old chap," he said, tossing another food stick at the bizarre creature, which scuttled back a few feet as if afraid. Then, slowly, it moved closer, locating the food and cautiously picking over it. The creature obviously decided the food stick was safe to eat, seized it in its mandibles, and instantly began to devour it with a variety of grating noises.
An awestruck Dr. Burrows reseated himself on the boulder and hunted in his pants pocket for his pencil sharpener. Finding it, he began to twist it on his dwindling stub of pencil. Still chewing, the giant creature lowered itself down on its legs, as if waiting expectantly for another morsel.
Dr. Burrows laughed at the strangeness of the situation as he took up his journal and flicked to a fresh page to make a record of the "dust mite" in front of him. He looked at the blank page, then hesitated, his eyes glazing with indecision. The clacking of the giant creature brought him back abruptly, and he know what he had to do. He turned back to the drawing of the tablet again. Translating the rest of the Dr. Burrows Stone had to be his immediate priority.
"Not enough time," he muttered. "Not enough time…"
29
"Help! Anybody! Help me! Is there anybody there?" Oh, wake up, will you… how likely is that? A gruff voice in Will's head wouldn't be silenced. There's nobody for miles. You're on your own, matey, it continued
"Help me! Help! Help!" Will called out, doing his best to ignore it.
What are you expecting… that Dad's going to jump out from around the next corner and show you the way home? Dr. "Super Dad" Burrows, who got himself lost on the London Underground? Yeah, right!
"Get lost!" Will roared hoarsely at his nagging self-doubt, his cry resounding in the tunnels around him.
Lost, huh? That's funny! The voice persisted. It was quietly smug, as if it knew exactly who things were going to turn out. It doesn't get any worse than this, it said. You're history.
Will stopped and shook his head, refusing to accept what it was telling him. There had to be a way out of this.
He closed and opened his eyes, trying to make out something, anything, but there was nothing. Even the blackest night up on the surface had some tiny trace of light, but not down here — this darkness was absolute. And it played tricks on you, giving you hope. False hope.
He moved along the wall, feeling its now all-too-familiar roughness with his fingers, inching forward until he became impatient and tried to move too quickly. His foot snagged against some obstacle and he pitched forward, tumbling down an incline. He came to rest with his face against the loose surface of the ground, breathing hard.
If he allowed himself to think for too long about his situation… Here he was, more than five miles below the surface of the earth, alone and frightened and hopelessly lost.
Every new second in this oblivion was as vital and terrifying as the last, and it seemed to him that millions of these seconds now stretched out behind him. He'd been separated from Drake and the others for what he estimated was at least a day. It could very well have been longer. In truth, he hadn't a clue how long he'd been in these endless tunnels, but if his parched throat was anything to go by, then it had to be at least twenty-four hours. The only thing he was certain of was that he'd never been so horribly thirsty before, not in his whole life.
He got up and reached for the wall. His outstretched fingers encountered nothing but warm air. He immediately pictured himself on the brink of a huge precipice and was beset by a wave of vertigo. He took another reluctant step. The floor didn't feel level to him, but he couldn't even be sure of this anymore. He'd reached a point where he was struggling to tell whether the ground was banked or whether it was he who was at an angle. He was beginning to distrust even his remaining senses.