"At last we put on the levium floating-suits, opened the cover at the top, and came to the surface. The last thing I saw was the searchlight, still burning, and illuminating the most marvelous spectacle that human eyes ever gazed upon."
"Oh, what was it? What was it?" demanded a score of voices in chorus.
"It is impossible to describe it. It was the secret of old Egypt revealed at last--at the end of the world!"
"Like a glimpse into the remotest corridors of time," interposed Cosmo Versál, with a curious look in his eyes.
"Some of you may have heard that long ago holes were driven through the Sphinx in the hope of discovering something hidden inside, but they missed the secret. The old god kept it well until his form fell apart. We were pinned so close to it that we could not help seeing it, even in the excitement of our situation.
"It had always been supposed that the Sphinx was the symbol of something--it _was_, and more than a symbol! The explorers away back in the nineteenth century who thought that they had found something mysterious in the Great Pyramid went wide of the mark when they neglected the Sphinx."
_"We saw the prophecy of the Second Deluge,"_ said Cosmo, rising to his feet, his piercing eyes aflame. "In the heart of the huge mass, approachable, no doubt, by some concealed passage in the rock beneath, known only to the priests, stood a gigantic idol, carved out of black marble.
"It had enormous eyes of some gem that blazed in the electric beam from the searchlight, with huge golden ears and beard, and on its breast was a representation of a drowning world, with a great nebula sweeping over it."
"It might have been a history instead of a prophecy," suggested one of the listening savants. "Perhaps it only told what had once happened."
"No," replied Cosmo, shaking his big head. "It was a prophecy. Under it, in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, which I recognized, was an inscription which could only be translated by the words, 'I come again--at the end of time!'"
There was a quality in Cosmo Versál's voice which made the hearers shudder with horror.
"Yes," he added. "It comes again! The prophecy was hidden, but science had its means of revelation, too, if the world would but have listened to its voice. Even without the prophecy I have saved the flower of mankind."