Miles's
carrying had needed--the altar stone was lifted, Quentin, curtains,
awning and all, and carried along a gangway to the shore, and there it
was put on a sort of cart, more like what people in Manchester call a
lurry than anything else I can think of. The wheels were made of solid
circles of wood bound round with copper. And the cart was drawn by--not
horses or donkeys or oxen or even dogs--but by an enormous creature more
like an elephant than anything else, only it had long hair rather like
the hair worn by goats.

You, perhaps, would not have known what this vast creature was, but
Quentin, who had all sorts of out-of-the-way information packed in his
head, knew at once that it was a mammoth.

And by that he knew, too, that he had slipped back many thousands of
years, because, of course, it is a very long time indeed since there
were any mammoths alive, and able to draw lurries. And the car and the
priest and the priest's retinue and the stone and Quentin and the
mammoth journeyed slowly away from the coast, passing through great
green forests and among strange gray mountains.

Where were they journeying?

Quentin asked the same question you may be sure, and Blue Mantle told
him--

'To Stonehenge.' And Quentin understood him perfectly, though
Stonehenge was not the word Blue Mantle used, or anything like it.

'The great temple is now complete,' he said, 'all but the altar stone.
It will be the most wonderful temple ever built in any of the colonies
of Atlantis. And it will be consecrated on the longest day of the year.'

'Midsummer Day,' said Quentin thoughtlessly--and, as usual, anxious to
tell all he knew. 'I know. The sun strikes through the arch on to the
altar stone at sunrise. Hundreds of people go to see it: the ruins are
quite crowded sometimes, I believe.'

'Ruins?' said the priest in a terrible voice. 'Crowded? Ruins?'

'I mean,' said Quentin hastily, 'the sun will still shine the same way
even when the temple is in ruins, won't it?'

'The temple,' said the priest, 'is built to defy time. It will never be
in ruins.'

'That's all _you_ know,' said Quentin, not very politely.

'It is not by any means all I know,' said the priest. 'I do not tell all
I know. Nor do you.'

'I used to,' said Quentin, 'but I sha'n't any more. It only leads to
trouble--I see that now.'

Now, though Quentin had been intensely interested in everything he had
seen in the ship and on the journey, you may be sure