ment. All the natural
features of the island seemed to have been ruthlessly swept away to make
room for something forming part of a complete, comprehensive plan. And
that plan bore eloquent evidence in its every feature that it owed its
inception to intellects characterised by a very high degree of culture
and refinement, and its execution to hands exceptionally skilled in many
of those arts and sciences that are the heritage of ages of
civilisation. The architecture was massive, almost heroic in its
proportions, and its ornamentation was severe yet graceful, with a very
strong and marked suggestion of Egyptian influence. The gardens were
elaborately terraced, and consisted for the most part of wide, smooth,
grassy lawns thickly dotted with flower beds cut into graceful and
fanciful shapes, with trees growing only where they would afford a
grateful shade either to the wayfarer or to the gardens arranged upon
the flat-topped roofs of the houses. The roads were so cunningly
planned that, by means of their serpentine windings, an easy gradient
was everywhere maintained; and, lastly, the entire island was
encompassed by a lofty and immensely solid wall, or quay, built of
enormous blocks of granite the face of which had been worked to so
smooth a surface as to render it absolutely unclimbable, the only means
of obtaining a landing seeming to be by way of a double flight of wide
stone steps leading up from the water to a wide platform which was shut
off from the interior of the island by an immensely strong gateway
flanked by two lofty towers.

By the time that Dick and Grosvenor had become imbued with a fairly
accurate general impression of the extraordinary characteristics of the
mysterious unknown island city to which they were bound, the craft that
bore them was close in under the frowning protective wall which
engirdled it, and a few minutes later the boat ranged up alongside one
of the two flights of landing steps, the paddles were laid in, and the
crew, springing to their feet, checked the vessel's way by grappling a
number of large bronze mooring rings the shanks of which were deeply
sunk into the face of the massive masonry. Then the officer who had
arrested the prisoners, and still had them in charge, gave the word to
land, and the young Englishmen stepped ashore, closely followed by half
a dozen men bearing their several belongings, except their firearms,
which they insisted on carrying themselves.

Ascendi