Atlantis and Other Places Read Online Free Page B

corresponded to that of western Europe in a more general way.
    What did that mean? Audubon knew he was far from the first to wonder. How could anyone who looked at a map help but wonder? Had Atlantis and Terranova been joined once upon a time? Had Africa and Brazil? How could they have been, with so much sea between? He saw no way it could be possible. Neither did anyone else. But when you looked at the map . . .
    “Coincidence,” Harris said when he mentioned it at supper.
    “Maybe so.” Audubon cut meat from a goose drumstick. His stomach was behaving better these days—and the seas stayed mild. “But if it is a coincidence, don’t you think it’s a large one?”
    “World’s a large place.” Harris paused to take a sip of wine. “It has room in it for a large coincidence or three, don’t you think?”
    “Maybe so,” Audubon said again, “but when you look at the maps, it seems as if those matches ought to spring from reason, not happenstance.”
    “Tell me how the ocean got in between them, then.” Harris aimed a finger at him like a pistol barrel. “And if you say it was Noah’s flood, I’ll pick up that bottle of fine Bordeaux and clout you over the head with it.”
    “I wasn’t going to say anything of the sort,” Audubon replied. “Noah’s flood may have washed over these lands, but I can’t see how it could have washed them apart while still leaving their coastlines so much like each other.”
    “So it must be coincidence, then.”
    “I don’t believe it must be anything, mon vieux ,” Audubon said. “I believe we don’t know what it is—or, I admit, if it’s anything at all. Maybe they will one day, but not now. For now, it’s a puzzlement. We need puzzlements, don’t you think?”
    “For now, John, I need the gravy,” Harris said. “Would you kindly pass it to me? Goes mighty well with the goose.”
    It did, too. Audubon poured some over the moist, dark meat on his plate before handing his friend the gravy boat. Harris wanted to ignore puzzlements when he could. Not Audubon. They reminded him not only of how much he—and everyone else—didn’t know yet, but also of how much he—in particular—might still find out.
    As much as I have time for , he thought, and took another bite of goose.
     
     
    Avalon rose on six hills. The city fathers kept scouting for a seventh so they could compare their town to Rome, but there wasn’t another bump to be found for miles around. The west-facing Bay of Avalon gave the city that bore its name perhaps the finest harbor in Atlantis. A century and a half before, the bay was a pirates’ roost. The buccaneers swept out to plunder the Hesperian Gulf for most of a lifetime, till a British and Dutch fleet drove them back to their nest and then smoked them out of it.
    City streets still remembered the swashbuckling past: Gold-beard Way, Valjean Avenue, Cutpurse Charlie Lane. But two Atlantean steam frigates patrolled the harbor. Fishing boats, bigger merchantmen—some steamers, others sailing ships—and liners like the Maid of Orleans moved in and out. The pirates might be remembered, but they were gone.
    May it not be so with the honkers , Audubon thought as the Maid of Orleans tied up at a pier. Please, God, let it not be so . He crossed himself. He didn’t know if the prayer would help, but it couldn’t hurt, so he sent it up for whatever it might be worth.
    Harris pointed to a man coming up the pier. “Isn’t that Gordon Coates?”
    “It certainly is.” Audubon waved to the man who published his work in Atlantis. Coates, a short, round fellow with side whiskers even bushier than Audubon’s, waved back. His suit was of shiny silk; a stovepipe hat sat at a jaunty angle on his head. Audubon cupped his hands in front of his mouth. “How are you, Gordon?”
    “Oh, tolerable. Maybe a bit better than tolerable,” Coates replied. “So you’re haring off into the wilderness again, are you?” He was a city man to the tips of his