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Colonel Belik was born in Adis Abeba, the capital of the empire, and until

recently had been in command of the emperor's palace guard. Jealousy and the

ambition and intrigue of another officer had lost him the favor of his emperor,

and he had been detailed to this frontier post as a mark of his sovereign's

displeasure.

Some fifty years before, the young emperor, Menelek XIV, was ambitious. He

knew that a great world lay across the waters far to the north of his capital. Once

he had crossed the desert and looked out upon the blue sea that was the

northern boundary of his dominions.

There lay another world to conquer. Menelek busied himself with the building of

a great fleet, though his people were not a maritime race. His army crossed into

Europe. It met with little resistance, and for fifty years his soldiers had been

pushing his boundaries farther and farther toward the north.

"The yellow men from the east and north are contesting our rights here now," said

the colonel, "but we shall win--we shall conquer the world, carrying Christianity

to all the benighted heathen of Europe, and Asia as well."

You are a Christian people?" I asked.

He looked at me in surprise, nodding his head affirmatively.

I am a Christian," I said. "My people are the most powerful on earth."

He smiled, and shook his head indulgently, as a father to a child who sets up his

childish judgment against that of his elders.

Then I set out to prove my point. I told him of our cities, of our army, of our great

navy. He came right back at me asking for figures, and when he was done I had

to admit that only in our navy were we numerically superior.

Menelek XIV is the undisputed ruler of all the continent of Africa, of all of ancient

Europe except the British Isles, Scandinavia, and eastern Russia, and has large

possessions and prosperous colonies in what once were Arabia and Turkey in

Asia.

He has a standing army of ten million men, and his people possess slaves--white

slaves--to the number of ten or fifteen million.

Colonel Belik was much surprised, however, upon his part to learn of the great

nation which lay across the ocean, and when he found that I was a naval officer,

he was inclined to accord me even greater consideration than formerly. It was

The Lost Continent