It was March of 1869 when my friend Jules and his wife, Madam Honorine, came by my townhouse in London. My friend from America, Cyrus Harding, picked them up from the dock. The esteemed Jules and his wife were bound to Scotland after his sojourn to the American states to see the devastation of their awful Civil War. Cyrus was trying to bedazzle M'sieur and Madam Verne with his fictitious escape from a Confederate prison camp in a balloon of all things! Cyrus explained the Union had observation balloons for years, so the 'Rebs' must have captured one. He didn't asked questions, but simply stole it one night,and floated from northern Mississippi to southern Pennsylvania in it. Jules soaked it up without comment, other than a sly smile. He said, "Perhaps, monsieur Harding, I put you in a novel?" Cyrus put up a hand and exclaimed with some feeling,"As long as you don't put me into that god-awful cannonade of yours that shoots people to the moon! There is a reason that people don't fly! It isn't the fear of the long fall--it is the sudden stop at the end of that fall! In your novel, 'From Earth to the Moon', shooting people to the moon reverses that with a sudden stop FOLLOWED by the falling up into the sky. Forgive me. If we DO make it to the moon...it will NOT be via cannon!" Cyrus looked over at me and said,"Professor Cloud? Why is it so bright in your study? Do you have every oil lamp in the house in here?" I nodded. "Quite. I received a package from an acquaintance in the Dutch East Indies, and I'd like you all to examine it's contents. He wrote that he found it inside the mouth of a cave on a mysterious island, east of Java. The locals regarded the island as haunted and the spot of evil spirits and lights in the sky. This artifact was partially occluded by a stalagmite and required some work to get to. He finally got it free with a piece of Dynamite!" I pulled the black glass mirror out of my top drawer and handed it to Cyrus. "Looks like obsidian. That's volcanic glass. Heavier than usual glass...no marks or cracks. Queer feel to it. My fingers aren't leaving marks!" He passed it Madam Honorine. Jules asked me,"What do the natives say about it?" I paused and thought of what my friend had said, and responded,"The natives call it the smoking mirror of the four goddesses. They were terrorized at my friend having it. They said it was cursed now it's removed from the gateway to the lower world." Madam Honorine said as Jules took it over to the Banquet lamp I had set up on my Louis the 15th table, "Mayhap...it is from...how you say...Atlantis?" Jules exclaimed," Il est incroyable, le professeur Cloud!" I said,"S'il vous plaît, Jules. Appelez-moi seulement Phineas." Cyrus asked me,"Phineas? What was that? I do NOT parlez vous that Frenchy." I sighed and translated for my French-challenged friend. "I told him to call me Phineas." Jules said,"I saw four women! With...maybe deux agents de them? Attendants?" I came over and looked. He rotated the plate hither and yon before the light. I remarked,"My friend,Arthur, said it flashed with light at one point of handling, but he never reproduced it. I believe he might well have imagined it. That glass in inhumanly strong. I dropped it on the hearthstone yesterday and it was unmarred. It cracked one brick, but didn't chip the plate at ALL." The plate flashed to a rainbow hue of four women with an attendant on either side. I touched it like lightning. I was thunderstruck by a vision of another world with cities in the clouds and of a Cyclops woman as if out of a Greek myth. Jules looked at me. "Phineas? Are you well? You looked peaked." I said,"Atlantis? It was in the Atlantic Ocean, not the Pacific. Jules? You are heading up to Scotland after here?" "Oui? Are you reconsidering my invitation?" I nodded. "Cyrus, you might want to come along. You mother's family is Scottish." Cyrus laughed."I'll get packed." --To BE CONTINUED!--