He had a transitory idea that these cylinders might be books, or a modern substitute for books, but at first it did not seem so.
The lettering on the cylinders puzzled him.

At first sight it seemed like Russian.

Then he noticed a suggestion of mutilated English about certain of the words.
"Thi Man huwdbi Kin" forced itself on him as "The Man who would be King." "Phonetic spelling," he said.

He remembered reading a story with that title, then he recalled the story vividly, one of the best stories in the world.

But this thing before him was not a book as he understood it.