"I think it will look even gloomier, but both of us are tired—we're not as young as we were, I guess—so we'll call it a day. But remember, Jim—we're both free."
" 'At's right." Jim squared his shoulders.
I let him go out first, and before I crawled through the opening, I turned to look again at the two black statues. Again there came a little stirring deep in my brain, and after a few seconds' intense concentration, I captured the memory that had escaped me before.
"Come back a moment, Jim."
"Aye, Cap'n."
"I've finally thought whom those two statues reminded me of. When I went to the Navy dockyard in Valletta, there were two jollies, with fixed bayonets, standing guard at the gate. They faced each other that same way."
Jim's eyes slowly rounded. "Cap'n, do you reckon?"
"If there's a hole in the wall, it's between those two statues.'
While I held the light, Jim looked carefully at the stone. A lateral crack ran from behind one statue to behind the other about three feet from the floor; it curved like other cracks and appeared indistinguishable from them. Jim took hold of one of the statues and, with a big heave of his shoulders, moved it about a foot to one side. Its side and pedestal almost touching the wall had concealed a perpendicular crack, running straight from the floor to intercept the other. In a sudden frenzy both of us heaved on the other statue. To our great joy we found another perpendicular crack, forming what might be the straight-sided, crooked-topped rim of a stone panel.
Where the crack was widest, Jim inserted the blade of his ax and pried. The edge of what was no doubt a facing began to emerge. In a few minutes it was free—a slab of limestone two inches thick which Jim set aside. Within were clay bricks laid without mortar. We had a little trouble loosening one of them because of their tight fit; thereafter we took them out with ease. The hole grew rapidly bigger and less dark.
"Go first, Jim," I said,
"No, sah, if you'll 'scuse me."
So I went through first. Jim was alongside before my mind could make the least sense of what I saw.
A long object occupying the full width of the room, perhaps ten feet, suggested to my mind the bottom half of a mummy case, but this was only because I was in an Egyptian edifice. There was no real resemblance, and nothing else to see but its contents and the bare walls. About two feet wide, with raised ends, it was crowded with fifteen or more wooden manikins about two feet high. One stood in the rear with a paddle-shaped stick, all but one of the rest faced forward with poles in their hands; one, a seated figure, bigger and finer than the rest, and evidently the master, faced the rear,
"It pertend like it's a real big bateau, with a lot of men to pole it." Jim remarked,
"Yes."
"You said 'em 'Gyptians was buried wi' things they thought they'd need in the nex' worl'. Do you reckon 'at king wanted a boat and men to take him across some big water, like de blessed River Jordan?"
"That's about right, I think,"
"Is 'at de king settin' in de bow?"
"I think that's the captain. The boat hasn't taken oft yet—you see the steering oar and the poles are still out of the water. She's waiting to take the king when he's ready."
"Accordin' to 'at, he belong to be still in de tomb."
"I guess so."
"Well, I'd like to know where he at. This here is the solidist-looking rock we've seen yet."
I held my lamp high. The room had been hewn out of solid limestone. There were no cracks in the walls or ceiling, or the least indication of anything beyond, Jim took hold of the boat and shoved it out of the way. The part of the floor it had concealed was as solid as die rest.
"We'd better go back before the lights go out," I told him.
In the following days of search, we found no hidden exit from either the boat room or its antechamber, and the tapped walls gave forth no hollow sound. Without a qualm I washed away the splendid fresco painting of the desert king in his chariot, in the feeble hope that the paint might conceal a trap door or inset stone. The rock-cut wall was inviolate.
The conviction grew upon us that if a burial chamber existed, its opening was concealed somewhere in the gas-filled temple where we could never find it.
Then there came the night that I was hurled up out of a dream by a startling realization. There was a part of the passage easy to search at which we had not even glanced—the outer stairway leading to the broken door. I rose at once, dressed, and wakened Jim. The fight was only beginning to clear, and close by in the thicket we heard a leopard cough, a sound like a dull saw drawn across a board. The sand grouse were flying to their water holes as we crept down our well.
The flight consisted of twelve steps about a foot high. We began our search at the bottom, fearful of finding any opening so low down, but more likely, we thought, to find nothing. But we had climbed only four when Jim looked at the one above and gave a little grunt.
In a moment he had his ax blade between the tread of the fifth step and the riser of the sixth. Plaster cracked and broke away; and a big grin broke on the black face. I lifted what was only a limestone facing on clay bricks. The tread of the sixth step was a similar facing; we continued to remove limestone slabs, vertical and horizontal, lightly plastered to bricks, till we came to the tread of the ninth step. This proved solid and continuous with the stone.
We removed the unmortared bricks, to find that they had rested on a heavy grating of wrought iron, supported by stone projections left when the stairway shaft had been quarried out, and level with the tread of the fifth step. It was as free from rust as though newly smelted, and had a fantastic design of snakes and birds—again the asp of Egypt and the vulture of Nubia if I judged aright. As Jim and I stood on the fifth step, it took our combined strengths to lift it by one edge, wheel on the stairway, and set it to one side. Now the treads of the fifth step and of the ninth dropped away in sheer cliffs into darkness. Between was a gap the width of the stairs and three feet across.
I fixed a string to a candle-lamp and lowered it into the pit. It burned well until about four feet from the floor, then suddenly went out. Since my hands would be in reach of Jim's and the drop was an easy one, I decided to go down. The corridor was plainly rock-cut and more narrow than the main passage into the temple; its floor appeared level as far as I could see. After making several tests, I was sure that the gas pool reached midway up my chest, still too high for comfort.
When we had broken our fast, Jim and I prepared for a first sally. Again I must leave Jim to handle a life line tied about my waist, although certain I would not need it, since the floor inclined a little and my lamp burned well. Sailors once, used to bawling in a heavy gale, we had no trouble making ourselves heard. Following the curving passage, I fetched up against what seemed another solid wall.
I was sure it was not solid. Although most of our findings made very little sense, a cunningly hidden passage leading nowhere made none at all. Anyway, there was some way around it. When Jim came with his ax, we found a suspicious looking stone about ten paces back from the dead end and dangerously close to the floor. Jim had only to push against it to make it turn. The aperture revealed was barely wide enough for my shoulders.
Holding his breath, he knelt down and put the lamp through the hole. Immediately he sprang up. In the wan fight his face looked gray.
"Cap'n, you won't like to see what's in there."
"Well, I've seen what I didn't like before now."
"It's the Sepulcher of Dry Bones, sho 'nough."
I kneeled and looked in. The room was on a lower level than this passage and larger than any we had seen except the temple itself, so my candle-light did not disclose its farthest walls. But it showed the floor, not strewn, but heaped with skeletons two or three feet deep in a jam like cordwood. I could not doubt that there were two hundred, and there might be four hundred.