My New Year's Eve Among The Mummies

"MY NEW YEAR'S EVE AMONG THE MUMMIES"

from Belgravia (1880-jan)

by Grant Allen (writing as J. Arbuthnot Wilson)

I have been a wanderer and a vagabond on the face of the earth for a good many
years now, and I have certainly had some odd adventures in my time; but I can
assure you, I never spent twenty-four queerer hours than those which I passed
some twelve months since in the great unopened Pyramid of Abu Yilla.

The way I got there was itself a very strange one. I had come to Egypt for a
winter tour with the Fitz-Simkinses, to whose daughter Editha I was at that
precise moment engaged. You will probably remember that old Fitz-Simkins
belonged originally to the wealthy firm of Simkinson and Stokoe, worshipful
vintners; but when the senior partner retired from the business and got his
knighthood, the College of Heralds opportunely discovered that his ancestors had
changed their fine old Norman name for its English equivalent some time about
the reign of King Richard I; and they immediately authorized the old gentleman
to resume the patronymic and the armorial bearings of his distinguished
forefathers. It's really quite astonishing how often these curious coincidences
crop up at the College of Heralds.

Of course it was a great catch for a landless and briefless barrister like
myself — dependent on a small fortune in South American securities, and my
precarious earnings as a writer of burlesque — to secure such a valuable
prospective property as Editha Fitz-Simkins. To be sure, the girl was undeniably
plain; but I have known plainer girls than she was, whom forty thousand pounds
converted into My Ladies: and if Editha hadn't really fallen over head and ears
in love with me, I suppose old Fitz-Simkins would never have consented to such a
match. As it was, however, we had flirted so openly and so desperately during
the Scarborough season, that it would have been difficult for Sir Peter to break
it off: and so I had come to Egypt on a tour of insurance to secure my prize,
following in the wake of my future mother-in-law, whose lungs were supposed to
require a genial climate though in my private opinion they were really as
creditable a pair of pulmonary appendages as ever drew breath.

Nevertheless, the course of true love did not run so smoothly as might have been
expected. Editha found me less ardent than a devoted squire should be; and on
the very last night of the old year she got up a regulation lovers' quarrel,
because I had sneaked away from the boat that afternoon under the guidance of
our dragoman, to witness the seductive performances of some fair Ghaw zi, the
dancing girls of a neighbouring town. How she found it out heaven only knows,
for I gave that rascal Dimitri five piastres to hold his tongue: but she did
find it out somehow, and chose to regard it as an offence of the first magnitude:
a mortal sin only to be expiated by three days of penance and humiliation.

I went to bed that night, in my hammock on deck, with feelings far from
satisfactory. We were moored against the bank at Abu Yilla, the most pestiferous
hole between the cataracts and the Delta. The mosquitoes were worse than the
ordinary mosquitoes of Egypt, and that is saying a great deal. The heat was
oppressive even at night, and the malaria from the lotus beds rose like a
palpable mist before my eyes. Above all, I was getting doubtful whether Editha
Fitz-Simkins might not after all slip between my fingers. I felt wretched and
feverish: and yet I had delightful interlusive recollections, in between, of
that lovely little Gh ziyah, who danced that exquisite, marvellous, entrancing,
delicious, and awfully oriental dance that I saw in the afternoon.

By Jove, she was a beautiful creature. Eyes like two full moons; hair like
Milton's Penseroso; movements like a poem of Swinburne's set to action. If
Editha was only a faint picture of that girl now! Upon my word, I was falling in
love with a Gh ziyah!

Then the mosquitoes came again. Buzz — buzz — buzz. I make a lunge at the
loudest and biggest, a sort of prima donna in their infernal opera. I kill the
prima donna, but ten more shrill performers come in its place. The frogs croak
dismally in the reedy shallows. The night grows hotter and hotter still. At last,
I can stand it no longer. I rise up, dress myself lightly, and jump ashore to
find some way of passing the time.

Yonder, across the flat, lies the great unopened Pyramid of Abu Yilla. We are
going to-morrow to climb to the top; but I will take a turn to reconnoitre in
that direction now. I walk across the moonlit fields, my soul still divided
between Editha and the Gh ziyah, and approach the solemn mass of huge,
antiquated granite blocks standing out so grimly against the pale horizon. I
feel half awake, half asleep, and altogether feverish: but I poke about the base
in an aimless sort of way, with a vague idea that I may perhaps discover by
chance the secret of its sealed entrance, which has ere now baffled so many
pertinacious explorers and learned Egyptologists.

As I walk along the base, I remember old Herodotus's story, like a page from the
'Arabian Nights', of how King Rhampsinitus built himself a treasury, wherein one
stone turned on a pivot like a door; and how the builder availed himself of this
his cunning device to steal gold from the king's storehouse. Suppose the
entrance to the unopened Pyramid should be by such a door. It would be curious
if I should chance to light upon the very spot.

I stood in the broad moonlight, near the north-east angle of the great pile, at
the twelfth stone from the corner. A random fancy struck me, that I might turn
this stone by pushing it inward on the left side. I leant against it with all my
weight, and tried to move it on the imaginary pivot. Did it give way a fraction
of an inch? No, it must have been mere fancy. Let me try again. Surely it is
yielding! Gracious Osiris, it has moved an inch or more! My heart beats fast,
either with fever or excitement, and I try a third time. The rust of centuries
on the pivot wears slowly off, and the stone turned ponderously round, giving
access to a low dark passage.

It must have been madness which led me to enter the forgotten corridor, alone,
without torch or match, at that hour of the evening; but at any rate I entered.
The passage was tall enough for a man to walk erect, and I could feel, as I
groped slowly along, that the wall was composed of smooth polished granite,
while the floor sloped away downward with a slight but regular descent. I walked
with trembling heart and faltering feet for some forty or fifty yards down the
mysterious vestibule: and then I felt myself brought suddenly to a standstill by
a block of stone placed right across the pathway. I had had nearly enough for
one evening, and I was preparing to return to the boat, agog with my new
discovery, when my attention was suddenly arrested by an incredible, a perfectly
miraculous fact.

The block of stone which barred the passage was faintly visible as a square, by
means of a struggling belt of light streaming through the seams. There must be a
lamp or other flame burning within. What if this were a door like the outer one,
leading into a chamber perhaps inhabited by some dangerous band of outcasts? The
light was a sure evidence of human occupation: and yet the outer door swung
rustily on its pivot as though it had never been opened for ages. I paused a
moment in fear before I ventured to try the stone: and then, urged on once more
by some insane impulse, I turned the massive block with all my might to the left.
It gave way slowly like its neighbour, and finally opened into the central hall.

Never as long as I live shall I forget the ecstasy of terror, astonishment, and
blank dismay which seized upon me when I stepped into that seemingly enchanted
chamber. A blaze of light first burst upon my eyes, from jets of gas arranged in
regular rows tier above tier, upon the columns and walls of the vast apartment.
Huge pillars, richly painted with red, yellow, blue and green decorations,
stretched in endless succession down the dazzling aisles. A floor of polished
syenite reflected the splendour of the lamps, and afforded a base for red
granite sphinxes and dark purple images in porphyry of the cat-faced goddess
Pasht, whose form I knew so well at the Louvre and the British Museum. But I had
no eyes for any of these lesser marvels, being wholly absorbed in the greatest
marvel of all: for there, in royal state and with mitred head, a living Egyptian
king, surrounded by his coiffured court, was banqueting in the flesh upon a real
throne, before a table laden with Memphian delicacies!

I stood transfixed with awe and amazement, my tongue and my feet alike
forgetting their office, and my brain whirling round and round, as I remember it
used to whirl when my health broke down utterly at Cambridge after the Classical
Tripos. I gazed fixedly at the strange picture before me, taking in all its
details in a confused way, yet quite incapable of understanding or realizing any
part of its true import. I saw the king in the centre of the hall, raised on a
throne of granite inlaid with gold and ivory; his head crowned with the peaked
cap of Rameses, and his curled hair flowing down his shoulders in a set and
formal frizz. I saw priests and warriors on either side, dressed in the costumes
which I had often carefully noted in our great collections; while bronze-skinned
maids, with light garments round their waists, and limbs displayed in graceful
picturesqueness, waited upon them, half nude, as in the wall paintings which we
had lately examined at Karnak and Syene. I saw the ladies, clothed from head to
foot in dyed linen garments, sitting apart in the background, banqueting by
themselves at a separate table; while dancing girls, like older representatives
of my yesternoon friends, the Ghaw zi, tumbled before them in strange attitudes,
to the music of four-stringed harps and long straight pipes. In short, I beheld
as in a dream the whole drama of everyday Egyptian royal life, playing itself
out anew under my eyes, in its real original properties and personages.

Gradually, as I looked, I became aware that my hosts were no less surprised at
the appearance of their anachronistic guest than was the guest himself at the
strange living panorama which met his eyes. In a moment music and dancing ceased;
the banquet paused in its course, and the king and his nobles stood up in
undisguised astonishment to survey the strange intruder.

Some minutes passed before any one moved forward on either side. At last a young
girl of royal appearance, yet strangely resembling the Gh ziyah of Abu Yilla,
and recalling in part the laughing maiden in the foreground of Mr Long's great
canvas at the previous Academy, stepped out before the throng.

'May I ask you,' she said in Ancient Egyptian, 'who you are, and why you come
hither to disturb us?'

I was never aware before that I spoke or understood the language of the
hieroglyphics: yet I found I had not the slightest difficulty in comprehending
or answering her question. To say the truth, Ancient Egyptian, though an
extremely tough tongue to decipher in its written form, becomes as easy as love-making
when spoken by a pair of lips like that Pharaonic princess's. It is really very
much the same as English, pronounced in a rapid and somewhat indefinite whisper,
and with all the vowels left out.

'I beg ten thousand pardons for my intrusion,' I answered apologetically: 'but I
did not know that this Pyramid was inhabited, or I should not have entered your
residence so rudely. As for the points you wish to know, I am an English tourist,
and you will find my name upon this card;' saying which I handed her one from
the case which I had fortunately put into my pocket, with conciliatory
politeness. The princess examined it closely, but evidently did not understand
its import.

'In return,' I continued, 'may I ask you in what august presence I now find
myself by accident?'

A court official stood forth from the throng, and answered in a set heraldic
tone: 'In the presence of the illustrious monarch, Brother of the Sun, Thothmes
the Twenty-seventh, king of the Eighteenth Dynasty.'

'Salute the Lord of the World,' put in another official in the same regulation
drone.

I bowed low to his Majesty, and stepped out into the hall. Apparently my
obeisance did not come up to Egyptian standards of courtesy, for a suppressed
titter broke audibly from the ranks of bronze-skinned waiting-women. But the
king graciously smiled at my attempt, and turning to the nearest nobleman,
observed in a voice of great sweetness and self-contained majesty: 'This
stranger, Ombos, is certainly a very curious person. His appearance does not at
all resemble that of an Ethiopian or other savage, nor does he look like the
pale-faced sailors who come to us from the Achaian land beyond the sea. His
features, to be sure, are not very different from theirs; but his extraordinary
and singularly inartistic dress shows him to belong to some other barbaric race.'

I glanced down at my waistcoat, and saw that I was wearing my tourist's check
suit, of grey and mud colour, with which a Bond Street tailor had supplied me
just before leaving town, as the latest thing out in fancy tweeds. Evidently
these Egyptians must have a very curious standard of taste not to admire our
pretty and graceful style of male attire.

'If the dust beneath your Majesty's feet may venture upon a suggestion,' put in
the officer whom the king had addressed, 'I would hint that this young man is
probably a stray visitor from the utterly uncivilized lands of the North. The
headgear which he carries in his hand obviously betrays an Arctic habitat.'

I had instinctively taken off my round felt hat in the first moment of surprise,
when I found myself in the midst of this strange throng, and I was standing now
in a somewhat embarrassed posture, holding it awkwardly before me like a shield
to protect my chest.

'Let the stranger cover himself,' said the king.

'Barbarian intruder, cover yourself,' cried the herald. I noticed throughout
that the king never directly addressed anybody save the higher officials around
him.

I put on my hat as desired. 'A most uncomfortable and silly form of tiara indeed,'
said the great Thothmes.

'Very unlike your noble and awe-spiring mitre, Lion of Egypt,' answered Ombos.

'Ask the stranger his name,' the king continued.

It was useless to offer another card, so I mentioned it in a clear voice.

'An uncouth and almost unpronounceable designation truly,' commented his Majesty
to the Grand Chamberlain beside him. 'These savages speak strange languages,
widely different from the flowing tongue of Memnon and Sesostris.'

The chamberlain bowed his assent with three low genuflexions. I began to feel a
little abashed at these personal remarks, and I almost think (though I shouldn't
like it to be mentioned in the Temple) that a blush rose to my cheek.

The beautiful princess, who had been standing near me meanwhile in an attitude
of statuesque repose, now appeared anxious to change the current of the
conversation. 'Dear father,' she said with a respectful inclination, 'surely the
stranger, barbarian though he be, cannot relish such pointed allusions to his
person and costume. We must let him feel the grace and delicacy of Egyptian
refinement. Then he may perhaps carry back with him some faint echo of its
cultured beauty to his northern wilds.'

'Nonsense, Hatasou,' replied Thothmes XXVII testily. 'Savages have no feelings,
and they are as incapable of appreciating Egyptian sensibility as the chattering
crow is incapable of attaining the dignified reserve of the sacred crocodile.'

'Your Majesty is mistaken,' I said, recovering my self-possession gradually and
realizing my position as a freeborn Englishman before the court of a foreign
despot — though I must allow that I felt rather less confident than usual, owing
to the fact that we were not represented in the Pyramid by a British Consul — 'I
am an English tourist, a visitor from a modern land whose civilization far
surpasses the rude culture of early Egypt; and I am accustomed to respectful
treatment from all other nationalities, as becomes a citizen of the First Naval
Power in the World.'

My answer created a profound impression. 'He has spoken to the Brother of the
Sun,' cried Ombos in evident perturbation. 'He must be of the Blood Royal in his
own tribe, or he would never have dared to do so!'

'Otherwise,' added a person whose dress I recognized as that of a priest, 'he
must be offered up in expiation to Amon-Ra immediately.'

As a rule I am a decent truthful person, but under these alarming circumstances
I ventured to tell a slight fib with an air of nonchalant boldness. 'I am a
younger brother of our reigning king,' I said without a moment's hesitation; for
there was nobody present to gainsay me, and I tried to salve my conscience by
reflecting that at any rate I was only claiming consanguinity with an imaginary
personage.

'In that case,' said King Thothmes, with more geniality in his tone, 'there can
be no impropriety in my addressing you personally. Will you take a place at our
table next to myself, and we can converse together without interrupting a
banquet which must be brief enough in any circumstances? Hatasou, my dear, you
may seat yourself next to the barbarian prince.'

I felt a visible swelling to the proper dimensions of a Royal Highness as I sat
down by the king's right hand. The nobles resumed their places, the bronze-skinned
waitresses left off standing like soldiers in a row and staring straight at my
humble self, the goblets went round once more, and a comely maid soon brought me
meat, bread, fruits and date wine.

All this time I was naturally burning with curiosity to inquire who my strange
host might be, and how they had preserved their existence for so many centuries
in this undiscovered hall; but I was obliged to wait until I had satisfied his
Majesty of my own nationality, the means by which I had entered the Pyramid, the
general state of affairs throughout the world at the present moment, and fifty
thousand other matters of a similar sort. Thothmes utterly refused to believe my
reiterated assertion that our existing civilization was far superior to the
Egyptian; 'because,' he said, 'I see from your dress that your nation is utterly
devoid of taste or invention;' but he listened with great interest to my account
of modern society, the steam-engine, the Permissive Prohibitory Bill, the
telegraph, the House of Commons, Home Rule, and other blessings of our advanced
era, as well as to a brief resume of European history from the rise of the Greek
culture to the Russo-Turkish war. At last his questions were nearly exhausted,
and I got a chance of making a few counter inquiries on my own account.

'And now,' I said, turning to the charming Hatasou, whom I thought a more
pleasing informant than her august papa, 'I should like to know who you are.'

'What, don't you know?' she cried with unaffected surprise. 'Why, we're mummies.'

She made this astonishing statement with just the same quiet unconsciousness as
if she had said, 'we're French,' or 'we're Americans.' I glanced round the walls,
and observed behind the columns, what I had not noticed till then — a large
number of empty mummy-cases, with their lids placed carelessly by their sides.

'But what are you doing here?' I asked in a bewildered way.

'Is it possible,' said Hatasou, 'that you don't really know the object of
embalming? Though your manners show you to be an agreeable and well-bred young
man, you must excuse my saying that you are shockingly ignorant. We are made
into mummies in order to preserve our immortality. Once in every thousand years
we wake up for twenty-four hours, recover our flesh and blood, and banquet once
more upon the mummied dishes and other good things laid by for us in the Pyramid.
To-day is the first day of a millennium, and so we have waked up for the sixth
time since we were first embalmed.'

'The sixth time?' I inquired incredulously. 'Then you must have been dead six
thousand years.'

'Exactly so.'

'But the world has not yet existed so long,' I cried, in a fervour of orthodox
horror.

'Excuse me, barbarian prince. This is the first day of the three hundred and
twenty-seven thousandth millennium.'

My orthodoxy received a severe shock. However, I had been accustomed to
geological calculations, and was somewhat inclined to accept the antiquity of
man; so I swallowed the statement without more ado. Besides, if such a charming
girl as Hatasou had asked me at that moment to turn Mohammedan, or to worship
Oysteries, I believe I should incontinently have done so.

'You wake up only for a single day and night, then?' I said.

'Only for a single day and night. After that, we go to sleep for another
millennium.'

'Unless you are meanwhile burned as fuel on the Cairo Railway,' I added mentally.
'But how,' I continued aloud, 'do you get these lights?'

'The Pyramid is built above a spring of inflammable gas. We have a reservoir in
one of the side chambers in which it collects during the thousand years. As soon
as we awake, we turn it on at once from the tap, and light it with a lucifer
match.'

'Upon my word,' I interposed, 'I had no notion you Ancient Egyptians were
acquainted with the use of matches.'

'Very likely not. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Cephrenes, than
are dreamt of in your philosophy," as the bard of Philae puts it.'

Further inquiries brought out all the secrets of that strange tomb-house, and
kept me fully interested till the close of the banquet. Then the chief priest
solemnly rose, offered a small fragment of meat to a deified crocodile, who sat
in a meditative manner by the side of his deserted mummy-case, and declared the
feast concluded for the night. All rose from their places, wandered away into
the long corridors or side-aisles, and formed little groups of talkers under the
brilliant gas-lamps.

For my part, I strolled off with Hatasou down the least illuminated of the
colonnades, and took my seat beside a marble fountain, where several fish (gods
of great sanctity, Hatasou assured me) were disporting themselves in a porphyry
basin. How long we sat there I cannot tell, but I know that we talked a good
deal about fish, and gods, and Egyptian habits, and Egyptian philosophy, and,
above all, Egyptian love-making. The last-named subject we found very
interesting, and when once we got fully started upon it, no diversion afterwards
occurred to break the even tenour of the conversation. Hatasou was a lovely
figure, tall, queenly, with smooth dark arms and neck of polished bronze: her
big black eyes full of tenderness, and her long hair bound up into a bright
Egyptian headdress, that harmonized to a tone with her complexion and her robe.
The more we talked, the more desperately did I fall in love, and the more
utterly oblivious did I become of my duty to Editha Fitz-Simkins. The mere ugly
daughter of a rich and vulgar brand-new knight, forsooth, to show off her airs
before me, when here was a Princess of the Blood Royal of Egypt, obviously
sensible to the attentions which I was paying her, and not unwilling to receive
them with a coy and modest grace.

Well, I went on saying pretty things to Hatasou, and Hatasou went on deprecating
them in a pretty little way, as who should say, 'I don't mean what I pretend to
mean one bit;' until at last I may confess that we were both evidently as far
gone in the disease of the heart called love as it is possible for two young
people on first acquaintance to become. Therefore, when Hatasou pulled forth her
watch — another piece of mechanism with which antiquaries used never to credit
the Egyptian people — and declared that she had only three more hours to live,
at least for the next thousand years, I fairly broke down, took out my
handkerchief, and began to sob like a child of five years old.

Hatasou was deeply moved. Decorum forbade that she should console me with too
much empressement; but she ventured to remove the handkerchief gently from my
face, and suggested that there was yet one course open by which we might enjoy a
little more of one another's society. 'Suppose,' she said quietly, 'you were to
become a mummy. You would then wake up, as we do, every thousand years; and
after you have tried it once, you will find it just as natural to sleep for a
millennium as for eight hours. Of course,' she added with a slight blush, 'during
the next three or four solar cycles there would be plenty of time to conclude
any other arrangements you might possibly contemplate, before the occurrence of
another glacial epoch.'

This mode of regarding time was certainly novel and somewhat bewildering to
people who ordinarily reckon its lapse by weeks and months; and I had a vague
consciousness that my relations with Editha imposed upon me a moral necessity of
returning to the outer world, instead of becoming a millennial mummy. Besides,
there was the awkward chance of being converted into fuel and dissipated into
space before the arrival of the next waking day. But I took one look at Hatasou,
whose eyes were filling in turn with sympathetic tears, and that look decided me.
I flung Editha, life, and duty to the dogs, and resolved at once to become a
mummy.

There was no time to be lost. Only three hours remained to us, and the process
of embalming, even in the most hasty manner, would take up fully two. We rushed
off to the chief priest, who had charge of the particular department in question.
He at once acceded to my wishes, and briefly explained the mode in which they
usually treated the corpse.

That word suddenly aroused me. 'The corpse!' I cried; 'but I am alive. You can't
embalm me living,'

'We can,' replied the priest, 'under chloroform.'

'Chloroform!' I echoed, growing more and more astonished: 'I had no idea you
Egyptians knew anything about it.'

'Ignorant barbarian!' he answered with a curl of the lip; 'you imagine yourself
much wiser than the teachers of the world. If you were versed in all the wisdom
of the Egyptians, you would know that chloroform is one of our simplest and
commonest anaesthetics.'

I put myself at once under the hands of the priest. He brought out the
chloroform, and placed it beneath my nostrils, as I lay on a soft couch under
the central court. Hatasou held my hand in hers, and watched my breathing with
an anxious eye. I saw the priest leaning over me, with a clouded phial in his
hand, and I experienced a vague sensation of smelling myrrh and spikenard. Next,
I lost myself for a few moments, and when I again recovered my senses in a
temporary break, the priest was holding a small greenstone knife, dabbled with
blood, and I felt that a gash had been made across my breast. Then they applied
the chloroform once more; I felt Hatasou give my hand a gentle squeeze; the
whole panorama faded finally from my view; and I went to sleep for a seemingly
endless time.

When I awoke again, my first impression led me to believe that the thousand
years were over, and that I had come to life once more to feast with Hatasou and
Thothmes in the Pyramid of Abu Yilla. But second thoughts, combined with closer
observation of the surroundings, convinced me that I was really lying in a
bedroom of Shepheard's Hotel at Cairo. An hospital nurse leant over me, instead
of a chief priest; and I noticed no tokens of Editha Fitz-Simkins's presence.
But when I endeavoured to make inquiries upon the subject of my whereabouts, I
was peremptorily informed that I mustn't speak, as I was only just recovering
from a severe fever, and might endanger my life by talking.

Some weeks later I learned the sequel of my night's adventure. The Fitz-Simkinses,
missing me from the boat in the morning, at first imagined that I might have
gone ashore for an early stroll. But after breakfast time, lunch time, and
dinner time had gone past, they began to grow alarmed, and sent to look for me
in all directions. One of their scouts, happening to pass the Pyramid, noticed
that one of the stones near the north-east angle had been displaced, so as to
give access to a dark passage, hitherto unknown. Calling several of his friends,
for he was afraid to venture in alone, he passed down the corridor, and through
a second gateway into the central hall. There the Fellahin found me, lying on
the ground, bleeding profusely from a wound on the breast, and in an advanced
stage of malarious fever. They brought me back to the boat, and the Fitz-Simkinses
conveyed me at once to Cairo, for medical attendance and proper nursing.

Editha was at first convinced that I had attempted to commit suicide because I
could not endure having caused her pain, and she accordingly resolved to tend me
with the utmost care through my illness. But she found that my delirious remarks,
besides bearing frequent reference to a princess, with whom I appeared to have
been on unexpectedly intimate terms, also related very largely to our casus
belli itself, the dancing girls of Abu Yilla. Even this trial she might have
borne, setting down the moral degeneracy which led me to patronize so degrading
an exhibition as a first symptom of my approaching malady: but certain
unfortunate observations, containing pointed and by no means flattering
allusions to her personal appearance — which I contrasted, much to her
disadvantage, with that of the unknown princess — these, I say, were things
which she could not forgive; and she left Cairo abruptly with her parents for
the Riviera, leaving behind a stinging note, in which she denounced my perfidy
and empty-heartedness with all the flowers of feminine eloquence. From that day
to this I have never seen her.

When I returned to London and proposed to lay this account before the Society of
Antiquaries, all my friends dissuaded me on the grounds of its apparent
incredibility. They declare that I must have gone to the Pyramid already in a
state of delirium, discovered the entrance by accident, and sunk exhausted when
I reached the inner chamber. In answer, I would point out three facts. In the
first place, I undoubtedly found my way into the unknown passage - for which
achievement I afterwards received the gold medal of the Soci‚t‚ Kh‚diviale, and
of which I retain a clear recollection, differing in no way from my recollection
of the subsequent events. In the second place, I had in my pocket, when found, a
ring of Hatasou's, which I drew from her finger just before I took the
chloroform, and put into my pocket as a keepsake. And in the third place, I had
on my breast the wound which I saw the priest inflict with a knife of greenstone,
and the scar may be seen on the spot to the present day. The absurd hypothesis
of my medical friends, that I was wounded by falling against a sharp edge of
rock, I must at once reject as unworthy of a moment's consideration.

My own theory is either that the priest had not time to complete the operation,
or else that the arrival of the Fitz-Simkins' scouts frightened back the mummies
to their cases an hour or so too soon. At any rate, there they all were, ranged
around the walls undisturbed, the moment the Fellahin entered.

Unfortunately, the truth of my account cannot be tested for another thousand
years. But as a copy of this book will be preserved for the benefit of posterity
in the British Museum, I hereby solemnly call upon Collective Humanity to try
the veracity of this history by sending a deputation of archaeologists to the
Pyramid of Abu Yilla, on the last day of December, Two thousand eight hundred
and seventy-seven. If they do not then find Thothmes and Hatasou feasting in the
central hall exactly as I have described, I shall willingly admit that the story
of my New Year's Eve among the Mummies is a vain hallucination, unworthy of
credence at the hands of the scientific world.

(End.)

.....