第48章

The third sculpture was a picture of the burial of the deceased.There he was, stiff and cold, clothed in a linen robe, and laid out on a stone slab such as I had slept upon at our first sojourning-place.At his head and feet burned lamps, and by his side were placed several of the beautiful painted vases that I have described, which were perhaps supposed to be full of provisions.The little chamber was crowded with mourners, and with musicians playing on an instrument resembling a lyre, while near the foot of the corpse stood a man with a sheet, with which he was preparing to cover it from view.

These sculptures, looked at merely as works of art, were so remarkable that I make no apology for describing them rather fully.They struck me also as being of surpassing interest as representing, probably with studious accuracy, the last rites of the dead as practised among an utterly lost people, and even then I thought how envious some antiquarian friends of my own at Cambridge would be if ever I got an opportunity of describing these wonderful remains to them.

Probably they would say that I was exaggerating, notwithstanding that every page of this history must bear so much internal evidence of its truth that it would obviously have been quite impossible for me to have invented it.

To return.As soon as I had hastily examined these sculptures, which I think I omitted to mention were executed in relief, we sat down to a very excellent meal of boiled goat's-flesh, fresh milk, and cakes made of meal, the whole being served upon clean wooden platters.

When we had eaten we returned to see how poor Leo was getting on, Billali saying that he must now wait upon _i_ She _i_ , and hear her commands.On reaching Leo's room we found the poor boy in a very bad way.He had woke up from his torpor, and was altogether off his head, babbling about some boat-race on the Cam, and was inclined to be violent.Indeed, when we entered the room Ustane was holding him down.I spoke to him, and my voice seemed to soothe him; at any rate he grew much quieter, and was persuaded to swallow a dose of quinine.

I had been sitting with him for an hour, perhapsat any rate I know that it was getting so dark that Icould only just make out his head lying like a gleam of gold upon the pillow we had extemporized out of a bag covered with a blanketwhen suddenly Billali arrived with an air of great importance, and informed me that _i_ She _i_ herself had deigned to express a wish to see mean honor, he added, accorded to but very few.I think that he was a little horrified at my cool way of taking the honor, but the fact was that Idid not feel overwhelmed with gratitude at the prospect of seeing some savage, dusky queen, however absolute and mysterious she might be, more especially as my mind was full of dear Leo, for whose life Ibegan to have great fears.However, I rose to follow him, and as I did so I caught sight of something bright lying on the floor, which I picked up.Perhaps the reader will remember that with the potsherd in the casket was a composition scarabaeus marked with a round O, a goose, and another curious hieroglyphic, the meaning of which signs is "Suten se Ra^," or "Royal Son of the Sun." This scarab, which is a very small one, Leo had insisted upon having set in a massive gold ring, such as is generally used for signets, and it was this very ring that I now picked up.He had pulled it off in the paroxysm of his fever, at least I suppose so, and flung it down upon the rock-floor.Thinking that if I left it about it might get lost, I slipped it on to my own little finger, and then followed Billali, leaving Job and Ustane with Leo.

We passed down the passage, crossed the great aisle-like cave, and came to the corresponding passage on the other side, at the mouth of which the guards stood like two statues.As we came they bowed their heads in salutation, and then lifting their long spears placed them transversely across their foreheads, as the leaders of the troop that had met us had done with.

their ivory wands.We stepped between them, and found ourselves in an exactly similar gallery to that which led to our own apartments, only this passage was, comparatively speaking, brilliantly lighted.A few paces down it we were met by four mutestwo men and two womenwho bowed low and then arranged themselves, the women in front and the men behind us, and in this order we continued our procession past several doorways hung with curtains resembling those leading to our own quarters, and which I afterwards found opened out into chambers occupied by the mutes who attended on _i_ She _i_.A few paces more and we came to another doorway facing us, and not to our left like the others, which seemed to mark the termination of the passage.Here two more white, or rather yellow, robed guards were standing, and they too bowed, saluted, and let us pass through heavy curtains into a great ante-chamber, quite forty feet long by as many wide, in which some eight or ten women, most of them young and handsome, with yellowish hair, sat on cushions working with ivory needles at what had the appearance of being embroidery-frames.These women were also deaf and dumb.At the farther end of this great lamp lit apartment was another doorway closed in with heavy Oriental-looking curtains, quite unlike those that hung before the doors of our own rooms, and here stood two particularly handsome girl mutes, their heads bowed upon their bosoms and their hands crossed in an attitude of the humblest submission.As we advanced they each stretched out an arm and drew back the curtains.Thereupon Billali did a curious thing.

Down he went, that venerable-looking old gentlemanfor Billali is a gentleman at the bottomdown on to his hands and knees, and in this undignified position, with his long white beard trailing on the ground, he began to creep into the apartment beyond.I followed him, standing on my feet in the usual fashion.Looking over his shoulder, he perceived it.