So she rose, and passing hand in hand through that chamber, we found ourselves face to face with a mighty door of granite, let down from the roof in grooves.  Once more I took counsel of the plan, pressed with my foot upon a certain stone, and waited.  Then, suddenly and softly, I know not by what means, the mass heaved itself from its bed of living rock.  We passed beneath, and found ourselves face to face with a second door of granite.  Again I pressed on a certain spot, and this door swung wide of itself, and we went through, to find ourselves face to face with a third door, yet more mighty than the two through which we had won our way.  Following the secret plan, I struck this door with my foot upon a certain spot, and it sank slowly as though at a word of magic till its head was level with the floor of rock.  We crossed and gained another passage which, descending gently for a length of fourteen paces, led us into a great chamber, paved with black marble, more than nine cubits high, by nine cubits broad, and thirty cubits long.  In this marble floor was sunk a great sarcophagus of granite, and on its lid were graved the name and titles of the Queen of Menkau-ra.  In this chamber, too, the air was purer, though I know not by what means it came thither.

“Is the treasure here?” gasped Cleopatra.

“Nay,” I answered; “follow me,” and I led the way to a gallery, which we entered through an opening in the floor of the great chamber.  It had been closed by a trap-door of stone, but the door was open.  Creeping along this shaft, or passage, for some ten paces, we came at length to a well, seven cubits in depth.  Making fast one end of the rope that I had brought about my body and the other to a ring in the rock, I was lowered, holding the lamp in my hand, till I stood in the last resting-place of the Divine Menkau-ra.  Then the rope was drawn up, and Cleopatra, being made fast to it, was let down by the eunuch, and I received her in my arms.  But I bade the eunuch, sorely against his will, since he feared to be left alone, await our return at the mouth of the shaft.  For it was not lawful that he should enter whither we went.

CHAPTER XI

OF THE TOMB OF THE DIVINE MENKAU-RA; OF THE WRITING ON THE BREAST OF MENKAU-RA; OF THE DRAWING FORTH OF THE TREASURE; OF THE DWELLER IN THE TOMB; AND OF THE FLIGHT OF CLEOPATRA AND HARMACHIS FROM THE HOLY PLACE

We stood within a small arched chamber, paved and lined with great blocks of the granite stone of Syene.  There before us—­hewn from a single mass of basalt shaped like a wooden house and resting on a sphinx with a face of gold—­was the sarcophagus of the Divine Menkau-ra.

We stood and gazed in awe, for the weight of the silence and the solemnity of that holy place seemed to crush us.  Above us, cubit over cubit in its mighty measure, the pyramid towered up to heaven and was kissed of the night air.  But we were deep in the bowels of the rock beneath its base.  We were alone with the dead, whose rest we were about to break; and no sound of the murmuring air, and no sight of life came to dull the awful edge of solitude.  I gazed on the sarcophagus; its heavy lid had been lifted and rested at its side, and around it the dust of ages had gathered thick.