This we cut loose, for it was glued fast.  This done, we began to unroll the wrappings of the holy corpse.  Setting my shoulders against the sarcophagus, I sat upon the rocky floor, the body resting on my knees, and, as I turned it, Cleopatra unwound the cloths; and awesome was the task.  Presently something fell out; it was the sceptre of the Pharaoh, fashioned of gold, and at its end was a pomegranate cut from a single emerald.

Cleopatra seized the sceptre and gazed on it in silence.  Then once more we went on with our dread business.  And ever as we unwound, other ornaments of gold, such as are buried with Pharaohs, fell from the wrappings—­collars and bracelets, models of sistra, an inlaid axe, and an image of the holy Osiris and of the holy Khem.  At length all the bandages were unwound, and beneath we found a covering of coarsest linen; for in those very ancient days the craftsmen were not so skilled in matters pertaining to the embalming of the body as they are now.  And on the linen was written in an oval, “Menkau-ra, Royal Son of the Sun.”  We could in no wise loosen this linen, it held so firm on to the body.  Therefore, faint with the great heat, choked with mummy dust and the odour of spices, and trembling with fear of our unholy task, wrought in that most lonesome and holy place, we laid the body down, and ripped away the last covering with the knife.  First we cleared Pharaoh’s head, and now the face that no man had gazed on for three thousand years was open to our view.  It was a great face, with a bold brow, yet crowned with the royal uraeus, beneath which the white locks, stained yellow by the spices, fell in long, straight wisps.  Not the cold stamp of death, and not the slow flight of three thousand years, had found power to mar the dignity of those shrunken features.  We gazed on them, and then, made bold with fear, stripped the covering from the body.  There at last it lay before us, stiff, yellow, and dread to see; and on the left side, above the thigh, was the cut through which the embalmers had done their work, but it was sewn up so deftly that we could scarcely find the mark.

“The gems are within,” I whispered, for I felt that the body was very heavy.  “Now, if thy heart fail thee not, thou must make an entry to this poor house of clay that once was Pharaoh,” and I gave her the dagger—­the same dagger which had drunk the life of Paulus.

“It is too late to doubt,” she answered, lifting her white beauteous face and fixing her blue eyes all big with terror upon my own.  She took the dagger, and with set teeth the Queen of this day plunged it into the dead breast of the Pharaoh of three thousand years ago.  And even as she did so there came a groaning sound from the opening to the shaft where we had left the eunuch!  We leapt to our feet, but heard no more, and the lamp-light still streamed down through the opening.

“It is nothing,” I said.  “Let us make an end.”

Then with much toil we hacked and rent the hard flesh open, and as we did so I heard the knife point grate upon the gems within.