fashion.  Even after the lapse of many years the stone swung round, showing a little opening, through which a man might scarcely creep.  As it swung, a mighty bat, white in colour as though with unreckoned age, and such as I had never seen before for bigness, for his measure was the measure of a hawk, flew forth and for a moment hovered over Cleopatra, then sailed slowly up and up in circles, till at last he was lost in the bright light of the moon.

But Cleopatra uttered a cry of terror, and the eunuch, who was watching, fell down in fear, believing it to be the guardian Spirit of the pyramid.  And I, too, feared, though I said nothing.  For even now I believe that it was the Spirit of Menkau-ra, the Osirian, who, taking the form of a bat, flew forth from his holy House in warning.

I waited a while, till the foul air should clear from the passage.  Then I drew out the lamps, kindled them, and passed them, to the number of three, into the entrance of the passage.  This done, I went to the eunuch, and, taking him aside, I swore him by the living spirit of Him who sleeps at Abouthis that he should not reveal those things which he was about to see.

This he swore, trembling sorely, for he was very much afraid.  Nor, indeed, did he reveal them.

This done, I clambered through the opening, taking with me a coil of rope, which I wound around my middle, and beckoned to Cleopatra to come.  Making fast the skirt of her robe, she came, and I drew her through the opening, so that at length she stood behind me in the passage which is lined with slabs of granite.  After her came the eunuch, and he also stood in the passage.  Then, having taken counsel of the plan of the passage that I had brought with me, and which, in signs that none but the initiated can read, was copied from those ancient writings that had come down to me through one-and-forty generations of my predecessors, the Priests of this Pyramid of Her, and of the worship of the Temple of the Divine Menkau-ra, the Osirian, I led the way through that darksome place towards the utter silence of the tomb.  Guided by the feeble light of our lamps, we passed down the steep incline, gasping in the heat and the thick, stagnated air.  Presently we had left the region of the masonry and were slipping down a gallery hewn in the living rock.  For twenty paces or more it ran steeply.  Then its slope lessened and shortly we found ourselves in a chamber painted white, so low that I, being tall, had scarcely room to stand; but in length four paces, and in breadth three, and cased throughout with sculptured panels.  Here Cleopatra sank upon the floor and rested awhile, overcome by the heat and the utter darkness.

“Rise!” I said.  “We must not linger here, or we faint.”