“Now for the Tombs, fellows,” cried Ned, after the party had gazed at
the Sphinx, climbed the great Pyramid and enjoyed the fine view of the
desert and the verdant Nile valley.
“The tombs! What’s the use of seeing a lot of moldy old tombs?”
protested some of the sailors.
“Oh, all right. But Herc and I want to pay our respects to a few
mummies before we leave Egypt,” responded Ned. “You fellows wait for
us.”
“All right,” agreed Meadows. “I’m plumb worn out with sight-seeing.”
“Where’s that guide? Oh, here he is. Now then, ‘Lead on, McDuff,’”
cried Ned, and the two boys followed the guide up to a height of fifty
feet or more above the desert. Then they paused at a black hole.
“Do we go in there?” demanded Herc, as the guide paused to light
candles.
“Certainly, why not?”
“It looks like the subway. First time I ever heard of burying kings in
the subway.”
Into the dark recesses of the tombs they plunged after the guide. It
was almost insufferably hot and smelled musty and mouldy. In places the
ceiling was low and they had to crawl on their hands and knees on the
dusty floor.
“My uniform will be a fine sight when we get out of here,” grumbled
Herc. “Just after I had all that sticky stuff cleaned off it, too!”
“Never mind. That dust will brush off,” declared Ned, and they went
forward once more.
“Look out where you go,” said the guide.
“Why, are there holes one can fall down?” asked Herc.
“Many. Lot of things not known about Tombs. Nobody know everything
about them.”
They finally came to a high-domed chamber. The walls were covered with
queer hieroglyphics and writings. The guide explained that this was
the King’s chamber. He showed them some stone coffins in which lay the
mummified forms of dead and gone rulers. Ned was much impressed, but
Herc, as usual, did not take the situation seriously.
“Maybe they are just a lot of fakes,” he remarked. But presently he
tugged Ned’s sleeve.
“I guess they’re not, either,” he said.
“Not what?”
“Fakes. I just saw the ghosts of two of them.”
“What in the name of time are you talking about?”
“Look back there yourself. There, among the shadows. Don’t you see
anything?”
“Why, yes. I do see somebody.”
“Don’t you think it might be the spooks of some of those old kings
snooping about to find out what we want in here?”
“No, I’ll tell you what I think it is.”
“What?”
“Some of our fellows who think they’ll put up a trick on us.”
“Oh, ho! That’s it, eh? What do you know about that? Let’s turn the
tables on them.”
“Good, we’ll slip away from the guide and hide off in that corridor
there. When they come along we’ll give them a scare they won’t forget
in a hurry.”
The guide was in another part of the Tomb chamber and the boys made
a noiseless exit in the direction Ned had indicated. They crept into
the shadows, chuckling in low tones over the scare they were going to
give their fun-loving ship-mates. At last it grew quite dark. The boys
decided to halt. Before long they heard something to confirm their
theory. Whisperings began to draw near to them.
“Hush!” hissed Ned warningly.
“S-s-s-s-say, those fellows aren’t talking in English!”
“No; what do you suppose it means?”
“I think we ought to go out and reconnoiter.”
“Same here.”
The boys made their way back along the passage. Suddenly Ned gave an
amazed and rather alarmed exclamation.
“The light has gone!”
“Which one?”
“Why, the one in the Tomb chamber. Where’s that guide?”
“He’s vamoosed. Maybe he thought we’d gone out of our own accord. Say,
Ned, I kind of wish we’d stayed with him.”
“So do I now. Well, we’ve got to make the best of it. Light up your
candle, Herc, and then we’ll holler as loud as we can. If that does no
good, we’ll have to try to get out of this place by ourselves.”
The boys began shouting at the top of their voices. But hollow echoes
coming weirdly back from the stone walls of the burial chamber were the
only response to their shouts. Suddenly Herc grabbed Ned’s arm.
“I saw them again,” he gasped.
“Saw who?”
“Those spooks. They are right back of us.”
“I’m glad you did. It’s some of our boys, for sure. Hullo, fellows!”
hailed Ned. But no answer was vouchsafed. Ned began not to like the
look of things a little bit.
For a long time the boys tried to find their way out of the Pyramid,
but without success. Finally they came to a halt and exchanged dismayed
glances.
“We might as well face the truth,” said Ned in sober tones; “we’re
lost.”
“That’s right,” agreed Herc in melancholy fashion. “I wish we’d stayed
outside.”
“Maybe we can get back to the burial chamber,” suggested Ned, after a
while. The boys were then standing in a passageway into which they had
blundered in the hope that it might lead to daylight.
“I doubt it. I’ve not the remotest idea of where it is, and this
Pyramid is simply honeycombed with passages.”
“The guide said nobody knew all about it. Maybe we are in one of those
passages that haven’t been explored yet.”
“In that case, we stand a mighty poor chance of being found.”
“Hark!” Herc grabbed Ned nervously.
“What’s the trouble?”
“What’s up?”
“I heard whispering.”
“Where?”
“Back there in the darkness. There it is again,” said Herc, whispering
himself.
“I hear it, too, now. What on earth is it? I wish we had some weapon.
It may be thieves.”
“Look!” cried Herc suddenly. “It is thieves! I saw two men just for an
instant.”
“Who were they?”
“Two of those beggars that we charged in Cairo last night. They slunk
off when they saw I’d spotted them.”
“Gracious, that’s nice! Look out, Herc! Now, you’ve done it.”
In his agitation, Herc had allowed the candle that he was carrying to
slip from his fingers. The boys were plunged in total darkness. To make
matters worse, they couldn’t, although they groped in every direction,
recover the candle.
“Strike a match, Herc.”
“Yes, it’s a good thing I’ve got some.”
The light flared up and the boys looked down for the candle. But at
the same instant something totally unexpected happened. They felt
themselves seized from behind in such a manner that they were powerless
to resist. Then they were rushed rapidly along by their captors.
“Let go!” roared Herc. “Let----”
That sentence was never finished. The earth appeared to drop from under
Herc’s feet and he felt himself plunging into unknown, unlit space.
Suddenly he struck something and knew that he was sliding at express
speed down an almost perpendicular wall of rock as smooth as glass.
“Wow! I’m going fully sixty miles an hour! Where will all this end?”
exclaimed the boy.
Hardly had the words left his lips when he landed with a crash at
the foot of the slope and lay still. He didn’t dare to move for some
minutes, thinking that he must be seriously injured.
“Where’s Ned, I wonder?” he thought.
Then he cried out softly.
“Ned! Oh, Ned!”
The next minute he gave a jump. Almost in his ear he heard his
comrade’s reply.
“Hello, Herc, all right?”
“Yes, how about you?”
“O. K., although I don’t see how we escaped injury. Gracious, that was
a ride!”
“Yes, a kind of chute the chutes that I don’t care to tackle again.
Those rascals must have followed us out to the Pyramids to get revenge.
I recognized one of them as the fellow I cracked in the eye. I reckon
they ran us into one of those holes that the guide warned us about, and
had hard work to save themselves!”
“Well, the question now is, how are we going to get out of here?”
“Yes, and that’s some question, too. Wait; I’ll strike a match and
maybe we can get some bearings.”
The match flared up and showed them that they were in a chamber not
unlike the great burial Tomb, but smaller. Dust lay thick, and showed
that it was many years since human footsteps had trodden its floor.
“This is nice,” snorted Herc. “We might stay here as long as those
mummies have, and never be found.”
“It looks that way,” said Ned in a musing voice, as if he were thinking
of something else. Suddenly he gave a whoop.
“I’ve got it.”
“Got what?”
“An idea.”
“Good for you. Let’s hear it.”
“Why, those fellows couldn’t have come into the Pyramid the same way
we did. Our boys would have seen them and recognized their ugly mugs,
especially that one with the black eye. They must have come in some
other way. Maybe we can find that way.”
“And then, again, maybe we can’t.”
“Let’s try.”
“No harm in that.”
Striking matches sparingly, the boys set off. Soon they found
themselves in another passage. On and on they went till their feet
ached. They began to think that they never would get out of the place.
Suddenly, just as Herc struck one of the few remaining matches, Ned
leaned over with a sharp exclamation. He picked up something. It was
a small, cheap ornament of Egyptian manufacture. But it was precious
to him, for it showed that the passage they were traversing was a
traveled one. Herc received the news with shining eyes.
“Good; never say die. We’ll be out of here in two shakes of a duck’s
tail. See if we’re not.”
They negotiated a sharp turn and then, to their astonishment, found
that they were confronting a door of wood. From within came voices
filtering out through a chink, for the door was not fully closed.
“Be ready for trouble,” said Ned, and then he shoved the door open.
As it swung back, the boys got the surprise of their lives. Within was
a chamber illumined by a smoky lamp and containing a divan and a few
bits of Oriental furniture. On the divan were seated two men whom they
recognized at once as the rascally beggars who had followed them to the
Pyramids and trailed them in the dark.
Both men leaped to their feet as the boys confronted them. They dashed
for two revolvers that lay in a niche in the wall.