with fine, drifted sand. Basketful by basketful
we got it out and then, my friend, there appeared the most
beautiful life-sized statue of Isis carved in alabaster that ever
I have seen. She was seated on a throne-like chair and wore the
vulture cap on which traces of colour remained. Her arms were held
forward as though to support a child, which perhaps she was
suckling as one of the breasts was bare. But if so, the child had
gone. The execution of the statue was exquisite and its tender and
mystic face extraordinarily beautiful, so life-like also that I
think it must have been copied from a living model. Oh! my friend,
when I looked upon it, which we did by the light of the candles,
for the sun was sinking and shadows gathered in that excavated
hole, I felt--never mind what I felt--perhaps _you_ can guess who
know my history.

"While we stared and stared, I longing to go upon my knees, I knew
not why, suddenly I felt a faint trembling of the ground. At the
same moment, the head overseer of the works, a man called Achmet,
rushed up to us, shouting out--'Back! Back! The wall has burst.
The sand runs!'

"He seized me by the arm and dragged me away beside of and behind
the grave, George turning to follow. Next instant I saw a kind of
wave of sand, on the crest of which appeared the stones of the
wall, curl over and break. It struck the shrine, overturned and
shattered it, which makes me think it was made of four pieces, and
shattered also the alabaster statue within, for I saw its head
strike George upon the back and throw him forward. He reeled and
fell into the open grave which in another moment was filled and
covered with the debris that seemed to grip me to my middle in its
flow. After this I remembered nothing more until hours later I
found myself lying in our house.

"Achmet and his Egyptians had done nothing; indeed none of them
could be persuaded to approach the place till the sun rose
because, as they said, the old gods of the land whom they looked
upon as devils, were angry at being disturbed and would kill them
as they had killed the Bey, meaning George. Then, distracted as I
was, I went myself for there was no other European there, to find
that the whole site of the sanctuary was buried beneath hundreds
of tons of sand, that, beginning at the gap in the broken wall,
had flowed from every side. Indeed it would have taken weeks to
dig