y
destroyed, Mr Preston?" asked Lawrence.

"It is impossible to say. It may have been by the ravages of fire.
More likely by war. The nation here may have been very powerful, and a
more powerful nation attacked them, and, perhaps after a long siege, the
soldiery utterly destroyed it, while the ravages of a couple of thousand
years, perhaps of three thousand, gave the finishing touches to the
destruction, and--ah, here is another piece of the same statue."

He dragged out with great difficulty another fragment of marble which
had plainly enough been carved to represent drapery, and he was scraping
carefully from it some adhering fragments of earth, when Mr Burne
suddenly leaped up from the block of stone upon which he had been
perched, and began to shake his trousers and slap and bang his legs for
a time, and then limped up and down rubbing his calf, and muttering
angrily.

"What _is_ the matter, Mr Burne?" cried Lawrence.

"Matter, sir! I've been bitten by one of those horrible vipers. The
brute must have crawled up my leg and--I say, Yussuf, am I a dead man?"

"Certainly not, your excellency," replied the guide gravely.

"You are laughing at me, sir. You know what I mean. I am bitten by one
of those horrible vipers, am I not?"

The professor had leaped out of the little hole he had laboriously dug,
and run to his companion's side in an agony of fear.

"Your excellency has been bitten by one of these," said the guide
quietly, and he pointed to some large ants which were running all over
the stones.

"Are--are you sure?" cried Mr Burne.

"Sure, excellency? If it had been a viper you would have felt dangerous
symptoms."

"Why, confound it, sir," cried Mr Burne, rubbing his leg which he had
laid bare, "that's exactly what I do feel--dangerous symptoms."

"What? What do you feel?" cried the professor excitedly.

"As if someone had bored a hole in my leg, and were squirting melted
lead into all my veins--right up my leg, sir. It's maddening! It's
horrible! It's worse than--worse than--there, I was going to say gout,
Lawrence, but I'll say it's worse than being caned. Now, Yussuf, what
do you say to that, sir, eh?"

"Ants, your excellency. They bite very sharply, and leave quite a
poison in the wound."

"Quite a poison, sir!--poison's nothing to it! Here, I say, what am I
to do?"

"If your excellency will allow me," said Yussuf, "I will prick the bite
with the point of my knife, and then rub