cursing by the
fire) over her white wrappings, we started. The dance was to be held in
the open air, on the smooth rocky plateau in front of the great cave,
and thither we made our way. About fifteen paces from the mouth of the
cave we found three chairs placed, and here we sat and waited, for as
yet no dancers were to be seen. The night was almost, but not quite,
dark, the moon not having risen as yet, which made us wonder how we
should be able to see the dancing.

"Thou wilt presently understand," said Ayesha, with a little laugh, when
Leo asked her; and we certainly did. Scarcely were the words out of her
mouth when from every point we saw dark forms rushing up, each bearing
with him what we at first took to be an enormous flaming torch. Whatever
they were, they were burning furiously, for the flames stood out a
yard or more behind each bearer. On they came, fifty or more of them,
carrying their flaming burdens and looking like so many devils from
hell. Leo was the first to discover what these burdens were.

"Great heaven!" he said, "they are corpses on fire!"

I stared and stared again--he was perfectly right--the torches that were
to light our entertainment were human mummies from the caves!

On rushed the bearers of the flaming corpses, and, meeting at a spot
about twenty paces in front of us, built their ghastly burdens crossways
into a huge bonfire. Heavens! how they roared and flared! No tar barrel
could have burnt as those mummies did. Nor was this all. Suddenly I
saw one great fellow seize a flaming human arm that had fallen from its
parent frame, and rush off into the darkness. Presently he stopped, and
a tall streak of fire shot up into the air, illumining the gloom, and
also the lamp from which it sprang. That lamp was the mummy of a woman
tied to a stout stake let into the rock, and he had fired her hair. On
he went a few paces and touched a second, then a third, and a fourth,
till at last we were surrounded on all three sides by a great ring of
bodies flaring furiously, the material with which they were preserved
having rendered them so inflammable that the flames would literally
spout out of the ears and mouth in tongues of fire a foot or more in
length.

Nero illuminated his gardens with live Christians soaked in tar, and
we were now treated to a similar spectacle, probably for the first time
since his day, only happily our lamps were not living ones.

But, although this element of horror was fo