and that we better go in and at least make a formal call on
the crowned heads, and so we went in, through dark passages, with little
candles that the guides carried, and up and down stairs, until finally
we got into a big room that smelled like a morgue, with bats and evil
looking things all around, and I felt creepy.

The guides got down on their knees to pray, and I thought it was time to
be robbed again. I do not know what made me think of making a sensation
right there in the bowels of that pyramid, where there were corpses
thousands of years old, of Egypt's rulers. I never felt that way at
home, when I visited a cemetery, but I though I would shoot my last
roman candle and fire my last giant firecracker right there in that
moseleum, and take the chances that we would get out alive. So when the
tourists were lined up beside a tomb of some Rameses or other, and the
guides were praying for strength and endurance, probably, to get away
with all the money we had, I picked out a place up toward the roof that
seemed full of bats and birds of ill omen, and I sneaked my roman candle
out from under my shirt, and touched the fuse to a candle on the turban
of a guide who was on his knees, and just as the first fire ball was
ready to come out I yelled "Whoop-la-much-a wano, epluribus un-um," and
the fire balls lighted up the gloom and knocked the bats gaily west.

Holy jumping cats, but you ought to have seen the guides, yelling Allah!
Allah! and groveling on the floor, and the bats were flying around in
the faces of the tourists, and everybody was simply scared out of
their boots. I thought I might as well wind the thing up glorious, so
I touched the tail of my last giant firecracker to the sparks that were
oozing out of my empty roman candle, and threw it into the middle of the
great room, and when it went off you would think a cannon had exploded,
and everybody rushed for the door, and we fell over each other getting
out through the passage towards the door.

I was the first to get out on to the side of the pyramid, and I watched
for the crowd to come out. The tourists got out first, and then dad came
out, puffing and wheezing, and the last to come out were the Arabs, and
they came on their hands and knees, calling to Mr. Allah and every one
of them actually pale, and I think they were conscience-stricken, for
they began to give back the money they had robbed dad of, and an Arab
must be pretty scared to give up any of his h