It was six feet high, so that we could all stand comfortably, and may
have been ten feet long by eight feet wide. Upon the wooden pillars at
the side I saw that Egyptian hieroglyphics had been rudely traced by
burning. Dr. Silence lit three candles and handed one to each of us. He placed a
fourth in the sand against the wall on his right, and another to mark
the entrance to the tunnel. We stood and stared about us, instinctively
holding our breath. “Empty, by God!” exclaimed Colonel Wragge. His voice trembled with
excitement. And then, as his eyes rested on the ground, he added, “And
footsteps--look--footsteps in the sand!”

Dr. Silence said nothing. He stooped down and began to make a search
of the chamber, and as he moved, my eyes followed his crouching figure
and noted the queer distorted shadows that poured over the walls and
ceiling after him. Here and there thin trickles of loose sand ran
fizzing down the sides. The atmosphere, heavily charged with faint yet
pungent odours, lay utterly still, and the flames of the candles might
have been painted on the air for all the movement they betrayed. And, as I watched, it was almost necessary to persuade myself forcibly
that I was only standing upright with difficulty in this little
sand-hole of a modern garden in the south of England, for it seemed to
me that I stood, as in vision, at the entrance of some vast rock-hewn
Temple far, far down the river of Time. The illusion was powerful,
and persisted. Granite columns, that rose to heaven, piled themselves
about me, majestically uprearing, and a roof like the sky itself spread
above a line of colossal figures that moved in shadowy procession along
endless and stupendous aisles. This huge and splendid fantasy, borne I
knew not whence, possessed me so vividly that I was actually obliged to
concentrate my attention upon the small stooping figure of the doctor,
as he groped about the walls, in order to keep the eye of imagination
on the scene before me. But the limited space rendered a long search out of the question, and
his footsteps, instead of shuffling through loose sand, presently
struck something of a different quality that gave forth a hollow and
resounding echo. He stooped to examine more closely. He was standing exactly in the centre of the little chamber when this
happened, and he at once began scraping away the sand with his feet. In
less than a minute a smooth surface became visible--the surface of a
wooden covering. The next thing I saw was that he had raised it and was
peering down into a space below. Instantly, a strong odour of nitre
and bitumen, mingled with the strange perfume of unknown and powdered
aromatics, rose up from the uncovered space and filled the vault,
stinging the throat and making the eyes water and smart. “The mummy!” whispered Dr. Silence, looking up into our faces over his
candle; and as he said the word I felt the soldier lurch against me,
and heard his breathing in my very ear. “The mummy!” he repeated under his breath, as we pressed forward to
look. It is difficult to say exactly why the sight should have stirred in
me so prodigious an emotion of wonder and veneration, for I have had
not a little to do with mummies, have unwound scores of them, and even
experimented magically with not a few. But there was something in the
sight of that grey and silent figure, lying in its modern box of lead
and wood at the bottom of this sandy grave, swathed in the bandages of
centuries and wrapped in the perfumed linen that the priests of Egypt
had prayed over with their mighty enchantments thousands of years
before--something in the sight of it lying there and breathing its own
spice-laden atmosphere even in the darkness of its exile in this remote
land, something that pierced to the very core of my being and touched
that root of awe which slumbers in every man near the birth of tears
and the passion of true worship. I remember turning quickly from the Colonel, lest he should see my
emotion, yet fail to understand its cause, turn and clutch John Silence
by the arm, and then fall trembling to see that he, too, had lowered
his head and was hiding his face in his hands. A kind of whirling storm came over me, rising out of I know not what
utter deeps of memory, and in a whiteness of vision I heard the magical
old chauntings from the Book of the Dead, and saw the Gods pass by in
dim procession, the mighty, immemorial Beings who were yet themselves
only the personified attributes of the true Gods, the God with the
Eyes of Fire, the God with the Face of Smoke. I saw again Anubis, the
dog-faced deity, and the children of Horus, eternal watcher of the
ages, as they swathed Osiris, the first mummy of the world, in the
scented and mystic bands, and I tasted again something of the ecstasy
of the justified soul as it embarked in the golden Boat of Ra, and
journeyed onwards to rest in the fields of the blessed. And then, as Dr. Silence, with infinite reverence, stooped and touched
the still face, so dreadfully staring with its painted eyes, there rose
again to our nostrils wave upon wave of this perfume of thousands of
years, and time fled backwards like a thing of naught, showing me in
haunted panorama the most wonderful dream of the whole world. A gentle hissing became audible in the air, and the doctor moved
quickly backwards. It came close to our faces and then seemed to play
about the walls and ceiling. “The last of the Fire--still waiting for its full accomplishment,” he
muttered; but I heard both words and hissing as things far away, for I
was still busy with the journey of the soul through the Seven Halls of
Death, listening for echoes of the grandest ritual ever known to men. The earthen plates covered with hieroglyphics still lay beside the
mummy, and round it, carefully arranged at the points of the compass,
stood the four jars with the heads of the hawk, the jackal, the
cynocephalus, and man, the jars in which were placed the hair, the nail
parings, the heart, and other special portions of the body. Even the
amulets, the mirror, the blue clay statues of the Ka, and the lamp with
seven wicks were there. Only the sacred scarabæus was missing. “Not only has it been torn from its ancient resting-place,” I heard Dr. Silence saying in a solemn voice as he looked at Colonel Wragge with
fixed gaze, “but it has been partially unwound,”--he pointed to the
wrappings of the breast,--“and--the scarabæus has been removed from the
throat.”

The hissing, that was like the hissing of an invisible flame, had
ceased; only from time to time we heard it as though it passed
backwards and forwards in the tunnel; and we stood looking into each
other’s faces without speaking. Presently Colonel Wragge made a great effort and braced himself. I
heard the sound catch in his throat before the words actually became
audible. “My sister,” he said, very low. And then there followed a long pause,
broken at length by John Silence. “It must be replaced,” he said significantly.