I think I may say truthfully, that not one of my visitors failed of being more than repaid for any trifling discomfort which was theirs, since few scenes can equal, certainly none surpass, the view presented by the extended vista north, south and eastward across the winding Nile Valley towards Karnak, Luxor, and the deep blue Eastern Hills.
But to return to my story. That memorable morning the fever must assuredly have had me well within its clutches. Since, of that early morning walk, I remember but a single incident—Heaven knows, I am never likely to forget it—a great black void into which I suddenly pitched, a horrible tingling in all my veins, a shock and a myriad of little flames that seemed to burst from my very eyeballs!
Was I conscious, I asked myself! I must be, for I seemed to realize at once what a dreadful thing had happened to me.
Of course, I knew I had pitched headlong into the open mouth of one of those rock-hewn tombs with which the tumbled slopes below the Libyan Hills are perforated. Well might those crumbling hills been named a honey-comb of death!
I could not move; my whole body seemed numb. By gazing upward I found that I could see the stars! Yes, I recognized the star of Hathor, in all her radiant beauty.
How my head ached! How my ears roared! Worse than all was the agony of a ceaseless throb-throb, beat-beat, at the back of my head.
It was as though someone were hitting me with a hammer, rhythmically, relentlessly.
No, there were the sharp outlines of the tomb-shaft and the stars above!
I wonder whose tomb it is? Is it charted? Oh, will that throbbing never stop? Won’t someone come? Help! Help!
As if in answer to my cry, high above me I saw a queer, yet strikingly familiar figure, a figure silhouetted black against the sky.
The figure leaned over and gazed downwards into the shaft. I noticed its long and thickly curled wig.
“Ha, ha! A wig of the New Empire,” said I to myself.
Its owner’s face I could not see, but he—or she—yes, it was a woman, peered long and earnestly into the gloomy depths of the shaft where I lay.
Suddenly, and as though through the medium of some unnatural light, her face was revealed.
“I was right,” thought I. “It _is_ a woman, and by her robes, a woman of the New Empire!”