Charlotte Bryson Taylor

“ The moon comes up behind it just as it comes up behind the Mound of the City every night. And there's a big old apple-tree there, and right below is the garden where the violets grow. I've been smelling those violets all day—seems as though I could look down any minute and expect to see them growing in the warmth and dampness. Funny thing how a fellow can almost make himself believe he's smelling flowers when there aren't any flowers in a thousand miles, and how the mere remembrance of the perfume will bring things back to him that he'd forgotten long ago. ”

“ He gained the edge of the level which overlooked the courtyard, forty feet below, and looked down. There, among the exhumed tombs, was dense black shadow, save at one place only, in the centre of the open court, where the moonlight fell like a lake of silver at the bottom of a well. Merritt, pausing uncertain which way to turn or what to look for, heard strange sounds arising from the heart of the shadow below him; heavy breathing, guttural snarls, low and worrying, like an angry dog's; thumping as of heavy bodies at grips and threshing to and fro. ”

“ The vanguard drew away over the desert, a long string of horses and men and camels. In the last moment of twilight, when the sky was steeped in violet, and the darkness rushed down upon them with swooping wings, Merritt turned in his saddle and looked back at the scene of his work. The excavations, only hastily filled up, gaped like open wounds—wounds which might never heal, but remain always open to the pitiless sun and the driving sand-storms and the holy nights—half-revealing, half-concealing the secrets which lay below. ”

“ He washed the wound and touched it with lunar caustic; and Deane laughed grimly through locked jaws. Then Merritt put him to bed, and lay down himself where Deane might touch him and be instantly convinced of his presence, leaving the lamp still burning.
The tent fell into silence; but Merritt, always wakeful, with every nerve strung taut, felt subtly the tenseness of the figure beside him; knew how Deane, motionless, was holding himself down by sheer force of will; and longed feverishly for daylight when the nightmare of the darkness should end. ”

“ The men became utterly convinced of an influence for evil working actively in their midst; each man looked upon himself as the next possible victim. Ibraheem hinted to Merritt that they might, in an excess of terror, capture the animals and provisions and desert in a body, taking the law into their own hands; and Merritt leaped from his camp-chair and strode out into the sunlight, his jaw set, his eyes ablaze with the light of coming battle. ”

“ No sound came from the camps; all the world slept. Merritt dozed uncomfortably, his head fallen forward, hands hanging limp between his knees. It seemed to him, afterwards, that he had slept thus a very long time. As one, in ten minutes, may dream through a cycle of time, so Merritt felt as though half the night had gone when at length he pulled himself together, guiltily conscious that he ought to go and look for Deane. ”

“ A sick goat, left behind as worthless, ran a few steps after the caravan, bleating feebly. It stopped in front of one of the mounds, and looked after them, as horses and men moved slowly across the desert. Occasionally, from in front, voices were heard, growing always fainter as the dark string wound its way westward against the stars. But those in the rear were very silent. Merritt, looking back, saw something slipping among the mounds, a black blot against the dusk, and struck the spurs into his horse's flank. Then he remembered that it might have been the goat. ”

“ He was lying face downward on the ground—I swear I could almost have touched him, it was so real!—and a woman was stooping over him—oh, Merritt, the loveliest thing that God or the Devil ever made! I never was much given to running after women, but—in that dream I wanted to strangle him, to crush the life and breath and soul out of him, because that woman was leaning over him, with her breath on him and her hands on his head, and I was mad for her. ”

“ Deane removed his boots, and went noiselessly to the door. He peered through the flap into the moonlight; abruptly drew back with a quick intake of breath.
"Good Lord!" he muttered. "That boy!... Camping down here in one blanket instead of sleeping decently in his tent ... Is the youngster crazy?"
An instant he thought rapidly. He drew on his boots, bestirred himself briskly a moment, making much noise; and listened again—then called out in natural tones:
"Hello, Holloway! Not turned in yet? Come in." ”

“ Oh, master, come away! The place is cursed. It is the lair of the evil soul, which we have freed from death to lure us into death. Ai, master, come!"
"Get along With you, you chicken-heart!" Merritt muttered in wrathful Anglo-Saxon, and waved him off. The man knew not the words, but took the hint and fled. For an hour Merritt patiently searched the mounds, the abandoned trenches, the deserted tombs. Once he looked up, feeling eyes upon him, and said with annoyance:
"Get back to camp, I tell you! If you won't work, I won't have you peering around here." ”

“ Continually he was restless, ill at ease, yet striving doggedly to get himself in hand. Merritt began to notice in him a desire for companionship, especially towards nightfall; noticed with opened eyes that Deane kept himself always near a group of men, even though he sat silent, taking no part in their talk. Twice, Merritt, going late at night cautiously to his tent to see that he wanted nothing, found it empty. At first this frightened him, suggesting thoughts of Deane wandering alone in the darkness, until he remembered that night and day were as the same to Deane. ”

“ I think this thing ought to be sifted. And when you come to think of their point of view, this is a pretty weird sort of a place. There's a-plenty to cook up a rattling good ghost story out of; this old cursed city, the altars to unknown gods where human sacrifices were offered; that mummy Princess, with her 'devil-soul' and her jewels and her story painted on the walls of her own tomb; and now the disappearance of our men, one by one. Well, I'm glad you two fellows are here, anyhow. If I were alone, by George, I shouldn't wonder if I'd get to believing in Ibraheem's spucks myself. ”

“ Merritt plunged down the slanting gallery leading to the courtyard, leaping downward with great strides. Even as he raced, his brain formulated theories. It might be a wild animal—lion—hyena—jackal; it might be a native run amuck; it might be a thief. Whatever it was, it had Deane, handicapped by his blindness and recent hardships, down and fighting for his life——
Merritt gained the lower level, stumbled over an unseen obstruction in his path, recovered, and dashed into the courtyard to where the struggling mass had been. ”

“ Merritt turned to look at him.
"What's up?" he demanded.
But Deane, without noticing his question, began to speak rapidly, in the same tense voice.
"Then I believe anything—everything. I believe that the men are right. I believe the place is cursed. I believe that Bob and the Arabs were decoyed and trapped by unhuman powers. I've scoffed and sneered, but now I will believe anything this land can show me. I'm beaten—done up. I don't understand—but I believe ... I believe it!"
His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. Merritt stood up and shook him gently. ”

“ Deane answered shortly. "Sometimes I get half off, but that—that's worse than nothing. Every time I drop off I'm back—out there—again, stumbling over rocks, mad with hunger and thirst." He brushed the back of a hand across his forehead. "Or else I'm feeling dry arms around my neck, and something pulling at me the way—oh, the way I dreamt out there!" He shuddered. "Then I stay awake the rest of the night."
"Deane, go home!" Merritt urged earnestly. " You're not fit to stay out here. No man would be, after—all that." ”

“ You are not, of course; when you make the conscious effort, you can move with perfect ease. It lasts barely a second. That is how I woke, the third time. And in that instant, while I lay feeling as though I could not stir hand or foot to save my soul, yet with every mental faculty waking to alertness, I got the impression of arms—soft human arms—removed from my neck, and knew that something beside me had sprung away, swiftly and silently. ”

“ Thus equipped and fortified against the Devil, he led the way, shivering and whining, past the trenches nearest the camp to one of the old diggings. Here he searched until he came to a shallow cave in the further side of the rubbish-heap.
"This is the place, my master," he said, and crept forward to look. Then he dropped upon his knees and felt for all his amulets and prayed crazily, even as Merritt said with sternness:
"You've forgotten the place. There's no mummy here." ”

“ Within the Tomb
y now the lamps had steadied to brighter burning, so that the tomb was thrown into the light. It was low and square and very small; and around the walls were paintings, still more or less preserved, whose subjects they did not then stop to ascertain. Deane turned over the thing, shrivelled and brown and leathery, which once had lived and moved and breathed even as they themselves. Said Merritt:
"It's a woman. From the dress I should judge she was of high rank"—he whistled—"Look at the jewels!" ”

“ Merritt, his grey face and tired eyes seemingly unchanged, sober, yet with the activity of one who, in authority, must be all things to all men, urged on the advance. Deane, silent, with brooding face and bowed shoulders, sat his horse listlessly, leaving its control to the Arab who held the leading-rein. ”

“ The half-buried corpse of the city that had been, sank again to its broken rest, to lie a while in pitiful nakedness, and be slowly buried once more, in the fulness of time, beneath the shifting sand. Man had come, and man had gone; man had come again, and now had gone, and the earth would reclaim her own. ”

“ Merritt lighted his lantern.
"We'll have time to take a look," he said, quietly enough. "It's in a first-class state of preservation—the first chamber we've found not crushed in and filled with rubbish. Come along, you two, but bring your lamps."
He picked his way through the débris, and lifted one leg over the stone which formed the threshold, flinging the light of his lantern ahead. Deane and Holloway followed close upon his heels. The three stood within the tomb. Earth and stone had done what might be done to hold the secret given to their keeping, but man had conquered. ”

“ Merritt turned the lamp out and stole noiselessly from the tent...
In spite of Merritt's anxious care, Deane did not seem to rally from the effects of that desert journey. So that Merritt wished to hasten the work, and get away, but to this Deane obstinately refused to listen. He argued forcefully that no time was like the present; that they did not know if they could ever get out again; that if his eyes could be cured at all, a few weeks' delay would not harm them. In the end Merritt yielded, partly because he wished to believe what Deane said, partly because all his heart was in his work. ”

“ For there is nothing more stirring than to stand at the threshold of a long-dead world, on the verge of entering, knowing that the next blow of the pick, the next step forward, may reveal either lost secrets of dead peoples which will shed fresh light through the grey mists of ages—or nothing; may turn a new page in the sealed Book of the Things that Were, or disclose a blank. Even the basket-men swarmed to look, craning over the shoulders of the pickmen.
The trench was close on a hundred and fifty feet wide, bounded on either side by towering walls of earth. ”

“ Can you build these ruined walls again, and see, instead of mounds and trenches, a city with tower-capped walls, and groves of trees, and gardens, teeming with human life whose very ashes have dissolved? ”

“ He thought of her, young perhaps, beautiful of course, thrust in there to perish by slow degrees, in the childish belief that the beautiful, evil soul of her, penned within the narrow walls, might never escape to wreak further havoc among the sons of men. ”