When Madcap Max felt that he was a prisoner, and that self-interest, at least, for a time, rendered it inadvisable to attempt to escape, he began to look about his strange abode.
Girzilla was more than ever a puzzle to him.
She was refined and educated—of that there could be no doubt.
She had said she had several names, but only one had she given him.
What did the word mean?
It had some special significance—of that he was sure.
Was it Arabic or Nubian? Was it of the ancient language of the Pharoahs, or the almost as ancient Syrian?
How did she overhear his conversation about the Mamelukes?
“I begin to think she is a fairy,” said Max, his head growing dizzy with puzzling over the matter.
“How long am I to remain here?”
There was no one to answer the question, so it had to remain still in the realm of doubt.
“Where am I?”
That query he could answer with a positiveness that could not be controverted. He was in a tomb.
At first the thought nearly drove him mad, but he got accustomed to the idea. After eating and drinking there, much of the superstitious fear had left him.
“Where shall I sleep?” he asked himself, “for I am tired and exhausted. The sand man has been about a long time,” he laughed; “yes, sand in my eyes, up my nostrils, down my throat, in my ears—the sand man has done his work this time. What was that?”
Max possessed a splendid amount of courage, but to be alone in a tomb and suddenly to hear a terrible noise, and to be nearly suffocated with dust, to have the torch knocked over—fortunately not extinguished—would be sufficient to set the strongest nerves quivering, and make the most valiant man tremble. He dare not raise his head.
He was afraid to open his eyes.
Had he done so, he would have known that the commotion was caused by a huge bat trying to escape from the inhabited tomb.
Nearly an hour passed before Max found courage enough to lift up the torch, which had nearly burned itself out.
If his torch went out, what was he to do?
He was far from being a madcap at that time.
But youth asserted itself, and Max found his spirits rising, perhaps aided considerably by his eyes suddenly perceiving another torch.
“I’ll have a gay old time. Why shouldn’t I? Eh, old fellow?”
Was Max addressing himself or one of the mummies in the place?
He lighted the torch, and began to look round his prison house.
On the walls—which had once been smoothed by sculptor’s skill—were the remains of paintings and hieroglyphic inscriptions.
“These old fellows believed in having their tombs beautiful!” exclaimed Max, aloud.
And the words had scarcely left his lips when his hair began to rise on his head, for he heard a voice add, with sepulchral emphasis:
“Beautiful!”
“Who’s there?” asked Max, half afraid of his own voice.
“There!”
“It was only an echo,” said Max; but all the same it was startling, especially when the voice of the tomb repeated the last syllable:
“Oh!”
But the sturdy young American laughed; and the whole tomb seemed alive with demoniac mirth, as the walls beat back the loud guffaws of the youth.
“I shall go mad!” exclaimed Max.
“Mad!” repeated the echo.
With wonderful courage Madcap Max remained silent for a time, afraid of the echo, and yet not afraid to continue his search.
Close to the place where Girzilla had kept the eatables was a sarcophagus, which seemed as if it had not been opened.
Here was something to do.
He resolved to open the stone casket.
The work was easier than he anticipated, for the lid was not fastened down, and Max was able to push it on one side.
He brought over a torch so that he might the better look into the huge cavern-like coffin.
When he did so he saw a mummy; the face, outlined by the cloths, was that of a woman.
“Who can it have been?” he wondered.
And then, with a pure love of fun, he resolved to unwrap the body, which may have been hidden from the world two or three thousand years, and present the mummy to his strange girl friend.
Max was now in his glory.
He had something to do, and at the same time his spirit of mischief was aroused.
He never imagined that Girzilla would be frightened if she entered and saw a mummified Egyptian looking at her.
It would be fun to watch her countenance. And that was all that Max did it for.
He managed to get the first wrapper off very easily, but when he came to the second, he found that the ancient Egyptians knew how to make a strong bandage, for every fold had to be cut with his knife.
Under this he found spices, lotos leaves and ears of corn.
The latter interested him, for while the grains looked like wheat, the general appearance was that of barley, only there were seven ears on every stalk.
“I’ll pocket some of this, and if ever I get back to America I’ll plant it and see if embalmed wheat will grow.”
As this thought passed through the mind of the daring young desecrator of the dead, he began to whistle “Yankee Doodle.”
The echo kept pace with him, and the louder he whistled the more distinct was the echo.
Suddenly stopping, his patriotic soul was stirred to its depths as the thought crossed his mind that men who had been buried there thousands of years before America was known to civilization were, through the echo, joining in the chorus of “Yankee Doodle.”
“Old Pharoah was a fine old fellow,” said Max, “but I’d rather be an American citizen than——”
“A mummy.”
That was no echo.
It was a human voice.
Max could stand no more.
His eyes seemed like coals of fire, his brain was burning, his lips were parched.
“Oh, God! I am dying!” he gasped, as he fell on the floor, scattering the dust of centuries and causing the tomb to be filled with a cloud, suffocating and unpleasant.
When he recovered consciousness he was still lying on the floor, but his head rested on Girzilla’s knee, and she was fanning him with a palm leaf which she had brought in with her.
“You silly boy, did I frighten you?”
“Was it you who said ‘a mummy?’”
“Of course it was. Who else could it be?”
“I thought——”
“That these dead-and-gone people had suddenly recovered the voice which perished before Isis’ great temple was built. You silly—silly boy. But what were you doing?”
There was so much nineteenth century life about Girzilla that Max thought but little of the bygone Pharoahs.
He told her about unwrapping the mummy, and she chided him for doing it.
“I have looked on that mummy ever since I was so high,” she said, placing her hand about two feet above the floor.
“You have!”
“Of course I have, and I was going to show her to you.”
“You were?”
“Did I not say so?”
“Yes.”
“Then why ask me? What did you do with the writing you found?”
“I did not see any.”
“I placed some there.”
“When?”
“The Nile did rise and fall and rise again since I placed it there.”
“Where did you find it? What is it about?”
“I don’t know; I could not read it.”
“Get it for me.”
“You silly boy, how can I? Your head is heavy, and holds me down.”
“My head resteth on a nice pillow.”
“Osiris must have fanned thy cheeks,” she said, using an Egyptian metaphor which in more modern English would mean: “You are a flatterer,” or “You have kissed the blarney stone.”
Max was not so gallant as an American youth ought to be, so he sprang to his feet and reached over into the casket, drawing therefrom a package of papers which were decidedly modern.
The language was a strange one to him, however, and his only hope was that once away from the strange tomb he might find some one who could translate the document for him.
He had become an ardent Egyptologist.