The vision passed. It was so real that Smith thought he must have been
dreaming. Well, he was awake now, and colder than ever. Moreover, the
jackals had multiplied. There were a whole pack of them, and not far
away. Look! One crossed in the ring of the lamplight, a slinking, yellow
beast that smelt the remains of dinner. Or perhaps it smelt himself.
Moreover, there were bad characters who haunted these mountains, and he
was alone and quite unarmed. Perhaps he ought to put out the light which
advertised his whereabouts. It would be wise, and yet in this particular
he rejected wisdom. After all, the light was some company.

Since sleep seemed to be out of the question, he fell back upon poor
humanity's other anodyne, work, which has the incidental advantage of
generating warmth. Seizing a shovel, he began to dig at the doorway of
the tomb, whilst the jackals howled louder than ever in astonishment.
They were not used to such a sight. For thousands of years, as the old
moon above could have told, no man, or at least no solitary man, had
dared to rob tombs at such an unnatural hour.

When Smith had been digging for about twenty minutes something tinkled
on his shovel with a noise which sounded loud in that silence.

"A stone which may come in handy for the jackals," he thought to
himself, shaking the sand slowly off the spade until it appeared. There
it was, and not large enough to be of much service. Still, he picked it
up, and rubbed it in his hands to clear off the encrusting dirt. When he
opened them he saw that it was no stone, but a bronze.

"Osiris," reflected Smith, "buried in front of the tomb to hallow the
ground. No, an Isis. No, the head of a statuette, and a jolly good