Moreover, there had been time for the foul air to escape through the
hole that they had cleared. Lastly, something seemed to call on him to
come and see. He placed the bronze head in his breast-pocket over his
heart, and, thrusting the lamp through the hole, looked down. Here there
was no difficulty, since sand had drifted in to the level of the bottom
of the aperture. Through it he struggled, to find himself upon a bed of
sand that only just left him room to push himself along between it and
the roof. A little farther on the passage was almost filled with mud.

Mahomet had been right when, from his knowledge of the bed-rock, he said
that any tomb made in this place must be flooded. It _had_ been flooded
by some ancient rain-storm, and Smith began to fear that he would find
it quite filled with soil caked as hard as iron. So, indeed, it was to
a certain depth, a result that apparently had been anticipated by those
who hollowed it, for this entrance shaft was left quite undecorated.
Indeed, as Smith found afterwards, a hole had been dug beneath the
doorway to allow the mud to enter after the burial was completed. Only a
miscalculation had been made. The natural level of the mud did not quite
reach the roof of the tomb, and therefore still left it open.

After crawling for forty feet or so over this caked mud, Smith suddenly
found himself on a rising stair. Then he understood the plan; the tomb
itself was on a higher level.

Here began the paintings. Here the Queen Ma-Mee, wearing her crowns and
dressed in diaphanous garments, was presented to god after god. Between
her figure and those of the divinities the wall was covered with
hieroglyphs as fresh to-day as on that when the artist had limned them.
A glance told him that they were extracts from the Book of the Dead.
When the thief of bygone ages had broken into the tomb, probably not