"It was not ugly," answered Samentu, shaking himself. "For think, lord, that monster was as tall as an obelisk."
Ramses made a movement of displeasure.
"Samentu," said he, "it seems to me that Thou didst visit thy caves in a dream."
"I swear to thee, holiness, by the life of my children!" exclaimed the priest, "that I speak truth. Yes; that monster in the skin of a reptile covered with a scaly armor, if lying on the ground, would with its tail be fifty paces long. In spite of fear and repulsion I returned a number of times to that cave and examined the creature most carefully."
"Then it was alive?"
"No, it was dead. Dead a very long time, but preserved like our mummies. The great dryness of the air preserved it, and perhaps some. salt of the earth unknown to me.
"That was my last discovery," continued Samentu. "I went no more into caves, for I meditated greatly. 'Osiris,' said I, 'creates lions, elephants, horses, and Set gives birth to serpents, bats, crocodiles; the monster which I met is surely a creation of Set, and since it exceeds everything known by us under the sun, Set is a mightier god than Osiris.'
"So I turned to Set, and on returning to Egypt fixed myself in his temple. When I told the priests of my discovery they explained to me that they knew a great many monsters of that sort."
Samentu drew breath, then continued,
"Shouldst Thou desire to visit our temple at any time, holiness, I will show thee wondrous and terrible beings in coffins: geese with lizards' heads and bats' wings. Lizards like swans, but larger than ostriches, crocodiles three times as long as those which live now in the Nile, frogs as bulky as mastiffs. Those are mummies, or skeletons found in caves and preserved in our coffins. People think that we adore them, but we merely save them from decay and examine their structure."