The raft grounded, and as a viscous wash of red lapped across it, she leaped forth, landing with both feet in the horror. She floundered out and crying to her servants to follow her, fled like a mad thing up the sandy stretch toward the distant wall of rock.
The boat, lightened of her weight, received a backward thrust as she leaped, and drifted out of the reeds. The heavy current caught it and swept it across the smitten river to the Memphian shore. It bore two insensible figures.
Masanath ran, thinking only to leave the ghastly flood behind. Her wet over-dress flapped about her ankles. It, too, was stained, and she tore if off as she ran. Ahead of her was a sagging limestone wall, with no gap, but Masanath, hardly sane, would have dashed herself against it, if hands had not detained her.
"Blood! Blood!" she shrieked. "Holy Ptah save us!"
"Peace!" some one made answer. "God is with us."
The voice was calm and reassuring, the hands firm. Here, then, was one who was strong and unafraid, and therefore, a safe refuge. No longer called upon to care for herself, Masanath fell into the arms of the brave unknown and ceased to remember.
Consciousness returned to her slowly and incompletely. Horror had dazed her, and her surroundings, but faintly discovered in an all-enveloping gloom, were not conducive to mental repose and clearness.
She became aware, first, that she was somewhere hidden from the sunshine and beyond reach of the strange odor from the Nile.
Next she realized that she was sheltered in a cave; that slender lines of white daylight sifted through the interstices of a door; that a lamp was burning somewhere behind a screen; that a hairy thing sat in a corner and looked at her with half-human eyes, and that, as she shrank at the sight, the warm support under her head moved and a fair face, framed with golden hair, bent over her.
Then her eyes, becoming clearer as her recollection returned, wandered away toward the walls of her shelter. They had been hewn by hands. There was an opening in one side, leading into another and a darker crypt. Was not this a tomb? She was in the Tomb of the Discontented Soul! Terrified, she struggled to gain her feet and fly, but the awful memory of the plague without returned to her overwhelmingly. Gentle hands restrained her, and the same voice that had sought to soothe her before, continued its soft comforting now.