“There, Lawrence, boy, it’s in your way, not mine. I never play at marbles now. How many have you found, Preston?”
“How many? Only this one.”
“Why, it’s a pump trough, and a fine one too,” cried the old lawyer.
“Pump trough!” cried the professor scornfully.
“What is it then—a cistern? I see. Old waterworks for irrigating the gardens.”
“My dear sir, can you not see? It is a huge sarcophagus. Come here, Lawrence. Look at the sculpture and ornamentation all along this side, and at the two ends as well. The cover ought to be somewhere about.”
He looked around, and, just as he had said, there was the massive cover, but broken into half a dozen pieces, and the carving and inscription, with which it had been covered, so effaced by the action of the lichens and weather that it was not possible to make anything out, only that a couple of sitting figures must at one time have been cut in high relief upon the lid.
“Probably the occupants of the tomb,” said the professor thoughtfully. “Greek, I feel sure. Here, Yussuf, what does this mean?”
He caught up his gun that he had laid across the corner of the sarcophagus, and turned to face some two dozen swarthy-looking men who had come upon them unperceived and seemed to have sprung up from among the broken stones, old columns, and traces of wall that were about them on every side.