“Eh?” cried Hans and I.
Adolph pushed open the outer gate, and we followed.
“Suppose you’ll pay our lodging at the Mena House?” grinned Hans, as we crossed the Kasr-el-Nil bridge.
“Don’t worry,” replied Adolph.
We pushed through the throng of donkey boys beyond the bridge and, ignoring the electric line that connects Cairo with the pyramids of Gizeh, covered the eight miles on foot. Darkness fell soon after our arrival, and with it rose an unveiled moon. The tourists were out in force. Adolph led the way in and out among the ancient monuments and pointed out the most charming views with the discernment of an antiquarian. The desert night soon turned cold. The tourist parties strolled away to the great hotel below the hill, and Hans fell to shivering.
“Where’s this fine lodging you’re telling about?” he chattered.
“Komm’ mal her,” said Adolph.
He picked his way over the tumbled blocks towards the third pyramid, climbed a few feet up its northern face, and disappeared in a black hole. We followed, and, doubled up like balls, slid down, down, down a sharply inclined tunnel, some three feet square, into utter darkness. As our feet touched a stone floor, Adolph struck a match. The flame showed two small vaults and several huge stone sarcophagi.
“Beds waiting for us, you see?” said Adolph. “Probably you’ve chatted with the fellows who used to sleep here? They’re in the British Museum, in London.”
He dropped the match and climbed into one of the coffins. I chose another and found it as comfortable as a stone bed can be, though a bit short. Our sleeping chamber was warm, somewhat too warm in fact, and Hans, given to snoring, awoke echoes that resounded through the vaults like the beating of forty drums. But the night passed quickly, and, when our sense of time told us that morning had come, we crawled upward on hands and knees through the tunnel and out into a sunlight that left us blinking painfully for several moments.