"Great Rameses!" I exclaimed as we stepped forth. "Look at those things."
Rhodes, I found, had already halted and was gazing up at them—two colossi, one on either side of the mouth of the tunnel. These carven monsters (we were, of course, standing between their bases) were seated, and one was a male, the other a female. They had not been fashioned in situ but clearly had been brought to the spot in sections. But how had those massive pieces of rock, the smallest of which weighed tons, been raised into their places? Who can tell? It remains, and probably always will remain, one of the mysteries of that lost and mysterious land.
We were getting rather used to strange things now; but, so remarkable were these great statues, for some minutes we lingered there before them.
The Dromans had moved on. We followed, to find ourselves in a few moments before a monstrous carven human head. There was the great pedestal, and there, lying face upward before it, was the great head, that and nothing more.
"Poor fellow," said I as we walked around the caput, "where is the rest of him? And why did they leave the head lying here like this?"
"I have an idea," Milton returned, "that there was no rest of him, that this head was all that was to be placed upon that pedestal."
I suppose that Rhodes was right. One wonders what happened there so long ago, why the great caput was never raised to the place which they had prepared for it. No man can tell that now. All we know is that there the great head lies, that there it has lain for, in all probability, untold thousands of years.
At last Milton Rhodes climbed up and stood upon the chin, in order, as he said, "to get a good view of the poor gink's phiz." And not only that, but he stood upon the poor fellow's nose; yes, he balanced himself on one foot on the very tip of it.
I turned my look to the Dromans with some apprehension, for I did not know what superstitious ideas they might entertain, feared that to them this acrobatic stunt of Rhodes might be sacrilege itself. My misgivings, however, were groundless. The Dromans were delighted. They burst into merry laughter; they applauded vociferously. Even Drorathusa laughed outright.
Little wonder, forsooth, for a pretty figure Milton Rhodes made balanced up there on the poor gink's olfactory protuberance. A fine posture truly for one of the world's (I mean, of course, our world's) great scientists; and I could not help wondering what certain dignified old fellows (Milton called them fossils) would have thought could they, by television or some miracle, have seen him there. And what would the Dromans themselves think? Well, I was glad when he came down and there was an end to that foolishness.