He announced the result, and an expression of gratification came from the lips of the savants.
“Those figures apply to a tomb only the third removed from that of Ras-Ameses, as far as we can make out,” said Phalos. “We can’t be very far from the royal tomb itself.”
“Do you remember, Frank,” asked the professor, “how many such measurements were found in the memoranda of Richard’s that we examined at Hillville? That shows that he wasn’t following a blind trail, but had something definite to go upon. It’s another proof that it was he who secured the other copy of the inscription.”
“I guess you’re right,” agreed the captain.
They went forward, and found themselves before long in a bewildering maze of passages that branched off from one another in all directions. Some led up to walls that might or might not have rooms on the other side. Others terminated in what were veritable points, and had evidently been designed to mislead and weary any intruder into the tombs.
“You have to hand it to those old engineers and architects,” grumbled the captain, in unwilling admiration. “In cunning and foxiness they’d make some of our modern ones look like thirty cents.”
The demands of hunger now began to make themselves felt, and the professor suggested that they snatch a hasty meal. The others willingly acquiesced.
“Napoleon used to say that an army, like a snake, traveled on its stomach,” remarked the professor. “Which is one way of saying that a hungry man is no good for fighting. And we have a fight on our hands, if any one ever had.”
They made their way back to the mortuary chamber of Horum-Aleb. Once there, they took from the bag of provisions a limited amount of their precious stores. They ate sparingly, but the meal was made more palatable by coffee that Ismillah had brewed that morning and placed in a thermos bottle.
Never before had any of them partaken of a meal in such weird and uncanny surroundings. To save the light, they sat in utter darkness. This had the additional advantage of hiding from them the funereal trappings and the dried-up figure of the headless mummy lying over in the corner.