Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/604

596 Columns; the island seemed deserted—no living thing was to be seen.

Sheshonk’s eye twinkled.

“Five hundred golden pieces for Petamon’s head!”

“Ay, and five hundred more,” said Septimius.

The priest beckoned them on. They entered the sacred chamber where Petamon had kept his vigil on that memorable night, and Lepidus half shuddered as he looked round at the familiar paintings on the wall. The altar was prepared and the fire burning on it. The priest advanced and set his foot heavily on one side of the step in front. Suddenly altar and step, solid though they seemed, rolled away noiselessly to one side, disclosing a dark passage beneath. In a moment the Romans leapt down, Lepidus, hastily lighting a torch at the altar fire as they did so. The passage led them to a small room in the thickness of the wall, and, throwing in the light of his torch, he saw the arms and accoutrements of the two murdered soldiers, and the fetters that had bound Petamon lying in a corner. Here the passage apparently terminated abruptly, but the priest raised a stone in the roof with his hand, and they crept up through the narrow aperture thus opened. A strongly barred wooden door was on their left. They shot back the bolts and the door opened, revealing a small cell hewn out of one solid stone, with no aperture save the door for the admission of air; the light of day never has penetrated those gloomy recesses. The cell was untenanted, but a heap of human bones at one corner told of the uses to which it had been applied.

Shuddering they closed the door, and upon Sheshonk touching another spring, a square aperture opened, through which they glided, serpentwise, into another of the sacred chambers, and gladly hailed the light of day as it glimmered faintly through the door.

They searched the whole temple, but in vain; secret chambers they found more than one; even the dungeon of Septimius was opened, but nothing was discovered, and even the bloodhound sagacity of Sheshonk seemed for a moment at fault.

But his eye soon brightened, and muttering to himself “five hundred pieces of gold,” he led them through the court under the high painted pillars, and opening a door in one of the sides of the pyramidal gateway, proceeded up a long narrow stair. Suddenly a rustle of garments was heard above them, and they caught sight of the robes of Petamon, his leopard-skin cloak and his golden fringe, as he fled before them. The two Romans dashed after him like greyhounds on a hare, but as they reached the top of the staircase Septimius stumbled and fell, and so checked the pursuit for an instant. In a moment he recovered himself, but in that instant Petamon, casting back on his pursuers a glance of baffled malignity, sprang from the tower, and in another moment lay, dashed upon the pavement of the hall, a shapeless mass, while his blood and brains were splashed over the gay painting of the pillars.

The soldiers and Sheshonk, horror-struck, hastened down, and were standing beside the body,—Lepidus had just recovered from the finger of the priest the signet ring that he had lost, and was in the act of drawing the roll of secret orders from his bosom,—Sheshonk had raised his head-dress and was wiping the perspiration from his brows, when suddenly, from aloft—it almost seemed from heaven—a sharp dagger was hurled with unerring aim. It cleft the bald skull of the traitor, and he fell, with scarcely a groan, on the top of Petamon’s corpse.

The Romans looked up: no one was to be seen. With a party of soldiers they searched the huge gateway towers, but, without a guide, such a quest was hopeless, and they never traced the hand from which the dagger came.

Their main object was accomplished. Petamon was dead, and with him expired all chances of a revolutionary outbreak. Sheshonk was dead, too; but, as Lepidus said, that saved the good gold pieces.

The same evening they returned to Syene, and next day the camp was broken up, and the Cohort embarked on the river and floated down to rejoin the garrison at Memphis.

Little more need be said. In six months Septimius and Lepidus left Egypt for good, and when they were fairly out of sight of land they seemed to breathe more freely.

“I owe you many a good turn, Lepidus, old boy,” said the Centurion; “but I’ll never admit, to the end of time, that Apis would not have made splendid beefsteaks.”

“Whoever said he wouldn’t?” retorted the other, his grim features relaxing into a smile; “only I think it would need a braver man than either you or I to eat them under the nose of old Petamon.”

No doubt a good deal more interesting conversation would have followed, but the wind at this point freshened, the sea began to rise, and the two Romans became deplorably sick.

was one of those large and important hotels that seem to swoop down and take possession of little villages. The first object that caught the eye of the traveller as he approached the hamlet over the neighbouring hill was the new Grand Hotel, with its white staring walls and numberless windows, and the letters of its name in black paint running across it. It had scattered the little houses to the right and left of it. It had fixed itself in the best possible situation in front of the sea, and had swallowed up in its erection all the most time-honoured and distinguished characteristics of the locality. In short, instead of the hotel being considered as belonging to the village, the village was now looked upon as an appurtenance to the hotel. The cause of this change was that the little fishing hamlet being prettily situated on the sea coast in North Wales, “the Faculty” had passed its opinion in favour of the place, and the hotel had in consequence sprung up like magic—“The Montmorency Hotel,” with plate-glass windows and a grand portico, hundreds of bed-rooms and sitting-rooms, bathing-machines, hot and vapour baths, invalid chairs, and various other conveniences.