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 “Sphinx, speak!!” said Emeralda, threateningly and red with rage.

The Sphinx spoke not and looked.

Emeralda stretched out her sceptre and directed the destroying rays.

The rays split on the basalt with crackling sparks like flashes of forked lightning. Emeralda uttered a cry, hoarse and terrible. She threw away her broken sceptre. But of her greater power she did not doubt, and for the last time she threatened.

“Terrible Sphinx, tremble! I am more terrible than you!! Speak, Sphinx!!”

The Sphinx was silent.

Then Emeralda tugged at the reins.

The maddened horses reared, snorting, foaming, panting, trampling, pulling, and dashed against the Sphinx.

But the foremost horses were dashed to pieces against the god-like basalt.

Then Emeralda uttered cry after cry, one hoarse cry after another, which resounded through the desert. She tugged at the reins; the horses, despairing of their attack against the immovable, drove at the Sphinx, and fell back crushed, falling over one another and trampling one another to death; the triumphal