After
twenty-five days of laborious exploration it was at length cleared out,
and he stood in a rude, unfinished cave. The queen for whom it had been
designed must have died quite young and been buried elsewhere; or she
had chosen herself another sepulchre, or mayhap the rock had proved
unsuitable for sculpture.
Smith shrugged his shoulders and moved on, sinking trial pits and
trenches here and there, but still finding nothing. Two-thirds of his
time and money had been spent when at last the luck turned. One day,
towards evening, with some half-dozen of his best men he was returning
after a fruitless morning of labour, when something seemed to attract
him towards a little _wadi_, or bay, in the hillside that was filled
with tumbled rocks and sand. There were scores of such places, and this
one looked no more promising than any of the others had proved to be.
Yet it attracted him. Thoroughly dispirited, he walked past it twenty
paces or more, then turned.
"Where go you, sah?" asked his head-man, Mahomet.
He pointed to the recess in the cliff.
"No good, sah," said Mahomet. "No tomb there. Bed-rock too near top. Too
much water run in there; dead queen like keep dry!"
But Smith went on, and the others followed obediently.
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