Kharmes and four others had stolen to the tower of Isis Lochias in the dead of night, and received the heavy sarcophagus lowered to them from above; of the stealth with which they had slipped past the guarding sentinels, to reach at length the galley that waited on the moonlit Nile; then, at the command of the aged Baltarus, wise man and secret adviser of the Queen, of how the narrator had set sail in the great warship of a hundred slaves and fifty soldiers, to find a spot far beyond the Roman legions and known civilized world, that they might bury in a befitting manner "One who is but sleeping."
It told of how the galley had landed after months at sea—months of storm and winds that swept upon them as they followed the coast of a seemingly endless world of beasts and jungle; of how the ship's company had then deserted the galley, to travel inland for many days, penetrating ever farther into a strange country of sand, to come at last to a spot they all agreed as one no man had ever seen, concluding with the words:
"And so it was we came at last to the three mountains that towered to the sky. But it was not till Ra had sunk and risen many times that the tomb was dug deep, the sarcophagus we carried so long laid within, and the great boulder that guards its entrance brought into place. And then, when this was done, and the orders of the Master carried out, the soldiers killed the slaves we had brought with us so that no loose tongue should tell the Romans our great secret.
"Here we rested many days. Then, with strength returned to our limbs, the little band took up the long march that lay between us and the galley we had left on the shore of the great sea. But the frown of Osiris was upon us, and the soldiers of Egypt were never again to know the palms and temples of the Motherland. One by one they fell before the rays of Ra, until of all that company I alone was left to continue on over the sands that stretched away to the sky.
"And for long I struggled, but at length the thirst and heat proved stronger, so that I too fell, to await my death. But Isis in her goodness remembered my suffering, and sent a caravan of bearded men, who tended and made easy my last hours.
"But I knew Anubis hovered near, and so have written this record of my travels and made a drawing of those three strange peaks, marking well the one in whose tip rests our burden, for though unable to return to the homeland, fate may one day send this parchment to the waiting Baltarus, and he will know where lies the treasure and sarcophagus of the 'One who is but sleeping.' The one who in my last hours I believe to be our great Queen—Cleopatra!"
At the bottom of the scroll was the drawing of three cone-shaped mountains, the central peak rising above the rest, and marked with a crude X.
Incredible? Well, perhaps; but the parchment was destined to know obscurity no longer. The archeologist who translated it was writing a series of articles at the time, and frequently mentioned its contents, as well as his own opinion as to its falsity. The learned man had added that the real mummy of Cleopatra was known to have been brought from Egypt to Paris by Napoleon, and at present the alleged remains of that famed Queen were said to be buried in the gardens of the French National Library, near the Rue Vivienne.
