as standing,
but the moonbeams bathed that side of the building in dazzling light
so that he was enabled to see a perfect crowd of bats whirling out of
the pyramid."

"Bats!" ejaculated Robert Cairn.

"Yes. There is a small colony of bats in this pyramid, of course; but
the bat does not hunt in bands, and the sight of these bats flying out
from the place was one which Ali Mohammed had never witnessed before.
Their concerted squeaking was very clearly audible. He could not
believe that it was this which had awakened him, and which had
awakened the ten or twelve workmen who also slept in the camp, for
these were now clustering around him, and all looking up at the side
of the pyramid.

"Fayum nights are strangely still. Except for the jackals and the
village dogs, and some other sounds to which one grows accustomed,
there is nothing--absolutely nothing--audible.

"In this stillness, then, the flapping of the bat regiment made quite
a disturbance overhead. Some of the men were only half awake, but
most, of them were badly frightened. And now they began to compare
notes, with the result that they determined upon the exact nature of
the sound which had aroused them. It seemed almost certain that this
had been a dreadful scream--the scream of a woman in the last agony."

He paused, looking from Dr. Cairn to his son, with a singular
expression upon his habitually immobile face.

"Go on," said Robert Cairn.

Slowly Sime resumed:

"The bats had begun to disperse in various directions, but the panic
which had seized upon the camp does not seem to have dispersed so
readily. Ali Mohammed confesses that he himself felt almost afraid--a
remarkable admission for a man of his class to make. Picture these
fellows, then, standing looking at one another, and very frequently up
at the opening in the side of the pyramid. Then the smell began to
reach their nostrils--the smell which completed the panic, and which
led to the abandonment of the camp--"

"The smell--what kind of smell?" jerked Robert Cairn.

Dr. Cairn turned himself in his chair, looking fully at his son.

"The smell of Hades, boy!" he said grimly, and turned away again.

"Naturally," continued Sime, "I can give you no particulars on the
point, but it must have been something very fearful to have affected
the Egyptian native! There was no breeze, but it swept down upon them,
this poisonous smell, as though borne by a hot wind."

"Was it actually hot?"

"I can