pool, "I am but a horse, I know, and being built
in that way--naturally have the stomach of one--yet, really, my lord,
this--er"-- And his voice was gone.

The next moment he had disappeared. Mulledwiney looked around with
affected concern.

"Save us! But we've cleaned out the Jungle! Sure, there's not a baste
left but ourselves!"

It was true. The watering-place was empty. Moo Kow, Miaow, and the
Gee Gees had disappeared. Presently there was a booming crash and a
long, deep rumbling among the distant hills. Then they knew they were
near the old Moulmein Pagoda, and the dawn had come up like thunder out
of China 'cross the bay. It always came up that way there. The strain
was too great, and day was actually breaking.

"ZUT-SKI"

THE PROBLEM OF A WICKED FEME SOLE

BY M-R-E C-R-LLI

I

The great pyramid towered up from the desert with its apex toward the
moon which hung in the sky. For centuries it had stood thus,
disdaining the aid of gods or man, being, as the Sphinx herself
observed, able to stand up for itself. And this was no small praise
from that sublime yet mysterious female who had seen the ages come and
go, empires rise and fall, novelist succeed novelist, and who, for eons
and cycles the cynosure and centre of admiration and men's idolatrous
worship, had yet--wonderful for a woman--through it all kept her head,
which now alone remained to survey calmly the present. Indeed, at that
moment that magnificent and peaceful face seemed to have lost--with a
few unimportant features--its usual expression of speculative wisdom
and intense disdain; its mouth smiled, its left eyelid seemed to droop.
As the opal tints of dawn deepened upon it, the eyelid seemed to droop
lower, closed, and quickly recovered itself twice. You would have
thought the Sphinx had winked.

Then arose a voice like a wind on the desert,--but really from the
direction of the Nile, where a hired dahabiyeh lay moored to the
bank,--"'Arry Axes! 'Arry Axes!" With it came also a flapping,
trailing vision from the water--the sacred Ibis itself--and with wings
aslant drifted mournfully away to its own creaking echo: "K'raksis!
K'raksis!" Again arose the weird voice: "'Arry Axes! Wotcher doin'
of?" And again the Ibis croaked its wild refrain: "K'raksis!
K'raksis!" Moonlight and the hour wove their own mystery (for which
the author is not responsible), and the voice was heard no more. But
when the full day sprang in gl