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51
I
struggled
at
first
,
but
soon
saw
that
one
man
could
make
no
headway
against
a
band
of
over
twenty
sinewy
barbarians
.
My
hands
were
tied
behind
my
back
,
my
knees
bent
to
their
fullest
extent
,
and
my
wrists
and
ankles
stoutly
linked
together
with
unyielding
cords
.
A
stifling
gag
was
forced
into
my
mouth
,
and
a
blindfold
fastened
tightly
over
my
eyes
.
Then
,
as
Arabs
bore
me
aloft
on
their
shoulders
and
began
a
jouncing
descent
of
the
pyramid
,
I
heard
the
taunts
of
my
late
guide
Abdul
,
who
mocked
and
jeered
delightedly
in
his
hollow
voice
,
and
assured
me
that
I
was
soon
to
have
my
'
magic-powers
'
put
to
a
supreme
test
--
which
would
quickly
remove
any
egotism
I
might
have
gained
through
triumphing
over
all
the
tests
offered
by
America
and
Europe
.
Egypt
,
he
reminded
me
,
is
very
old
,
and
full
of
inner
mysteries
and
antique
powers
not
even
conceivable
to
the
experts
of
today
,
whose
devices
had
so
uniformly
failed
to
entrap
me
.
52
How
far
or
in
what
direction
I
was
carried
,
I
can
not
tell
;
for
the
circumstances
were
all
against
the
formation
of
any
accurate
judgment
.
53
I
know
,
however
,
that
it
could
not
have
been
a
great
distance
;
since
my
bearers
at
no
point
hastened
beyond
a
walk
,
yet
kept
me
aloft
a
surprisingly
short
time
.
It
is
this
perplexing
brevity
which
makes
me
feel
almost
like
shuddering
whenever
I
think
of
Gizeh
and
its
plateau
--
for
one
is
oppressed
by
hints
of
the
closeness
to
everyday
tourist
routes
of
what
existed
then
and
must
exist
still
.
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54
The
evil
abnormality
I
speak
of
did
not
become
manifest
at
first
.
Setting
me
down
on
a
surface
which
I
recognized
as
sand
rather
than
rock
,
my
captors
passed
a
rope
around
my
chest
and
dragged
me
a
few
feet
to
a
ragged
opening
in
the
ground
,
into
which
they
presently
lowered
me
with
much
rough
handling
.
For
apparent
eons
I
bumped
against
the
stony
irregular
sides
of
a
narrow
hewn
well
which
I
took
to
be
one
of
the
numerous
burial-shafts
of
the
plateau
until
the
prodigious
,
almost
incredible
depth
of
it
robbed
me
of
all
bases
of
conjecture
.
55
The
horror
of
the
experience
deepened
with
every
dragging
second
.
That
any
descent
through
the
sheer
solid
rock
could
be
so
vast
without
reaching
the
core
of
the
planet
itself
,
or
that
any
rope
made
by
man
could
be
so
long
as
to
dangle
me
in
these
unholy
and
seemingly
fathomless
profundities
of
nether
earth
,
were
beliefs
of
such
grotesqueness
that
it
was
easier
to
doubt
my
agitated
senses
than
to
accept
them
.
Even
now
I
am
uncertain
,
for
I
know
how
deceitful
the
sense
of
time
becomes
when
one
is
removed
or
distorted
.
56
But
I
am
quite
sure
that
I
preserved
a
logical
consciousness
that
far
;
that
at
least
I
did
not
add
any
fullgrown
phantoms
of
imagination
to
a
picture
hideous
enough
in
its
reality
,
and
explicable
by
a
type
of
cerebral
illusion
vastly
short
of
actual
hallucination
.
57
All
this
was
not
the
cause
of
my
first
bit
of
fainting
.
The
shocking
ordeal
was
cumulative
,
and
the
beginning
of
the
later
terrors
was
a
very
perceptible
increase
in
my
rate
of
descent
.
They
were
paying
out
that
infinitely
long
rope
very
swiftly
now
,
and
I
scraped
cruelly
against
the
rough
and
constricted
sides
of
the
shaft
as
I
shot
madly
downward
.
My
clothing
was
in
tatters
,
and
I
felt
the
trickle
of
blood
all
over
,
even
above
the
mounting
and
excruciating
pain
.
My
nostrils
,
too
,
were
assailed
by
a
scarcely
definable
menace
:
a
creeping
odor
of
damp
and
staleness
curiously
unlike
anything
I
had
ever
smelled
before
,
and
having
faint
overtones
of
spice
and
incense
that
lent
an
element
of
mockery
.
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58
Then
the
mental
cataclysm
came
.
It
was
horrible
--
hideous
beyond
all
articulate
description
because
it
was
all
of
the
soul
,
with
nothing
of
detail
to
describe
.
It
was
the
ecstasy
of
nightmare
and
the
summation
of
the
fiendish
.
59
The
suddenness
of
it
was
apocalyptic
and
demoniac
--
one
moment
I
was
plunging
agonizingly
down
that
narrow
well
of
million-toothed
torture
,
yet
the
next
moment
I
was
soaring
on
bat-wings
in
the
gulfs
of
hell
;
swinging
free
and
swooping
through
illimitable
miles
of
boundless
,
musty
space
;
rising
dizzily
to
measureless
pinnacles
of
chilling
ether
,
then
diving
gaspingly
to
sucking
nadirs
of
ravenous
,
nauseous
lower
vacua
...
Thank
God
for
the
mercy
that
shut
out
in
oblivion
those
clawing
Furies
of
consciousness
which
half
unhinged
my
faculties
,
and
tore
harpy-like
at
my
spirit
!
That
one
respite
,
short
as
it
was
,
gave
me
the
strength
and
sanity
to
endure
those
still
greater
sublimations
of
cosmic
panic
that
lurked
and
gibbered
on
the
road
ahead
.
60
It
was
very
gradually
that
I
regained
my
senses
after
that
eldritch
flight
through
stygian
space
.
The
process
was
infinitely
painful
,
and
colored
by
fantastic
dreams
in
which
my
bound
and
gagged
condition
found
singular
embodiment
.
The
precise
nature
of
these
dreams
was
very
clear
while
I
was
experiencing
them
,
but
became
blurred
in
my
recollection
almost
immediately
afterward
,
and
was
soon
reduced
to
the
merest
outline
by
the
terrible
events
--
real
or
imaginary
--
which
followed
.
I
dreamed
that
I
was
in
the
grasp
of
a
great
and
horrible
paw
;
a
yellow
,
hairy
,
five-clawed
paw
which
had
reached
out
of
the
earth
to
crush
and
engulf
me
.
And
when
I
stopped
to
reflect
what
the
paw
was
,
it
seemed
to
me
that
it
was
Egypt
.
In
the
dream
I
looked
back
at
the
events
of
the
preceding
weeks
,
and
saw
myself
lured
and
enmeshed
little
by
little
,
subtly
and
insidiously
,
by
some
hellish
ghoul-spirit
of
the
elder
Nile
sorcery
;
some
spirit
that
was
in
Egypt
before
ever
man
was
,
and
that
will
be
when
man
is
no
more
.