Chapter XI Good-bye to the Nile The Englishman was evidently something of a gourmet. I found foie gras, camembert cheese, pressed sheep's tongues and bottled British ale in his private locker. But he was as sullen as a sore-headed grizzly. He sourly declined to eat even though I offered to free his hands, and he strove to make my dinner unpleasant by volunteering pungent information on the punishment provided by law for the crimes of piracy, robbery under arms, burglary, assault and battery, and false imprisonment. Those, it seems, were the titular heads of some of my delinquencies. He felt sure that I would get ten years' hard labour, at least. I did not argue the point with him. After dinner I examined the sarcophagus. The lid was fastened on with crosswise-running bands of hinged steel, padlocked in the centre. But it was, strange to say, wedged at one end with iron bolts about an inch ajar, as if on purpose to allow air to pass into the coffin. After a little search I discovered a toolbox in the shallow hold of the punt; and I attacked the bands with cold chisels and a mallet. Ten minutes' work sufficed. I tossed the broken bands aside and levered off the lid. My heart beat like a trip-hammer as I looked into the coffin. I was prepared for a surprise. I received one. My Arab gazed up at me. The mysterious Arab with the three broken ribs, who had frightened Miss Ottley and tried to throttle me and whom I had last seen lying--a corpse--in the cave temple at Rakh. Of course, Sir Robert Ottley had declared the corpse in the temple to be identical with that of Ptahmes, the four thousand years dead High Priest of Amen-Ra. But that was ridiculous. I had only had time to make a cursory examination of the dead Arab in the cave temple, it is true, but I am a surgeon, and I had convinced myself that the fellow, so far from being a mummy, had not been long dead. I had yet to discover an essential error in my cave temple investigation. My very first impression had been not death, but suspended animation. And I must have been right. The later speedy diagnosis had, in sober truth, misled me. The man was not dead. It had been a case of suspended animation. The Arab lying in the sarcophagus before me was alive. His broken ribs were neatly set and bandaged. Otherwise he was swathed from head to foot in oiled rags. He was lying in an easy position on his back--upon a doubled feather tick. He was breathing softly but unmistakably. And he was awake. His extraordinary eyes--they were set fully five inches apart in his abnormally broad skull--were wide open and staring at me in a way to make the flesh creep. They were horrible eyes. The whites were sepia-coloured, the pupils were yellowish, and the iris of each a different shade of black flecked with scarlet spots. His cone-shaped forehead was moist and glistening with oil or perspiration. His mouth was held open by two small rubber-tipped metal bars joined together,