Talham did not answer. He was looking stupidly at one of the two ornaments which flanked the lower steps leading into the death chamber. “What is it?” asked Tillizinni. Talham nodded sleepily. Tillizinni examined the object of his interest a little closer. It was one of the two huge birds of bronze. It seemed alive as it stood there, balanced on one leg. “I didn’t notice those before,” said Talham. Neither had the other, a fact easily explained as they stood in the shadow cast by the two great War Gods which towered left and right of the tomb’s entrance. “I think this is where we go out,” muttered Talham. His heart was beating at a terrific rate; his head was swimming. He was affected sooner than the smaller man, and staggered, and would have fallen but for Tillizinni’s arm. “You had better sit down,” said Tillizinni quietly. He would take his own advice later; seated with his back to the wall he would wait for death. But Talham shook his head; he took a step and swayed, reached out his hand to steady himself, and caught the bronze bird by the neck. He threw his head back suddenly. “A pelican,” he said thickly. “A pelican! my God! I didn’t see a pelican----” There was no other word. He threw all his weight upon the neck of the bronze bird, and it bent down towards him as if working upon an invisible pivot. There was a rumble at the head of the stairs; a draught of sweet, fresh air rushed down to the men, and Talham fell on his hands and knees and breathed it in greedily. “So that was it,” he gasped. “Now, Soo, look out for me!” and he went reeling up the stairs like a drunken man, Tillizinni following. They went out into the starlit night to find their patient men still sitting in the gulley waiting for orders. Whilst the men were mounting, Talham went back to the tomb alone. He was absent for five minutes. “Oughtn’t we do something to hide the door?” asked Tillizinni. “There will be an awful row when it is found open.” Talham turned on his saddle. “It will be hidden in a minute,” he said. At that moment there was a dull, muffled roar which set the horses prancing. “I dynamited the first chamber,” said Talham “That’s the end of the Emperor’s tomb.” * * * * * Soo stared blankly at the intruder, but he did not lose his presence of mind. “Captain Talham, I believe,” he said. “How very interesting!” He smiled at the stern-faced man before him. “I had intended coming to-morrow to find your unhappy bodies”--he saw Tillizinni at the entrance and nodded in a friendly way--“and incidentally to help myself to such of the treasures of the great Emperor’s. May he dwell in the seventeenth heaven for a million years”--he bowed his head in mock reverence; “but that one pleasure, at least, is deferred.” “All your pleasures are deferred,” said Talham sternly. “You will never again discover the tomb of the dead Emperor--neither you nor any other man. The outer chamber has ceased to be.” Soo lifted his eyebrows.