She
sleep we got that night and not have been much the poorer. At
daybreak Leo arrived in my room in a dressing-gown, and suggested
that we should at once proceed to business. I scouted the idea as
showing an unworthy curiosity. The chest had waited twenty years,
I said, so it could very well continue to wait until after
breakfast. Accordingly at nine—an unusually sharp nine—we
breakfasted; and so occupied was I with my own thoughts that I
regret to state that I put a piece of bacon into Leo’s tea in
mistake for a lump of sugar. Job, too, to whom the contagion of
excitement had, of course, spread, managed to break the handle
off my Sèvres china tea-cup, the identical one I believe that
Marat had been drinking from just before he was stabbed in his
bath.
At last, however, breakfast was cleared away, and Job, at my
request, fetched the chest, and placed it upon the table in a
somewhat gingerly fashion, as though he mistrusted it. Then he
prepared to leave the room.
“Stop a moment, Job,” I said. “If Mr. Leo has no objection, I
should prefer to have an independent witness to this business,
who can be relied upon to hold his tongue unless he is asked to
speak.”
“Certainly, Uncle Horace,” answered Leo; for I had brought him up
to call me uncle—though he varied the appellation somewhat
disrespectfully by calling me “old fellow,” or even “my avuncular
relative.”
Job touched his head, not having a hat on.
“Lock the door, Job,” I said, “and bring me my despatch-box.”
He obeyed, and from the box I took the keys that poor Vincey,
Leo’s father, had given me on the night of his death. There were
three of them; the largest a comparatively modern key, the second
an exceedingly ancient one, and the third entirely unlike
anything of the sort that we had ever seen before, being
fashioned apparently from a strip of solid silver, with a bar
placed across to serve as a handle, and leaving some nicks cut in
the edge of the bar. It was more like a model of an antediluvian
railway key than anything else.
“Now are you both ready?” I said, as people do when they are
going to fire a mine. There was no answer, so I took the big key,
rubbed some salad oil into the wards, and after one or two bad
shots, for my hands were shaking, managed to fit it, and shoot
the lock. Leo bent over and caught the massive lid in both his
hands, and with an effort, for the hinges had rusted, forced it
back. Its removal revealed another case covered with dust. This
we extracted from the iron chest without any difficulty, and
removed the accumulated filth of years from it with a
clothes-brush.
It was, or appeared to be, of ebony, or some such close-grained
black wood, and was bound in every direction with flat bands of
iron. Its antiquity must have been extreme, for the dense heavy
wood was in parts actually commencing to crumble from age.
“Now for it,” I said, inserting the second key.
Job and Leo bent forward in breathless silence. The key turned,
and I flung back the lid, and uttered an exclamation, and no
wonder, for inside the ebony case was a magnificent silver
casket, about twelve inches square by eight high. It appeared to
be of Egyptian workmanship, and the four legs were formed of
Sphinxes, and the dome-shaped cover was also surmounted by a
Sphinx. The casket was of course much tarnished and dinted with
age, but otherwise in fairly sound condition.
I drew it out and set it on the table, and then, in the midst of
the most perfect silence, I inserted the strange-looking silver
key, and pressed this way and that until at last the lock
yielded, and the casket stood before us. It was filled to the
brim with some brown shredded material, more like vegetable fibre
than paper, the nature of which I have never been able to
discover. This I carefully removed to the depth of some three
inches, when I came to a letter enclosed in an ordinary
modern-looking envelope, and addressed in the handwriting of my
dead friend Vincey.
“_To my son Leo, should he live to open this casket._”
I handed the letter to Leo, who glanced at the envelope, and then
put it down upon the table, making a motion to me to go on
emptying the casket.
The next thing that I found was a parchment carefully rolled up.
I unrolled it, and seeing that it was also in Vincey’s
handwriting, and headed, “Translation of the Uncial Greek Writing
on the Potsherd,” put it down by the letter. Then followed
another ancient roll of parchment, that had become yellow and
crinkled with the passage of years. This I also unrolled. It was
likewise a translation of the same Greek original, but into
black-letter Latin, which at the first glance from the style and
character appeared to me to date from somewhere about the
beginning of the sixteenth century. Immediately beneath this roll
was something hard and heavy, wrapped up in yellow linen, and
reposing upon another layer of the fibrous material. Slowly and
carefully we unrolled the linen, exposing to view a very large
but undoubtedly ancient potsherd of a dirty yellow colour! This
potsherd had in my judgment, once been a part of an ordinary
amphora of medium size. For the rest, it measured ten and a half
inches in length by seven in width, was about a quarter of an
inch thick, and densely covered on the convex side that lay
towards the bottom of the box with writing in the later uncial
Greek character, faded here and there, but for the most part
perfectly legible, the inscription having evidently been executed
with the greatest care, and by means of a reed pen, such as the
ancients often used. I must not forget to mention that in some
remote age this wonderful fragment had been broken in two, and
rejoined by means of cement and eight long rivets. Also there
were numerous inscriptions on the inner side, but these were of
the most erratic character, and had clearly been made by
different hands and in many different ages, and of them, together
with the writings on the parchments, I shall have to speak
presently.
[Illustration] FACSIMILE OF THE SHERD OF AMENARTAS
One 1/2 size
Greatest length of the original 10½ inches
Greatest breadth 7 inches
Weight 1lb 5½ oz
[Illustration] FACSIMILE OF THE SHERD OF AMENARTAS
One 1/2 size
“Is there anything more?” asked Leo, in a kind of excited
whisper.
I groped about, and produced something hard, done up in a little
linen bag. Out of the bag we took first a very beautiful
miniature done upon ivory, and secondly, a small
chocolate-coloured composition _scarabæus_, marked thus:—
symbols which, we have since ascertained, mean “Suten se Ra,”
which is being translated the “Royal Son of Ra or the Sun.” The
miniature was a picture of Leo’s Greek mother—a lovely, dark-eyed
creature. On the back of it was written, in poor Vincey’s
handwriting, “My beloved wife.”
“That is all,” I said.
“Very well,” answered Leo, putting down the miniature, at which
he had been gazing affectionately; “and now let us read the
letter,” and without further ado he broke the seal, and read
aloud as follows:—
“My Son Leo,—When you open this, if you ever live to do so, you
will have attained to manhood, and I shall have been long enough
dead to be absolutely forgotten by nearly all who knew me. Yet in
reading it remember that I have been, and for anything you know
may still be, and that in it, through this link of pen and paper,
I stretch out my hand to you across the gulf of death, and my
voice speaks to you from the silence of the grave. Though I am
dead, and no memory of me remains in your mind, yet am I with you
in this hour that you read. Since your birth to this day I have
scarcely seen your face. Forgive me this. Your life supplanted
the life of one whom I loved better than women are often loved,
and the bitterness of it endureth yet. Had I lived I should in
time have conquered this foolish feeling, but I am not destined
to live. My sufferings, physical and mental, are more than I can
bear, and when such small arrangements as I have to make for your
future well-being are completed it is my intention to put a
period to them. May God forgive me if I do wrong. At the best I
could not live more than another year.”
“So he killed himself,” I exclaimed. “I thought so.”
“And now,” Leo went on, without replying, “enough of myself. What
has to be said belongs to you who live, not to me, who am dead,
and almost as much forgotten as though I had never been. Holly,
my friend (to whom, if he will accept the trust, it is my
intention to confide you), will have told you something of the
extraordinary antiquity of your race. In the contents of this
casket you will find sufficient to prove it. The strange legend
that you will find inscribed by your remote ancestress upon the
potsherd was communicated to me by my father on his deathbed, and
took a strong hold in my imagination. When I was only nineteen
years of age I determined, as, to his misfortune, did one of our
ancestors about the time of Elizabeth, to investigate its truth.
Into all that befell me I cannot enter now. But this I saw with
my own eyes. On the coast of Africa, in a hitherto unexplored
region, some distance to the north of where the Zambesi falls
into the sea, there is a headland, at the extremity of which a
peak towers up, shaped like the head of a negro, similar to that
of which the writing speaks. I landed there, and learnt from a
wandering native, who had been cast out by his people because of
some crime which he had committed, that far inland are great
mountains, shaped like cups, and caves surrounded by measureless
swamps. I learnt also that the people there speak a dialect of
Arabic, and are ruled over by a _beautiful white woman_ who is
seldom seen by them, but who is reported to have power over all
things living and dead. Two days after I had ascertained this the
man died of fever contracted in crossing the swamps, and I was
forced by want of provisions and by symptoms of an illness which
afterwards prostrated me to take to my dhow again.
“Of the adventures that befell me after this I need not now
speak. I was wrecked upon the coast of Madagascar, and rescued
some months afterwards by an English ship that brought me to
Aden, whence I started for England, intending to prosecute my
search as soon as I had made sufficient preparations. On my way I
stopped in Greece, and there, for ‘Omnia vincit amor,’ I met your
beloved mother, and married her, and there you were born and she
died. Then it was that my last illness seized me, and I returned
hither to die. But still I hoped against hope, and set myself to
work to learn Arabic, with the intention, should I ever get