than thoughtful of the crowd without, promptly clapped to, and shot the bolts. Thus we were safe for a moment, and putting the princess on a couch, I ran up a short flight of stairs and looked out of a front window to see if there were a chance of succouring those in the palace square. But it was all hopeless chaos with the town already beginning to burn and not a show of fight anywhere which I could join.
I glared out on that infernal tumult for a moment or two in an agony of impotent rage, then turned towards the harbour and saw in the shine of the burning town below the ancient battlements and towers of Seth begin to gleam out, like a splendid frost work of living metal clear-cut against the smooth, black night behind, and never a show of resistance there either. Ay, and by this time Ar-hap's men were battering in our gates with a big beam, and somehow, I do not know how it happened, the palace itself away on the right, where the dry-as-dust library lay, was also beginning to burn.
It was hopeless outside, and nothing to be done but to save Heru, so down I went, and, with the slaves, carried her away from the hall through a vestibule or two, and into an anteroom, where some yellow-girt individuals were already engaged in the suggestive work of tying up palace plate in bundles, amongst other things, alas! the great gold love-bowl from which—oh!
