“Half of you get into the house, and first save the princess; the other half keep the fire from catching the south wing.  I will try to get there.”

But Nemu’s brand had been effectual, the flames flared up, and the soldiers strained every nerve to conquer them.  Their cries mingled with the crackling and snapping of the dry wood, and the roar of the flames, with the trumpet calls of the awakening troops, and the beating of drums.  The young princes appeared at a window; they had tied their clothes together to form a rope, and one by one escaped down it.

Rameses called to them with words of encouragement, but he himself was unable to take any means of escape, for though the parapet on which he stood was tolerably wide, and ran round the whole of the building, at about every six feet it was broken by spaces of about ten paces.  The fire was spreading and growing, and glowing sparks flew round him and his companion like chaff from the winnowing fan.

“Bring some straw and make a heap below!” shouted Rameses, above the roar of the conflagration.  “There is no escape but by a leap down.”

The flames rushed out of the windows of the king’s room; it was impossible to return to it, but neither the king nor Mena lost his self-possession.  When Mena saw the twelve princes descending to the ground, he shouted through his hands, using them as a speaking trumpet, and called to Rameri, who was about to slip down the rope they had contrived, the last of them all.

“Pull up the rope, and keep it from injury till I come.”

Rameri obeyed the order, and before Rameses could interfere, Mena had sprung across the space which divided one piece of the balustrade from another.  The king’s blood ran cold as Mena, a second time, ventured the frightful leap; one false step, and he must meet with the same fearful death as his enemy Paaker.

While the bystanders watched him in breathless silence—­while the crackling of the wood, the roar of the flames, and the dull thump of falling timber mingled with the distant chant of a procession of priests who were now approaching the burning pile, Nefert roused by little Scherau knelt on the bare ground in fervent and passionate prayer to the saving Gods.  She watched every movement of her husband, and she bit her lips till they bled not to cry out.  She felt that he was acting bravely and nobly, and that he was lost if even for an instant his attention were distracted from his perilous footing.  Now he had reached Rameri, and bound one end of the rope made out of cloaks and handkerchiefs, round his body; then he gave the other end to Rameri, who held fast to the window-sill, and prepared once more to spring.  Nefert saw him ready to leap, she pressed her hands upon her lips to repress a scream, she shut her eyes, and when she opened them again he had accomplished the first leap, and at the second the Gods preserved him from falling; at the third the king held out his hand to him, and saved him from a fall.  Then Rameses helped him to unfasten the rope from round his waist to fasten it to the end of a beam.