nearly five o’clock
_ what a find ! There has been nothing like it for years . Benedictions on the head of Odd-fish Smith ! '' Then he collected the precious objects , thrust them into an inner compartment of his safe , which he locked and double-locked , and , as it was nearly five o'clock , departed from the Museum to his private residence in the grounds , there to study Smith 's copies and photographs , and to tell some friends of the great things that had happened . When Smith found himself outside the sacred door , and had presented its venerable guardian with a baksheesh of five piastres , he walked a few paces to the right and paused a while to watch some native labourers who were dragging a huge sarcophagus upon an improvised tramway . As they dragged they sang an echoing rhythmic song , whereof each line ended with an invocation to Allah . Just so , reflected Smith , had their forefathers sung when , millenniums ago , they dragged that very sarcophagus from the quarries to the Nile , and from the Nile to the tomb whence it reappeared to-day , or when they slid the casing blocks of the pyramids up the great causeway and smooth slope of sand , and laid them in their dizzy resting-places .