My journey began in the middle of the Mediterranean sea to the north of Africa, making my way towards the Nile delta. We had left Southampton 9 days ago and were now coming to the end of our sea journey because in a couple of days we would be landing in Egypt. We had come as an exploration party going to the ancient Egyptian pyramids. Our party consisted of me and my sister Elsa. Our guide, was an American who we only knew as Wilson. He was a rather unusual person, very and rather curious, I cant explain this curiousness. I guess that was just the way he was. Wilson was also very cautious and had taken many precautions.
He was armed with a hand-gun and a machine gun aswell. This made me feel very unsafe, but he obviously knew what he was doing, so we left him to what had to be done. Elsa was in her cabin reading a map of some description. She also had this, rather unusual looking key. It was kind of star shaped and had jagged edges. She wouldn’t tell anyone what it was for. Night had fallen now and I was up on deck having a drink with Wilson, and Elsa was down in her cabin still studying that map of hers. There were sounds coming from the side of the boat, as if another boat was being drawn alongside ours. There was shouting Silence There were gunshots
People screamed and ran in different directions Men in black Rhodes armed with guns and macheties clambered aboard the ship and opened fire. Wilson got his machine gun out and started to shoot back as I dove for cover. A group of Americans also started shooting at these ‘pirates’. The pirates set alight part of the ship to the rear, near where all the cargo was. Things weren’t looking good. Elsa was in her cabin when one of the pirates entered. He had these black on covering all but his face. His face was covered with scars as if blades had already pierced the skin. These scars were only covered by a thick grey beard.
He had a knife in one hand, he went straight to the desk that Elsa had been working at and flung her to the floor. He also took the obscure key that Elsa had. The man moved back towards Elsa, who was sprawled upon the floor and raised his knife high above his head ready to bring it down. Wilson blew the smoke away from his gun, and helped Elsa back onto her feet. She was still shaking as she picked the key out of out of the pocket of the corpse which was lying there, perfectly still. Dead. Up on deck was mayhem. People were jumping out off the boat into the river below as the boat was being taken over by flames.
We had no other option but to jump ourselves. We watched from the water as the boat was engulfed by flames. All of our luggage was still on board. We had nothing now. We had to swim to shore. By morning we had to put the problems of last night behind us, as we took across the dessert by camel. We had to be quick because we had to arrive at our destination before sunrise. Even though the sun wasn’t up yet it was still very very hot and I was sweating like a pig. It wasn’t the most comfortable ride I had ever had but at least we were there now. As the sun rose it led a path to the pyramid. As this happened the Americans rom back on the ship came up behind us. This is when we joined forces with them, after all, we had the guide, and they had the equipment. It was what seemed to be a good idea at the time. We wasted no time once we got there. We put up our tents and got our equipment ready and waited for the Americans to join us. When they did, we were ready to go and study the pyramid. The pyramid was known as the tomb of O’man Ra. We lowered ourselves down by ropes into the main chamber of the pyramid. Inside was a long row of mirrors running down both sides of the chamber. Wilson and Elsa both seemed to know what they were doing, so I took a back seat and atched what they were doing. I still had no idea what these mirrors were for. Wilson and Elsa lined the mirrors up with the beam of sunlight coming in through the entrance to the chamber. As they did this, the room suddenly lit up. It was as if someone had just flicked on the lights. The room was damp and smelt a bit like sweaty socks; there was nothing fascinating about this room. At one end though, there were two doors. We took the door on the left. This room we had just entered was small; but on the walls was the most fascinating thing I had ever seen before. All around the room, were hieroglyphics
Elsa told me they were telling a life story. There wasn’t a bit of the brick wall to be seen, it was just completely covered. O’man Ra had obviously led a long rewarding life. The ceiling of the room was very very high up for such a small room. That too was covered in hieroglyphics. The only part of the room that wasn’t covered was a door leading nto another room. This other room had a picture of an Egyptian worker, but all over his body were rubies and jewels. One of the Americans started picking them off the body of the picture and putting them into a bag. One of them dropped onto the floor and plit. A scarab beetle came out of the jewel and scuttled out of the room. These bugs are very dangerous flesh-eating animals! As we left the room a whole swarm of these bugs came out of the darkness and down a slope heading straight towards us. There must have been thousands of them. We turned and ran. As we were running, one of the Americans tripped and fell. He was completely taken over by the scarab beetles. All that was left of him was a pile of bones just lying on the floor. When we stopped running we were in a room with a large box of some description, lying on the ground We went up to it.
On the side was some sort of lock witch matched the key that Elsa had. We opened the lock to look inside. Inside were solid gold monuments and small statues. We pocketed all these, or should I say that the Americans did! We had decided That it was too dangerous to carry on because the light at the end of the room stopped, and it was pitch black. If you listened hard enough, you could here a moaning coming from the darkness. We followed the light back to the main chamber, passing through many of the rooms we had been in before, we went back through the room with the hieroglyphics in on our way back into the main hamber again. We had to climb back up the rope to get back up to the campsite. It was dark when we left the campsite . The journey back was pretty uneventful as we went back through the baking hot desert night to where another ship was moored to take us and the Americans back home to Southampton. It was the most eventful day of my life, even though we were only in Egypt for one day. It was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to me. When we were back home, Elsa wrote a book about our journey. It turned out to be a best seller. After all she was only a librarian.
