Sarchedon Part 20

Wide tracts of desert, therefore, stretching between the different wells and stations that enabled travellers to proceed in a direct course to Egypt, though lonely, were as secure as the main streets of Babylon itself, especially since they had been so recently trodden by the returning army of the Great King. Sadoc's only anxiety was the insufficiency of water on their way; his only apprehension, lest his patient should die ere he could bring him into the land of strangers he was forced to call his home.

It was weary work for the sick man in the wilderness, after he had recovered consciousness and began to regain strength day by day. He had never known before with what force that merciless sun could pour down on his face and hands, with what a glare it could be refracted on his aching eyes. How he sickened for the bright translucent waters of the mirage, though he knew them false and illusive as a dream! How he loathed the protracted crawl, the unbroken sky-line, the palms that promised rest and refreshment, but seemed never a furlong nearer, as he journeyed sadly on! The a.s.s's patient step, the monotonous jingle of its bell, the heat, the thirst, the unvarying interminable sea of sand, the longing for something green, were it but a leaf, a blade of gra.s.s, a single bulrush, became almost maddening; and when at noon they halted to fling themselves gladly down in any cubit's-breadth of shade they could find, no palace had ever seemed so commodious, no hangings of silk or velvet so grateful, as the dark lines cast by a clump of slender palm-trees, the protection of some uncovered boulder jutting from the surface to offer repose and shelter--the "shadow of a great rock in a weary land."

The a.s.syrian's const.i.tution, however, was sound, as his frame was strong and agile. Ere he reached the confines of Egypt, his health was reestablished, he had strength to look his destiny firmly in the face.

The wayfarers rose from their encampment before dawn. With the first streaks of morning the summits of the mighty Pyramids--already time-honoured records of long-past ages and exhausted dynasties--peered daily above the horizon. Crossing the frontier, Sadoc pointed them out to his companions, while over his usually gentle brow swept an expression of fierce anger and hate.

"Behold them!" said he--"the monuments and the archives of our masters, detailing like a scroll the history of their cruelties, their iniquities, and their oppressions. I tell you, the mortar that daubs them has been tempered with human blood. Every brick is cemented with tears of women and children, every slab founded on the body and bones of a murdered man. I know their cruelties; for is not my own nation crushed and tortured every hour to complete their like? I know that the Egyptian is without compunction or remorse; that in life he would shrink from no crime, as he would accept any privation, but to secure a palace for his resting-place after death. Vain, frivolous, pleasure-seeking, this people--living but for the empty gratification of the hour, jesting, dancing, posture-making, revelling in wine and flowers--can yet erect for the vile body they are so loath to leave tombs that might contain an army, that shall outlast countless generations of their slavish, tyrannous, blood-thirsty, and luxurious race."

"They are skilful warriors," answered Sarchedon, whose only experience of the Egyptian was under shield; "but they cannot stand against the chariots of a.s.syria. Why do not your people rise and cast off their yoke?"

The Israelite shook his head.

"Who is to lead us?" said he, "and whither are we to go? Shall we take our little ones in our hand, and wander forth to the wilderness without food, without arms, without flocks and herds, skins of water, beasts of burden, and means of daily life? How shall you conduct a mult.i.tude like ours through the desert? Where shall we encamp at night, and whither bend our steps at dawn? If we fled to the South, we should arrive at fathomless rivers, impa.s.sable mountains, troops of evil spirits and demons, the servants of Seth and Abitur, if indeed, our task-masters tell us truth, that the hideous square-eared offspring of the Great Serpent has been expelled to the confines of Ethiopia. Shall we move eastward to be a spoil to the terrible children of Anak and the fierce tribes of Philistia, who live but to slay, ravage, and destroy? Should we seek the land of our fathers, to find it occupied by our own nation--a race of warriors, men of fierce countenance, worshippers of many G.o.ds? No, my son, no. While we remain in Egypt, we have bread, though it be moistened with tears; we have safety of life and limb, though we are subject to outrage, insult, and ignominy; we have a home like the weary ox in the stall, and food like the a.s.s at his master's crib."

"And you can bear it!" exclaimed the fiery a.s.syrian. "I had rather go out afoot in the desert to die of hunger and thirst with my bow in my hand!"

"We bear it," answered the other gravely, "because of the promise to our father Abraham, in which we believe. We shall _not_ bear it a day longer, when the time comes and the man!"

They were approaching a small cavalcade of Egyptians, journeying in an opposite direction. It consisted of a n.o.bleman and his attendants on some party of pleasure or business. The two princ.i.p.al figures were seated in a light fanciful chariot, gaudily painted, drawn by a pair of desert-born steeds, chestnut and grey. Contrary to the custom of the a.s.syrians, who usually drove at a gallop, these proceeded in an airy, lofty, trotting pace, their heads borne up, their yoke highly ornamented, and their trappings heavily fringed with scarlet, blue, and gold. In the car sat its lord, accompanied by his charioteer, who held the reins, and attended by some score of servants on foot and horseback--lithe, slender, laughing varlets, fancifully dressed and garlanded with flowers. As this noisy throng approached, the Israelites drew aside to let them pa.s.s, halting respectfully, and saluting their present masters with deep humility. The Egyptian lord whirled by with no more notice than a scornful smile; but his people laughed and jeered at the way-worn travellers, mocking their speech and gestures with flippant insolence and scorn.

"Go to," said they, "shepherds and sons of shepherds! Go, seek your straw and burn your bricks! So shall ye build houses and tombs for your masters, and temples for your master's G.o.ds. Shepherds and sons of shepherds, go to!"

Sarchedon's grasp tightened round the tent-pole he carried in his hand.

The fiery temper illness had not subdued would soon have broken in on their mirth; but Sadoc's restraining touch was on his shoulder, while the Israelite's grave accents whispered in his ear,

"And these be our masters. Better, indeed, the gripe of the demons or the sword of the Anakim. Better, far better, the iron yoke of a.s.syria than such degradation as this! How long must we endure--how long?"

CHAPTER XXII

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE

Advancing into Egypt step by step, the slavery of the captive people became more obvious, the tyranny of their task-masters more offensive.

The fierce a.s.syrian could not patiently brook scoff and insult levelled at his companions; but he controlled himself in deference to the wishes of his preserver, and they reached Sadoc's home without any such overt act of violence as would have brought the whole party into trouble.

It was but a miserable hut of mud and reeds, standing a few leagues without the walls of a city which Sarchedon had heretofore visited as a conqueror--a city of palms and palaces, stately in its long avenues of sphinxes, gaudy in the variegated paintings of its brick-built walls, thronged with a dense population, glittering in a profusion of luxury, dedicated to its tutelary deity the Cat.

Somewhat removed from the bounteous river, on the rise and fall of which depended their fertility and even their existence, the adjacent fields were irrigated with all the skill that science and experience could suggest. Their surface--moistened judiciously by ca.n.a.ls, ditches, and water-furrows--was alive with a thousand husbandmen. Hoes were plying, buckets swinging, shrill voices rose on the serene air, and lean arms gesticulated with a vehemence ill-proportioned to the amount of labour accomplished or the importance of the subject discussed. All seemed bustle, plenty, and prosperity, save in the huts of these poor Israelites, that stood apart, types of the loathing in which their inhabitants were held by a people with whom, in the days of famine long ago, their fathers had come to dwell.

Lighting down from his beast, Sadoc bade his guest welcome, somewhat mournfully, to so squalid a home. Then turning to the dark-eyed youth who had run out to take the a.s.s's bridle in his hand, he asked eagerly,

"And the river, my son--how many cubits hath it risen?"

"Fifteen cubits, O my father!" replied the other, bowing himself in reverence, and kissing the hem of the old man's dusty travel-worn skirt.

"Praise be to our G.o.d!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Sadoc; "we shall not then suffer famine added to hard labour and heavy blows. And thy mother, thy brethren? Is it well with them? Bid them fetch water for his feet, and a morsel of bread to comfort the heart of this stranger, who hath come to abide within our gates."

Whatever might have been wanting in luxuries, Sarchedon found amply made up for by the good-will with which his host's family applied themselves to promote the comfort of their guest. The daughter of the house, a tender little maiden yet far off womanhood, brought water for his feet, and was not to be dissuaded from washing, drying, and chafing them with her own hands. The young men lost no time in choosing from the fold a kid to kill, dress, and set on the table forthwith. Barley-bread was furnished by the mother, with b.u.t.ter, dried locusts, and a piece of wild honey-comb. Fresh water stood to cool in jars of Egyptian earthenware; nor was a skin of good wine wanting to crown the humble meal; for Sadoc was an elder of his people, and a man of mark, even amongst the haughty conquerors by whom they were oppressed.

When it had somewhat warmed his heart, the old man seemed to brace himself for a confession that had weighed on his mind ever since he lifted the wounded a.s.syrian on his own beast, and resolved to bring him home with him into the land of his captivity. Filling his guest's cup, he bade him observe the shadows of declining day and the crimson of sunset, tinging the solemn face of a gigantic sphinx in marble, visible from the window of their hut.

"My son," said he, "our people will be called to their tasks at dawn.

Not a male of the Israelites must be absent, when the servant of Pharaoh beckons with his whip to count us, family by family, and man by man. Our dwellings are searched, our very sick are summoned. There is but one master who claims precedence of the Egyptian, and his name is Death. My son, it is out of my power to conceal you here. Look around, and satisfy yourself. You must cast in your lot with us, as though you belonged to our people; and I will account for you as an Israelite who has made his escape with me from our captivity in Babylon the Great."

"I would not willingly bring danger on your household," answered Sarchedon, "but I pray you remember that I am wont to handle bow and spear. My fingers are not skilled to use mattock, hoe, and trowel; my nature, too, does not calmly brook chiding, and refuses altogether to abide blows."

"It is not for long," urged Sadoc. "I beseech you be patient for a little s.p.a.ce. The time may come when you shall return to a.s.syria with the good wishes of a whole nation to speed you on the way."

"It cannot come too soon," answered the other, whose heart was with Ishtar, and whose only hope of recovering some traces of her lay in a speedy return to his own country. "I owe you my life, indeed; and but for you, should have been bleaching in the desert, stripped to the bones by jackal and bird of prey; yet what is life without honour, without liberty, without love?"

"Without faith rather," said Sadoc, grave, sorrowful, and dignified.

"The only possession the greedy Egyptian cannot ravish, the only jewel Pharaoh's arm is not long enough to seize--too lofty for his reach, too pure for his diadem, too precious for his throne. My son, there is a something even in the weeping captive's breast that may be greater, n.o.bler, more enduring than the glory of warriors and the pride of kings."

"There are but two motives," answered Sarchedon, "to stir a brave man's heart: the hope of warlike fame, the desire of woman's love."

Sadoc smiled sadly.

"And when the warrior is down in battle," he replied, "or pining in the dungeon--when the woman turns false and cold, or her fair face is fixed in death--what is left then to him whose arm has striven but for his own vain glory, whose worship has turned from the G.o.d of his fathers to a creature weaker and lower than himself?"

"A man can always die," answered the a.s.syrian, "when there is nothing left to live for, as he falls asleep when the sun has gone down into the wilderness. How shall you compel _him_ who has no fear of death?"

"Death!" repeated Sadoc. "And is it, then, so much more dreadful to die than to live? Is rest more terrible than labour, fulness than want, peace than strife? Which is n.o.bler, the courage of resistance or of attack? Which best fulfils the purpose of creation?--the ox, plodding obedient to the goad, or the wild a.s.s, spurning control beneath her hoof? I will show you to-morrow a whole people displaying such calm and patient fort.i.tude as shames the proudest triumphs of a.s.syria, with her line of kings from Nimrod the Great down to that fierce old warrior whose chariots rolled here, as it seems, but yesterday over a heap of slain, and whose name to-day bids the false Egyptian tremble and turn pale. My son, the hour may yet come when Pharaoh shall be humbled to the dust, and we shall live like brethren with our kindred once more in the land of Shinar--the land of our fathers, the land of our inheritance, and of our hope. In the meantime, though the night has seemed long and weary, morning may be close at hand."

With these words, he spread a couch for his guest, and betook himself to slumber. Sarchedon, looking round the hut, remembered it was of such a shelter he had dreamed, sleeping beneath the tower of Belus, in the temple of the a.s.syrian G.o.d.

It was to hard reality, though, that he woke under the gray morning sky.

Company by company, as his host had warned him, family by family, and man by man, the Israelites were summoned to their tasks. As he marched to the scene of labour, between two sons of Sadoc, one a tender stripling, the other a stalwart broad-shouldered youth, shame crimsoned the cheek of the practised warrior, thus to find himself identified with a nation of slaves.

An Egyptian task-master, daintily attired, and mounted on a pure-bred steed of the desert, pranced to and fro, marshalling the band of workmen, threatening, and indeed striking hard with his whip, such as failed to obey his orders, either from weakness of body or inability to comprehend them. The sun was not a palm's-breadth above the horizon ere more than one pair of naked shoulders were already scored with blood.

The lash was even raised for an instant over Sarchedon's head, but something in the a.s.syrian's eye must have altered its direction; for it curled round the ma.s.sive neck and deep chest of Sadoc's elder son instead, who accepted his stripes with a sullen patience, that denoted some set purpose, some hope of vengeance at no distant date.

"Go to! ye are idle, ye are idle!" was the unceasing reproach of the pitiless Egyptian, while he hurried his gang forward at such a pace as disordered even the light-armed bowmen who formed their guard.

These Sarchedon recognised, by their shields and head-pieces, for a company which had fled before a handful of his own comrades, at the pa.s.sage of the Nile by the Great King.

How strangely the past came back to him!--the fierce excitement, the restless variety, of war; the royal signet; the ride through the desert; Ishtar's loving face; and the Great Queen's maddening smile. It seemed impossible that he should be trudging on foot a peasant, a prisoner, a slave. O for an hour of Merodach!--a bowshot's start, with the horse's head turned towards home! He would have time, he thought, for one blow at that painted task-master, and so, hurling him to the dust, swing fairly into the saddle, and away!

He was roused from his dreams by the back of his companion's hand significantly touching his own, while it pa.s.sed a rope into his grasp; and at the same moment a monotonous chorus broke on his ear, to which, while an Egyptian beat time with his hands, each Israelitish labourer lent as much voice as his lungs could spare from the severity of his toil.

Their day's work was to move a few cubits on its way the colossal image of Pharaoh, cut from a block of granite, destined to form at some future period the ornament of a tomb, grander, costlier, and more s.p.a.cious than the palace in which he reigned. Sarchedon, looking upward at the ponderous image, with its long cunning eyes, its grave cruel face, its shapely limbs designed in the harmony of true proportion, could not but admire the resources that had thus hewn a mountain into a statue, and brought it inch by inch over many a weary furlong, to gratify the pride and enhance the glory of a king. Firm, erect, sedentary, its hands spread calmly on its knees, there was something in the very att.i.tude of the giant that suggested power unquestioned, irresponsible, without pity, and without fear.

Levers were employed at every step to raise the weighty ma.s.s sufficiently for the insertion of rollers, on which it proceeded wearily, slowly, painfully, yet surely propelled by the efforts of a captive nation, whose straining muscles quivered under the labour, whose blistered hands burned over the cable, whose spirits were broken by slavery, as their backs were torn with stripes, yet whose voices, keeping time with their exertions, swelled a mournful cry in honour of their oppressor:

"Work, my brother, rest is nigh-- Pharaoh lives for ever!

Beast and bird of earth and sky, Things that creep and things that fly-- All must labour, all must die; But Pharaoh lives for ever!