CHAPTER x.x.xVII

AT THE WELL

Once out of its confines the Nile divided its flood over and over again and hunted the sea in long meanderings over the flat Delta. A few miles above On the separation began and continued to the marshy coast far to the north. From the summit of the great towers of Bubastis and Sas the glistening sinuosities of its branches might be discerned for many miles.

There was no thirst in the Delta. Nowhere did the capillary, the irrigation ca.n.a.l, fail to reach, even now in the season of desolation and loss. Half-green stubble, hail-mown and locust-eaten, showed where a wheat-field had been. Regular, barren rows were the only evidences of the lentil and garlic gardens in happier days, and the location of pastures might be guessed by the skeletons that whitened the uplands.

Through fringes of leafless palm trees, stone-rimmed pools, like splashes of quicksilver or facets of sapphire, reflected the sky.

Half-way between On and Pa-Ramesu was one of these basins, elliptical in shape and walled with rough limestone. Moss grew in the crevices of the masonry and about it had been a sod of velvet gra.s.s. Black beetles slipped in and out among the stones; dragon-flies hung over the surface of the water and large ants made erratic journeys about the rough bark of the naked palms. Whoever came dipped his goblet deep, for there the water was cold. If he gazed through to the bottom he detected a convection in the sand below. This was not a reservoir, but a well.

Once only had it failed, but then Hapi, the holy river, had been smitten also.

The spring bubbled up at the division of a road. One branch led along the northern bank of the Rameside ca.n.a.l, eastward to Pa-Ramesu. The other crossed the northwestern limits of Goshen and went toward Tanis, in the northeast. Round about the little oasis were the dark circles where the turf fires of many travelers had been. The merchants from the Orient entering Egypt through the great wall of Rameses II, across the eastern isthmus, pa.s.sed this way going to Memphis. Here Philistine, Damascene, Ninevite and Babylonian had halted; here Egyptian, Bedouin, Arabian and the dweller of the desert had paused.

The earth about the well was always damp, and the top-most row of the curb was worn smooth in hollows. This, therefore, was a point common to native and alien, the home-keeping and the traveler, the faithful and the unbeliever.

The strait of Egypt was sore and the aid of the G.o.ds essential. The priests had seized upon the site as a place of prayers, placed a tablet there, commanding them, and a soldier to see that the command was obeyed.

The soldier was in cavalry dress of tunic and ta.s.seled coif, with pike and bull-hide shield and a light broadsword. He was no ordinary bearer of arms. He walked like a man accustomed to command; he turned a cold eye upon too-familiar wayfarers and startled them into silence by the level blackness of his low brows. Wealth, beauty, age nor rank won servility or superciliousness from him. The Egyptian soldier was not obliged to cringe, and this one abode by the privilege.

He was a man of one att.i.tude, one mood and few words. The Memnon might as well have been expected to smile. The earliest riser found him there; the latest night wanderer came upon him. When the day broke, after the falling of the dreadful night, the brave or the thirsty who ventured forth saw him at his post, silent, unastonished, unafraid.

Once only the soldier had been seen to flinch. Merenra, now nomarch of Bubastis, but whilom commander over Israel at Pa-Ramesu, paused one noon with his train at the well. The governor glanced at the soldier, glanced again, shrugged his shoulders and rode away. The man-at-arms winced, and often thereafter stood in abstracted contemplation of the distance.

Just after sunrise on the second day following the pa.s.sing of the darkness, four Egyptians, lank, big-footed and brown, came from the northeast. By their dress they had been prosperous rustics of the un-Israelite Delta. But the healthful leanness, characteristic of the race, had become emaciation; there was the studious unkemptness of mourning upon them, and they, who had ridden once, before the plagues of murrain and hail, traveled afoot.

They were evidently journeying to On, where the benevolence of Ra would feed them.

They said nothing, looking a little awed at the soldier and puzzled at the stela. The warrior read the command and the unlettered men fell on their knees, each to a different G.o.d. The Egyptian was not ashamed of his piety nor did he closet himself to pray.

"Incline the will of the Pharaoh to accord with the needs of the hour, O thou Melter of Hearts!"

"Rescue the kingdom, O thou Controller of Nations, for it descendeth into death and none succoreth it!"

"Deal thou as thou deemest best with the destroyer of Egypt, O thou Magistrate over Kings!"

Thus, in these fragments of prayers was it made manifest that the worm was turning, apologetically, it is true, but surely. For once the prescribed defense of the Pharaoh was ignored. "It is not the fault of the Child of the Sun, but his advisers, who are evil men and full of guile." And in the odd perversity of fate for once its observance would have been just.

Having fulfilled the command and relieved their souls, the four arose and went their way, soft of foot and stately of carriage, after the manner of all their countrymen.

Next, descending with a volley of yells, a rout of the nomad tribes, mounted on horses, came from the southwest.

They were chiefly Bedouins, their women perched behind them with the tiniest members of their broods. But every child that could bestride a horse was mounted independently. Whatever worldly possessions the nomads owned were bound in numerous flat rolls on other horses which they led.

"Hail!" they shouted to the warrior, for the desert races are prankish and unabashed. A younger among them, without wife or goods, drew his gaunt horse back upon its scarred haunches and saluted the soldier.

"Greeting, bearer of many arms!" he said, and then addressed a near-by companion as if he were rods away. "Behold leaden-toed Egypt, c.u.mbered with defense! Bull-hide for shield instead of the safe remoteness of distance, blade and pike for vulgar intimacy in combat instead of the nice aloofness of the launched spear--"

"Go to, thou prater!" interrupted a companion. "If thou lovest Bedouin warfare so well, wherefore dost thou join thyself to the Israelite who fights not at all?"

"Spoil!" retorted the first, "and new fields, O waster of the air!

Hast thou not heard of Canaan?"

"Nay," shouted a third, "he hath an eye only to some heifer-eyed brickmaker among them!"

The soldier moved forward to the group and grounded his pike. His att.i.tude interested them, and in the expectant silence he repeated the writing on the tablet.

"So saith the writing," the first speaker began, but the warrior interrupted him.

"It behooves thee to obey. Thou art yet within the reach of the awkward arms of Egypt."

"One against a troop of Bedouins," the trifler laughed.

"And there are a thousand within sound of my beaten shield," was the harsh answer.

"Come," said an elder complacently, "it does no harm to ask the alleviation of any man's hurt, and it may keep us whole for the journey into Canaan." He dismounted, and in a twinkling the company, even to the babes, had followed his example. Each dropped to his haunches, his hands spread upon his knees, and there was no sound for a few minutes.

Then they rose simultaneously and, flinging themselves upon their horses, departed as they came, like the whirlwind, over the road to Pa-Ramesu and the heart of Goshen.

These were part of the mixed mult.i.tude that went with Israel.

The dust of their going had hardly settled before a drove of hosannahing Israelites approached from the direction of the Nile. The soldier saw them without seeming to see and, moving toward the tablet, a four-foot stela of sandstone, planted himself against its inscribed face, and, resting his pike, contemplated the west.

The ragged rout approached, singing and shouting, noisy and of doubtful temper. A cloud of dust came with them and the odor of stall and of quarry sweat.

Want plays havoc with the Oriental's appearance. It acutely accentuates his already aggressive features and reduces his color to ghastliness. The approaching Hebrews were studies of sharp angularity in monochrome, and the soul which showed in the eyes was no longer a spiritual but a ravenous thing.

Being something distinctly Egyptian, the soldier brought their actual temper to the surface. They had suffered long, but their time had come.

The foremost flung themselves into his view and halted, hushed and amazed. When those behind them tried to press forward with jeers, they turned with a frown and a significant jerk of the head in the direction of the man-at-arms. These, also, subsided and pa.s.sed along the sign of silence. A leader in the front rank walked away and took a drink, using his hands as a cup. The whole silent herd followed and did likewise, solemnly and thoughtfully.

Presently the bolder began to whisper and conjecture among themselves, hushing the sibilant surmises of the humbler with a cautioning frown.

An old man, who could not lower his voice, quavered a resolve to "ask and discover," and started toward the soldier to put his resolution into effect. A wiry old woman seized him and drew him back.

"Wilt thou humiliate him with thy notice, meddler?" she demanded in a fierce whisper. "See him not, and it will be a mercy to him in his hour of abas.e.m.e.nt,--him who hath been balsam to the wound of Israel!"

She turned about and took the road toward Pa-Ramesu, the unprotesting old man trotting after her. The crowd followed, silent at first, then softly talkative, and finally, in the distance, singing and noisy once again.

A careening camel, almost white in the early morning sunshine, broke the sky-line far up the road leading from Tanis in the north. Very much nearer, to the west, two single litters, with a staff-bearing attendant, were approaching.

The camel rider was a Hebrew by the beast that bore him. Egypt had no liking for the bearer of the Orient's burdens and small acquaintance with him. Likewise the litters were Hebraic, for the attendant was bearded. The soldier kept his place before the stela and contemplated the distance.

The time was not long, though in that land of distances the camel had far to come from the horizon to the well, until by the soft jarring of the earth the motionless sentinel knew that the swifter traveler had arrived. Haste is not common in tropical countries, and the camel had been put to his limit of speed. A commoner spirit than the soldiers could not have resisted the impulses of curiosity concerning this hot haste. But he did not turn his eyes.

The traveler alighted before his mount ceased to move, and undoing his leathern belt with a jerk, he struck the camel a smart blow on the shoulder. There was the protesting buzz of a large fly and an angry, disabled blundering on the sand, silenced by the stamp of a sandal.

"Thou wouldst have it, pest!" the traveler exclaimed. "Thy kind is not to be persuaded from its blood-sucking by milder means. Ye mind me of the Pharaoh!"