WHO IS MY BROTHER?
Sarchedon, stretched senseless in the desert, bled so freely, that he
must have bled to death but for the sand on which he lay. Its fine
particles served to stanch the wound ere life was quite extinct; and
though very faint and feeble, the mysterious spark was not so wholly
quenched but that a tender hand might nurse it into flame once more.
Sadoc and his little band of Israelites, journeying peaceably on, so
long as their asses seemed to travel without fatigue, and finding their
course through the wilderness by the stars, were about to halt for the
night, when they came across the prostrate form of the Assyrian, very
white and death-like in the moonlight, lying near the lion's skeleton in
their path. Those were patriarchal times, and it was not the nature of a
son of Abraham, witnessing such a calamity, to "pass by on the other
side." Sadoc was down by the helpless figure in an instant with his hand
on its breast, rejoiced to trace the feeble flutterings of its heart.
What little skill of surgery he possessed came into practice forthwith.
He forced some drops of wine between the clenched teeth; he drew the
arrow, and poured oil into the gaping wound; he tore his linen garment
into strips for a bandage; and lifting the wounded man on his own beast,
walked patiently by its side, until they reached a fitting spot of
encampment for the night.
That Sadoc should have been thus journeying in freedom and honour, while
his Egyptian fellow-captives were bewailing their bondage in the heart
of Babylon, was due to one of those strokes of policy in which Assarac
the eunuch took especial pride.
Ever since her subjection under an Eastern people of wandering and
warlike habits, counting their possessions by their flocks, but showing
rather the rapacious instincts of the wolf than the meek and gentle
nature of those creatures they loved to tend, Egypt had learned to hate,
even more than she feared, all races of mankind that lay nearer the land
of Morning than herself. She had not long shaken off the loathed
supremacy of the Shepherd Kings ere she employed her new-found strength
in making war on the nations of her eastern border--the formidable
Philistines, the terrible sons of Anak, and the mighty empire of which
Nimrod was the founder, ruled in succession by a line of heroic kings.
As her victories increased, so she enlarged her territories, until she
became powerful enough to contest with her Assyrian rival the supremacy
of the Eastern world.
Perhaps that protracted famine, which wasted other countries, and for
which the wise and high-minded stranger whom Pharaoh had made his regent
provided so skilfully, may have enhanced her relative resources as it
weakened her neighbours; perhaps the balance in which nations are
weighed was so adjusted by that Supreme Power, to whom worlds are but as
grains of sand, through other means; but it came to pass that the more
Southern and less warlike people contended with varying success against
their ancient enemy; and to proud Assyria the very name of Egypt was as
an offence that stunk in her nostrils, a wound that spread and festered
in her flesh.
It was a day of triumph, therefore, in great Babylon when her fiery old
monarch returned victorious from his Egyptian campaign, and the common
multitude rejoiced to tell each other how their hereditary foes had been
humbled, how Memphis and Thebes had seen the banners of Ashur flaunting
defiance at their gates, his horsemen encompassing their walls; but
wiser heads reflected on the small amount of real gain represented by
all this glory, of real damage inflicted on the enemy by an invasion
that had obtained no concession of dominion, no increase of national
power. What were a few herds of cattle, a drove of captives, a heap or
two of gold, garments, armour, and common spoil. Like the subsiding of
their own river, this ebbing wave of war left, perhaps, increased
fertility where it had passed, in the stern lessons of experience
learned by those who were honourably worsted in hard-won fight. Egypt
was little weaker in numerical force than when the Great King entered
her territories; in skill, confidence, and spirit, she was actually
stronger than before.
These considerations were not overlooked by the wisdom of Semiramis;
while to Assarac's far-seeing eye, the sapping of Egyptian strength, by
every means at home and abroad, seemed the surest and safest policy for
the attainment of his one paramount object--the aggrandisement of his
country, and through her supremacy, his own.
It did not escape his penetration, that Assyria's great rival was vexed
with a sore at her very heart, to prove a constant drain on her
resources, an object of daily anxiety and alarm. By a flagrant breach of
faith, an unscrupulous desecration of the rites of hospitality, she had
converted a race of exiles into a nation of slaves. Those who came to
her for bread had indeed received a stone, and the hand she once
stretched to them in friendship was now clenched in menace, or fell
heavily in blows of tyranny and oppression. As the Israelites increased
in numbers, like certain herbs that spring into growth and vitality more
profusely, the more they are trampled under foot, the wiser Pharaohs
began to realise the danger they incurred. No state, however powerful,
could be safe having a numerous race of aliens mixed, yet not mingling,
with its native population, strangers in thought, feelings, usages,
above all, in creed and worship. They might be tamed with hard work,
disheartened by ill-usage, coerced and kept down in every mode that a
remorseless policy could suggest, still nothing less than their
absorption or extinction could give security to their conquerors; and
Providence permitted neither the one nor the other.
They lived, a people apart, dogged, unresisting, suffering with but
little complaint, yet preserving, apparently for consolation under the
bitterest hardships, some strange confidence in their future, some
mysterious trust in a Power before which Pharaoh and his bowmen should
be swept away like locusts in an east wind. They worked in sad
suggestive silence, they earned their morsel of bread with sweat and
blood and tears; but they had no voluntary dealings with their
task-masters--neither ate nor drank with them, married nor gave in
marriage, bought nor sold.
Much of this Assarac had already learned from intercourse with the many
strangers who crowded to the great mart of Babylon out of the South;
much from his conversation with Sadoc, whom he had liberated, not
without a purpose. By the Israelite's narrative, he verified his own
information concerning the captive people, and won the other's
confidence in his sympathy with their sufferings, his desire to right
them by the unanswerable arguments of sword and spear. His plan, he
thought, was not unworthy of his own intellect and the glory of the
Great Queen.
To send back this venerable Israelite, as an emissary to his countrymen,
promising them the powerful aid of Assyria at the time when they should
see fit to cast off the Egyptian yoke; exhorting them to rise
unanimously from within, while all the force of Ashur pressed on the
enemy from without; thus to obtain complete conquest, to extend
unbounded dominion over the land of the South; and, finally, when the
sway of the Great Queen should extend from the sands of the Libyan
desert to the farthest mountains of Armenia, to place this strange
people in some district suited to their habits, there to become hewers
of wood and drawers of water for the Assyrian nation. What matter? They
would have served his purpose, and might be cast aside like a frayed
bowstring or the shaft of a broken spear.
But the wily eunuch was perplexed by the coldness with which the
Israelite received, while he accepted, these warlike overtures. Sadoc
seemed to have but little confidence even in the mighty resources of
Assyria; little faith in chariots of iron, and horsemen countless as the
sands by the Red Sea.
"Our fathers," said he, "came down into Egypt, directed by the finger of
our God. When he thinks fit, he will lead us out of the house of our
captivity into a land of corn and wine and oil, where we shall worship
him in freedom, teaching our children, and our children's children,
that he only is mighty, and that the gods of the nations are in his
sight but as chaff winnowed from the threshing-floor, as smoke from a
burnt-offering, that melts into empty air."
Nevertheless, he was satisfied to take with him to his captive people
the good tidings of promised assistance at their need, and journeyed
back to Egypt, pondering deeply on the prospect of a path to freedom
thus opened out by the assurances of a priest of Baal.
It was characteristic of the man and of his national habits, that he
refused all guard or escort for his long and toilsome journey. His own
servants, taken captive at the same time with himself, and a few asses
bearing a slender store of water and provisions, formed the whole troop.
Thus scarcely half a score of wayfarers gathered round Sarchedon, to
preserve him from a lonely death on the desert sand.
Long days the little company plodded on, taking by choice the most
frequented route, in order to avoid those wandering and predatory tribes
of the Philistines, whose hand was already against every man, as "every
man's hand was against them." But the domestic policy of Semiramis had
made her name a terror to these pitiless spoilers; and many a swarthy
robber, who would have scorned to quail before the face of Ninus
himself, trembled at the ghastly punishments inflicted on his kindred by
order of the Great Queen. They believed her--and not entirely without
reason--to be omnipotent, omnipresent, beautiful as morning, terrible as
the lightning, pitiless as fate.
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 ass'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 grass, 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 Assyrian's constitution, however, was sound, as his frame was strong
and agile. Ere he reached the confines of Egypt, his health was
reëstablished, 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 Assyria. 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 multitude 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, impassable 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 gods? 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 ass at his master's
crib."
"And you can bear it!" exclaimed the fiery Assyrian. "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 nobleman and his attendants on
some party of pleasure or business. The two principal 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
Assyrians, 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 pass, 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 gods. 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 Assyria
than such degradation as this! How long must we endure--how long?"