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 Assyrian 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 canals, 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 ass'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 God!" ejaculated 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 butter, 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 Assyrian 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 space. The time may come when you shall return to Assyria 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,
nobler, 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 God of his fathers to a
creature weaker and lower than himself?"
"A man can always die," answered the Assyrian, "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 nobler, the courage of resistance or of
attack? Which best fulfils the purpose of creation?--the ox, plodding
obedient to the goad, or the wild ass, spurning control beneath her
hoof? I will show you to-morrow a whole people displaying such calm and
patient fortitude as shames the proudest triumphs of Assyria, 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 Assyrian god.
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 Assyrian's eye must have altered its direction; for it
curled round the massive 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
passage 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 passed 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 spacious 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 attitude of
the giant that suggested power unquestioned, irresponsible, without
pity, and without fear.
Levers were employed at every step to raise the weighty mass
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!
Work, my brother, while 'tis day--
Pharaoh lives for ever;
Rivers waste and wane away,
Marble crumbles down like clay,
Nations dwindle to decay;
But Pharaoh lives for ever!
Work--it is thy mortal doom--
Pharaoh lives for ever!
Shadows passing through the gloom,
Age to age gives place and room,
Kings go down into the tomb;
But Pharaoh lives for ever!"
The task-master on his spirited little steed was here, there,
everywhere; now giving out the words of the chant, to which, dropping
his bridle, he clapped his hands in time; now directing a broken lever
to be replaced, the position of a roller altered, a hook secured, a rope
greased, or a fainting labourer revived by smart application of the
lash. The sun was high, the heat suffocating; even Sarchedon, inured to
the toils of war, longed for any catastrophe, however dangerous, that
might release him from the insupportable hardships of his task.
The sand became softer, the men more fatigued, the ponderous image
rocked, wavered, and stood still. In terror of the lash, a simultaneous
effort was made, a cable snapped, and some score of Israelites were
hurled panting to the earth.
Amongst them fell the younger son of Sadoc, a weakly stripling, whose
labour Sarchedon, working between him and his brother, had endeavoured
to spare by his own exertions. When the others scrambled to their feet,
this lad lay prostrate, too faint to rise.
The task-master arrived at the scene of disorder almost as quickly as
the casualty took place. His eye glared fiercely on the boy's slender
shoulders, bare to the waist; his hand went up to strike; but even while
the lash whistled round his head, the Egyptian's wrist was clasped by an
iron grip, that shook him in the saddle where he sat. Sarchedon's eye
looked very fierce and resolute, his arms seemed powerful enough to have
torn the threatening horseman limb from limb.
The latter foamed with rage while he struggled to release himself from
the Assyrian's grasp. The Israelites gathered round, the guard of bowmen
were fairly shut out by the crowd, a thousand tongues clamoured, a
thousand eyes glared vengeance, and the mocking colossus looked down on
all that turmoil with its eternal inscrutable smile.
"By the Queen of Heaven, if you move a finger, or speak a syllable, I
will strangle you on the spot!" said Sarchedon, in those low distinct
tones men use when they mean to waste little more breath on words.
There was enough similitude in their languages for the Egyptian to
understand his meaning; but had it not been so, he could scarce have
mistaken the other's attitude and bearing. The oath too, and the man's
determined face so close to his own, warned him that this was no
Israelitish slave, but one of those formidable enemies from the North,
before whom he had seen the choicest of Pharaoh's bowmen turn and flee.
What could it mean? What did this stranger in the land of Egypt,
naturalised, it would seem, amongst her slaves? This was no time to
inquire while those slaves crowded round so wildly, as though eager for
an outbreak, of which his life would too surely be the prey. Men learned
discretion in the service of the Pharaoh's, and though he trembled and
turned pale, he did not lose his presence of mind.
"Lift the youth from the ground," said he earnestly, "and take care of
him if you be indeed his brother. Bring here water!" he added, raising
his voice--"wine, if you have it. Stand off from him, Israelites, and
give him air! Make way, there, for the bowmen to bring him help!"
Thus craftily summoning the guards to his assistance, he extricated
himself from the perplexity of his position, and ordering the youth's
brother to take him home, excused from farther labour, resumed the
direction of affairs; but during the rest of the day blows fell less
thickly among the Israelites, and the solemn senseless image made a
shorter journey than usual towards its final resting-place.
Returning at nightfall to his hut, Sadoc found it surrounded by a
company of bowmen. The tale of bricks his family were required to
provide for the king's use had been increased one-tenth, and Sarchedon
was to be carried into the presence of Pharaoh without delay.