The storm which had risen as night closed in swept over the isthmus.
The waves in its lakes dashed high, and the Red Sea, which thrust a bay
shaped like the horn of a snail into it from the south, was lashed to
the wildest fury.
Farther northward, where Pharaoh’s army, protected by the Migdol of the
South, the strongest fort of the Etham line, had encamped a short time
before, the sand lashed by the storm whirled through the air and, in
the quarter occupied by the king and his great officials, hammers were
constantly busy driving the tent-pins deeper into the earth; for the
brocades, cloths, and linen materials which formed the portable houses
of Pharaoh and his court, struck by the gale, threatened to break from
the poles by which they were supported.
Black clouds hung in the north, but the moon and stars were often
visible, and flashes of distant lightning frequently brightened the
horizon. Even now the moisture of heaven seemed to avoid this rainless
region and in all directions fires were burning, which the soldiers
surrounded in double rows, like a living shield, to keep the storm from
scattering the fuel.
The sentries had a hard duty; for the atmosphere was sultry, in spite of
the north wind, which still blew violently, driving fresh clouds of sand
into their faces.
Only two sentinels were pacing watchfully to and fro at the most
northern gate of the camp, but they were enough; for, on account of the
storm, no one had appeared for a long time to demand entrance or egress.
At last, three hours after sunset, a slender figure, scarcely beyond
boyhood, approached the guards with a firm step and, showing a
messenger’s pass, asked the way to Prince Siptah’s tent.
He seemed to have had a toilsome journey; for his thick black locks
were tangled and his feet were covered with dust and dried clay. Yet
he excited no suspicion; for his bearing was that of a self-reliant
freeman, his messenger’s pass was perfectly correct, and the letter
he produced was really directed to Prince Siptah; a scribe of the corn
storehouses, who was sitting at the nearest fire with other officials
and subordinate officers, examined it.
As the youth’s appearance pleased most of those present, and he came
from Tanis and perhaps brought news, a seat at the fire and a share in
the meal were offered; but he was in haste.
Declining the invitation with thanks, he answered the questions curtly
and hurriedly and begged the resting soldiers for a guide. One was
placed at his disposal without delay. But he was soon to learn that it
would not be an easy matter to reach a member of the royal family; for
the tents of Pharaoh, his relatives, and dignitaries stood in a
special spot in the heart of the camp, hedged in by the shields of the
heavily-armed troops.
When he entered he was challenged again and again, and his messenger’s
pass and the prince’s letter were frequently inspected. The guide, too,
was sent back, and his place was filled by an aristocratic lord, called
I the ‘eye and ear of the king,’ who busied himself with the seal of the
letter. But the messenger resolutely demanded it, and as soon as it was
again in his hand, and two tents standing side by side rocking in the
tempest had been pointed out to him, one as Prince Siptah’s, the other
as the shelter of Masana, the daughter of Hornecht, for whom he asked,
he turned to the chamberlain who came out of the former one, showed him
the letter, and asked to be taken to the prince; but the former
offered to deliver the letter to his master--whose steward he was--and
Ephraim--for he was the messenger--agreed, if he would obtain him
immediate admission to the young widow.
The steward seemed to lay much stress upon getting possession of the
letter and, after scanning Ephraim from top to toe, he asked if Kasana
knew him, and when the other assented, adding that he brought her a
verbal message, the Egyptian said smiling:
“Well then; but we must protect our carpets from such feet, and you seem
weary and in need of refreshment. Follow me.”
With these words he took him to a small tent, before which an old slave
and one scarcely beyond childhood were sitting by the fire, finishing
their late meal with a bunch of garlic.
They started up as they saw their master; but he ordered the old man to
wash the messenger’s feet, and bade the younger ask the prince’s cook
in his name for meat, bread, and wine. Then he led Ephraim to his
tent, which was lighted by a lantern, and asked how he, who from his
appearance was neither a slave nor a person of mean degree, had come
into such a pitiable plight. The messenger replied that on his way he
had bandaged the wounds of a severely injured man with the upper part
of his apron, and the chamberlain instantly went to his baggage and gave
him a piece of finely plaited linen.
Ephraim’s reply, which was really very near the truth, had cost him so
little thought and sounded so sincere, that it won credence, and the
steward’s kindness seemed to him so worthy of gratitude that he made no
objection when the courtier, without injuring the seal, pressed the roll
of papyrus with a skilful hand, separating the layers and peering into
the openings to decipher the contents. While thus engaged, the corpulent
courtier’s round eyes sparkled brightly and it seemed to the youth as
if the countenance of the man, whose comfortable plumpness and smooth
rotundity at first appeared like a mirror of the utmost kindness of
heart, now had the semblance of a cat’s.
As soon as the steward had completed his task, he begged the youth to
refresh himself in all comfort, and did not return until Ephraim had
bathed, wrapped a fresh linen upper-garment around his hips, perfumed
and anointed his hair, and, glancing into the mirror, was in the act of
slipping a broad gold circlet upon his arm.
He had hesitated some time ere doing this; for he was aware that he
would encounter great perils; but this circlet was his one costly
possession and, during his captivity, it had been very difficult for him
to hide it under his apron. It might be of much service to him but,
if he put it on, it would attract attention and increase the danger of
being recognized.
Yet the reflection he beheld in the mirror, vanity, and the desire
to appear well in Kasana’s eyes, conquered caution and prudent
consideration, and the broad costly ornament soon glittered on his arm.
The steward stood in astonishment before the handsome, aristocratic
youth, so haughty in his bearing, who had taken the place of the
unassuming messenger. The question whether he was a relative of Kasana
sprang to his lips, and receiving an answer in the negative, he asked to
what family he belonged.
Ephraim bent his eyes on the ground for some time in embarrassment, and
then requested the Egyptian to spare him an answer until he had talked
with Hornecht’s daughter.
The other, shaking his head, looked at him again, but pressed him no
farther; for what he had read in the letter was a secret which might
bring death to whoever was privy to it, and the aristocratic young
messenger was doubtless the son of a dignitary who belonged to the
circle of the fellow-conspirators of Prince Siptah, his master.
A chill ran through the courtier’s strong, corpulent body, and he gazed
with mingled sympathy and dread at the blooming human flower associated
thus early in plans fraught with danger.
His master had hitherto only hinted at the secret, and it would still
be possible for him to keep his own fate separate from his. Should he
do so, an old age free from care lay before him; but, if he joined
the prince and his plan succeeded, how high he might rise! Terribly
momentous was the choice confronting him, the father of many children,
and beads of perspiration stood on his brow as, incapable of any
coherent thought, he led Ephraim to Kasana’s tent, and then hastened to
his master.
Silence reigned within the light structure, which was composed of poles
and gay heavy stuffs, tenanted by the beautiful widow.
With a throbbing heart Ephraim approached the entrance, and when he at
last summoned courage and drew aside the curtain fastened firmly to the
earth, which the wind puffed out like a sail, he beheld a dark room,
from which a similar one opened on the right and left. The one on
the left was as dark as the central one; but a flickering light stole
through numerous chinks of the one on the right. The tent was one of
those with a flat roof, divided into three apartments, which he had
often seen, and the woman who irresistibly attracted him was doubtless
in the lighted one.
To avoid exposing himself to fresh suspicion, he must conquer his timid
delay, and he had already stooped and loosed the loop which fastened
the curtain to the hook in the floor, when the door of the lighted room
opened and a woman’s figure entered the dark central chamber.
Was it she?
Should he venture to speak to her? Yes, it must be done.
Panting for breath and clenching his hands, he summoned up his courage
as if he were about to steal unbidden into the most sacred sanctuary of
a temple. Then he pushed the curtain aside, and the woman whom he had
just noticed greeted him with a low cry.
But he speedily regained his composure, for a ray of light had fallen on
her face, revealing that the person who stood before him was not Kasana,
but her nurse, who had accompanied her to the prisoners and then to the
camp. She, too, recognized him and stared at him as though he had risen
from the grave.
They were old acquaintances; for when he was first brought to the
archer’s house she had prepared his bath and moistened his wound with
balsam, and during his second stay beneath the same roof, she had
joined her mistress in nursing him. They had chatted away many an hour
together, and he knew that she was kindly disposed toward him; for when
midway between waking and sleeping, in his burning fever, her hand
had stroked him with maternal tenderness, and afterwards she had never
wearied of questioning him about his people and at last had acknowledged
that she was descended from the Syrians, who were allied to the Hebrews.
Nay, even his language was not wholly strange to her; for she had been
a woman of twenty when dragged to Egypt with other prisoners of Rameses
the Great. Ephraim, she was fond of saying, reminded her of her own son
when he was still younger.
The youth had no ill to fear from her, so grasping her hand, he
whispered that he had escaped from his guards and come to ask counsel
from her mistress and herself.
The word “escaped” was sufficient to satisfy the old woman; for her
idea of ghosts was that they put others to flight, but did not fly
themselves. Relieved, she stroked the youth’s curls and, ere his
whispered explanation was ended, turned her back upon him and hurried
into the lighted room to tell her mistress whom she had found outside.
A few minutes after Ephraim was standing before the woman who had become
the guiding star of his life. With glowing cheeks he gazed into the
beautiful face, still flushed by weeping, and though it gave his heart a
pang when, before vouchsafing him a greeting, she enquired whether Hosea
had accompanied him, he forgot the foolish pain when he saw her gaze
warmly at him. Yet when the nurse asked whether she did not think he
looked well and vigorous, and withal more manly in appearance, it seemed
as though he had really grown taller, and his heart beat faster and
faster.
Kasana desired to learn the minutest details of his uncle’s experiences;
but after he had done her bidding and finally yielded to the wish
to speak of his own fate, she interrupted him to consult the nurse
concerning the means of saving him from unbidden looks and fresh
dangers--and the right expedient was soon found.
First, with Ephraim’s help, the old woman closed the main entrance of
the tent as firmly as possible, and then pointed to the dark room into
which he must speedily and softly retire as soon as she beckoned to him.
Meanwhile Kasana had poured some wine into a goblet, and when he came
back with the nurse she made him sit down on the giraffe skin at her
feet and asked how he had succeeded in evading the guards, and what he
expected from the future. She would tell him in advance that her father
had remained in Tanis, so he need not fear recognition and betrayal.
Her pleasure in this meeting was evident to both eyes and ears; nay,
when Ephraim commenced his story by saying that Prince Siptah’s command
to remove the prisoners’ chains, for which they were indebted solely
to her, had rendered his escape possible, she clapped her hands like a
child. Then her face clouded and, with a deep sigh, she added that ere
his arrival her heart had almost broken with grief and tears; but Hosea
should learn what a woman would sacrifice for the most ardent desire of
her heart.
She repaid with grateful words Ephraim’s assurance that, before his
flight, he had offered to release his uncle from his bonds and, when
she learned that Joshua had refused to accept his nephew’s aid, lest it
might endanger the success of the plan he had cleverly devised for him,
she cried out to her nurse, with tearful eyes, that Hosea alone would
have been capable of such a deed.
To the remainder of the fugitive’s tale she listened intently, often
interrupting him with sympathizing questions.
The torturing days and nights of the past, which had reached such a
happy termination, seemed now like a blissful dream, a bewildering
fairy-tale, and the goblet she constantly replenished was not needed to
lend fire to his narrative.
Never before had he been so eloquent as while describing how, in the
ravine, he had stepped on some loose stones and rolled head foremost
down into the chasm with them. On reaching the bottom he had believed
that all was lost; for soon after extricating himself from the rubbish
that had buried him, in order to hurry to the pool, he had heard the
whistle of the guards.
Yet he had been a good runner from his childhood, had learned in his
native pastures to guide himself by the light of the stars, so without
glancing to the right or to the left, he had hastened southward as fast
as his feet would carry him. Often in the darkness he had fallen over
stones or tripped in the hollows of the desert sand, but only to rise
again quickly and dash onward, onward toward the south, where he knew he
should find her, Kasana, her for whose sake he recklessly flung to the
winds what wiser-heads had counselled, her for whom he was ready to
sacrifice liberty and life.
Whence he derived the courage to confess this, he knew not, and neither
the blow from her fan, nor the warning exclamation of the nurse: “Just
look at the boy!” sobered him. Nay, his sparkling eyes sought hers still
mote frequently as he continued his story.
One of the hounds which attacked him he had flung against a rock, and
the other he pelted with stones till it fled howling into a thicket. He
had seen no other pursuers, either that night, or during the whole
of the next day. At last he again reached a travelled road and found
country people who told him which way Pharaoh’s army had marched. At
noon, overwhelmed by fatigue, he had fallen asleep under the shade of
a sycamore, and when he awoke the sun was near its setting. He was very
hungry, so he took a few turnips from a neighboring field. But their
owner suddenly sprang from a ditch near by, and he barely escaped his
pursuit.
He had wandered along during a part of the night, and then rested
beside a well on the roadside, for he knew that wild beasts shun such
frequented places.
After sunrise he continued his march, following the road taken by the
army. Everywhere he found traces of it, and when, shortly before noon,
exhausted and faint from hunger, he reached a village in the cornlands
watered by the Seti-canal, he debated whether to sell his gold armlet,
obtain more strengthening food, and receive some silver and copper
in change. But he was afraid of being taken for a thief and again
imprisoned, for his apron had been tattered by the thorns, and his
sandals had long since dropped from his feet. He had believed that even
the hardest hearts could not fail to pity his misery so, hard as it was
for him, he had knocked at a peasant’s door and begged. But the man gave
him nothing save the jeering counsel that a strong young fellow like him
ought to use his arms and leave begging to the old and weak. A second
peasant had even threatened to beat him; but as he walked on with
drooping bead, a young woman whom he had noticed in front of the
barbarian’s house followed him, thrust some bread and dates into his
hand, and whispered hastily that heavy taxes had been levied on the
village when Pharaoh marched through, or she would have given him
something better.
This unexpected donation, which he had eaten at the next well, had not
tasted exactly like a festal banquet, but he did not tell Kasana that it
had been embittered by the doubt whether to fulfil Joshua’s commission
and return to his people or yield to the longing that drew him to her.
He moved forward irresolutely, but fate seemed to have undertaken to
point out his way; for after walking a short half hour, the latter
portion of the time through barren land, he had found by the wayside a
youth of about his own age who, moaning with pain, held his foot clasped
between both hands. Pity led him to go to him and, to his astonishment,
he recognized the runner and messenger of Kasana’s father, with whom he
had often talked.
“Apu, our nimble Nubian runner?” cried the young widow, and Ephraim
assented and then added that the messenger had been despatched to convey
a letter to Prince Siptah as quickly as possible, and the swift-footed
lad, who was wont to outstrip his master’s noble steeds, had shot over
the road like an arrow and would have reached his destination in two
hours more, had he not stepped on the sharp edge of a bottle that had
been shattered by a wagon-wheel--and made a deep and terrible wound.
“And you helped him?” asked Kasana.
“How could I do otherwise?” replied Ephraim. “He had already lost a
great deal of blood and was pale as death. So I carried him to the
nearest ditch, washed the gaping wound, and anointed it with his
balsam.”
“I put the little box in his pouch myself a year ago,” said the nurse
who was easily moved, wiping her eyes. Ephraim confirmed the statement,
for Apu had gratefully told him of it. Then he went on.
“I tore my upper garment into strips and bandaged the wound as well as I
could. Meanwhile he constantly urged haste, held out the pass and letter
his master had given him and, knowing nothing of the misfortune which
had befallen me, charged me to deliver the roll to the prince in his
place. Oh, how willingly I undertook the task and, soon after the second
hour had passed, I reached the camp. The letter is in the prince’s
hands, and here am I--and I can see that you are glad! But no one was
ever so happy as I to sit here at your feet, and look up to you, so
grateful as I am that you have listened to me so kindly, and if they
load me with chains again I will bear it calmly, if you will but care
for me. Ah, my misfortune has been so great! I have neither father nor
mother, no one who loves me. You, you alone are dear, and you will not
repulse me, will you?”
He had fairly shouted the last words, as if beside himself, and carried
away by the might of passion and rendered incapable by the terrible
experiences of the past few hours of controlling the emotions that
assailed him, the youth, still scarcely beyond childhood, who saw
himself torn away from and bereft of all that had usually sustained
and supported him, sobbed aloud, and like a frightened birdling seeking
protection under its mother’s wings, hid his head, amid floods of tears,
in Kasana’s lap.
Warm compassion seized upon the tender-hearted young widow, and her own
eyes grew dim. She laid her hands kindly upon his head, and feeling the
tremor that shook the frame of the weeping lad, she raised his head with
both hands, kissed his brow and cheeks, looked smilingly into his eyes
with tears in her own, and exclaimed:
“You poor, foolish fellow! Why should I not care for you, why should I
repel you? Your uncle is the most beloved of men to me, and you are like
his son. For your sakes I have already accepted what I should otherwise
have thrust far, far from me! But now I must go on, and must not care
what others may think or say of me, if only I can accomplish the one
thing for which I am risking person, life, all that I once prized!
Wait, you poor, impulsive fellow!”--and here she again kissed him on
the cheeks--“I shall succeed in smoothing the path for you also. That is
enough now!”
This command sounded graver, and was intended to curb the increasing
impetuosity of the ardent youth. But she suddenly started up, exclaiming
with anxious haste: “Go, go, at once!”
The footsteps of men approaching the tent, and a warning word from
the nurse had brought this stern order to the young widow’s lips, and
Ephraim’s quick ear made him understand her anxiety and urged him to
join the old nurse in the dark room. There he perceived that a few
moments’ delay would have betrayed him; for the curtain of the tent was
drawn aside and a man passed through the central space straight to the
lighted apartment, where Kasana--the youth heard it distinctly--welcomed
the new guest only too cordially, as though his late arrival surprised
her.
Meanwhile the nurse had seized her own cloak, flung it over the
fugitive’s bare shoulders, and whispered:
“Be near the tent just before sunrise, but do not enter it until I call
you, if you value your life. You have neither mother nor father, and my
child Kasana ah, what a dear, loving heart she has!--she is the best
of all good women; but whether she is fit to be the guide of an
inexperienced young blusterer, whose heart is blazing like dry straw
with love for her, is another question. I considered many things, while
listening to your story, and on account of my liking for you I will tell
you this. You have an uncle who--my child is right there--is the best
of men, and I know mankind. Whatever he advised, do; for it will surely
benefit you. Obey him! If his bidding leads you far away from here and
Kasana, so much the better for you. We are walking in dangerous paths,
and had it not been done for Hosea’s sake, I would have tried to hold
her back with all my might. But for him--I am an old woman; but I would
go through fire myself for that man. I am more grieved than I can tell,
both for the pure, sweet child and for yourself, whom my own son was
once so much like, so I repeat: Obey your uncle, boy! Do that, or you
will go to ruin, and that would be a pity!”
With these words, without waiting for an answer, she drew the curtain
of the tent aside, and waited until Ephraim had slipped through. Then,
wiping her eyes, she entered, as if by chance, the lighted chamber;
but Kasana and her late guest had matters to discuss that brooked no
witnesses, and her “dear child” only permitted her to light her little
lamp at the three-armed candelabra, and then sent her to rest.
She promptly obeyed and, in the dark room, where her couch stood beside
that of her mistress, she sank down, hid her face in her hands, and
wept.
She felt as though the world was upside down. She no longer understood
her darling Kasana; for she was sacrificing purity and honor for the
sake of a man whom--she knew it--her soul abhorred.