A solitary goatherd sat crouched on a slope above the Sea of
Galilee. It was approaching morning, and he had lit a little fire on
the rocks in order to roast his breakfast of fish. It was still dark,
though the embroidered velvet canopy overhead was beginning to reveal
a grape-like bloom along its eastern verge. Seven miles across, on the
opposite shore, the lamps of Tiberias, minute and liquid, dripped
threads of gold into the motionless lake; to the north the snows of
Mount Hermon lay like a pillow to the quiet hills; everywhere was the
swoon and stillness which characterise that last deep hour of slumber
when sleep itself sleeps.
The smoke of the goatherd’s fire rose in a thin, unbroken shaft; the
hiss and explosion of its thorns were uttered in a subdued voice; he
himself sat like a figure carved in old ivory. His arms and legs were
bare; his only garment was a tunic of brown sackcloth; he was the
gauntest man of his race in all Galilee. He suggested some grotesque
vulturine fledgling rather than a human being, in his leathery skin,
denuded scalp, prominent eyes, and great horny beak of a nose.
Whatever juice there was in him must have been as brown and acrid as a
walnut’s.
He had laid his sticks upon a little ledge or plateau where the green
of the banks, rising some fifty feet or so from the margin of the
lake, first strayed to lose itself among the waste and tumble of the
sandstone heights above. Scattered among the bents and yellow boulders
from which he had descended lay his silent flock. He was the only soul
awake, it seemed, in all that heaped-up solitude.
Suddenly he raised his head. The sound of a footstep, distant at
first, but regularly approaching, penetrated to his ears. It fell low
and loud, unmistakably human, until it resolved itself into the tramp
of a worried man coming over the hills from the south. The goatherd
was not interested or concerned. He sat apathetic, even when the
traveller, appearing round a bend of the rocks, walked grunting into
the firelight and revealed himself a Roman soldier.
The newcomer had a heavy, colourless face with thick black eyebrows.
The close chin-piece of his small cap-like helmet gave his lower jaw
a bulldog look. His body to the hips was cased in a laminated cuirass
of brass, epaulets of which covered his shoulders, and his short tunic
was garnished with hanging straps of leather plated with strips of the
same metal. Skin-tight drawers descended to the middle of his calves,
and were succeeded by puttees of pliant felt, which ended in military
caligæ with spiked soles. A short, double-edged sword hung in a
sheath at his right side, and in his hand he carried a javelin of
about his own height, the shaft of which had served him for a staff.
Weary and benighted as he appeared to be, his speech and bearing
expressed the arrogance of the dominant race.
“Ho!” he said, “ho!” and stretched himself relieved. “Food and fire,
and a respite at least from his cursed chase. What lights are yon
across the lake, goatherd?”
“Tiberias.”
It might have been an automaton speaking. The soldier swore by all his
gods.
“Eighty miles from Jerusalem--a land of rogues and fools! Now directed
this way, now that, mountains where I was told valleys, and torrents
for fords, and to find at last that I have taken the wrong bank!
Harkee, thou wooden Satyrus: my horse fell foundered among the hills,
and I saw thy fire and made for it on foot. Well, I carry despatches
for thy Tetrach, and thou tellest me that is Tiberias yonder. Should
I not do well to beat thee for it?”
The large eyes of the goatherd conned the speaker immovably.
“Tiberias,” he repeated. And then he added: “With dawn will come the
fishermen.”
The soldier cursed: “What, calf!” and checked himself. “Thou meanest,”
he said, “a boat to carry me across?” He heaved out a sigh. “Well,
goatherd, so be it; and while I wait I starve. Dost thou not hunger
too?”
“Aye,” said the goatherd, “always and for ever.”
The fish were spluttering on the embers. The soldier speared one with
his javelin, and, blowing on it, began to eat unceremoniously.
“I would not concede so much to _my_ Fates,” he said. “I would rob
sooner. Besides, here is proof plenty that you lie, old goatherd.”
The goatherd bent forward, and prodded the speaker once with a finger
like a crooked stick.
“How old wouldst call me?” he said.
“A hundred.”
“I am seven and twenty, Roman.”
The soldier laughed and stared.
“Bearest thy years ill. Since when beganst to age?”
“Since I began to starve.”
“And when was that?”
“When one said to me: ‘Feed on the illusions of the flesh until I come
again.’”
“One--one? What one?”
“A strange white man. They called him Jesus of Nazareth about here.”
The soldier, his cheek bulged with fish, stopped masticating a moment
to stare, then burst into a hoarse laugh.
“Ho ho! my friend! Art in a sorry case indeed! Thou shalt starve and
starve, by Cæsar. Tell me the story, goatherd.”
The gaunt creature mused a little.
“Why, there is none, Roman, but just this. I had heard of him and
scoffed--I, a practical man--and one day (it was many seasons back) he
came across the water to these hills, and a great multitude followed
and gathered to him from all sides. And they brought with them a
number that were maimed and sick, and the man touched them and they
appeared healed, rising and blessing his name, so that I, though
counting it an illusion of the spirit, could not but marvel in his
magic and the people’s blindness. Now the crowd abode here into the
third day, and they felt neither thirst nor hunger; but I, that durst
not leave my flock, waiting for them to go, was like a ravenous wolf.
And on the third day this Jesus called for food to give to his
followers, and some that were his went down to the boat, and I with
them. And, lo! there were but a few loaves and fishes--nothing at all
for such a multitude. But I helped to carry these up, and on the way
the largest fish of all I hid beneath my tunic, for I thought: ‘Great
he may be, but nothing is lost that I take precautions against his
failure to assuage my hunger.’ Then did he bid us all to sit upon the
ground, and he blessed and brake the fish and bread; and so it
happened--account it to what you will--for every soul there was a meal
and to spare. But when it came to my turn he would give me none; only,
gazing on me, he bade me, since faith I had not, to feed on the
illusions of the flesh until he came again. And I laughed to myself,
thinking of the fish; but, Roman, that fish when I came to devour it
was like a shadow in the water, having form but no substance, and so
it is with all food to me since. Though I behold it, handle it, I put
a shadow to my lips. Yet every day do I prepare my meal, hoping the
curse removed, and knowing always it shall not be until he come
again.”
The soldier broke into a roar of laughter.
“Until he come again!” he cried, “until he come again! O, a jockeyed
Jew, a poor deluded Jew!”
He was so gloriously tickled that he had to gasp and choke himself
into sobriety.
“Harkee, goatherd,” he said presently; “there was a day, not long
past, in Jerusalem--a lamentable day for thee. It thundered--gods, how
it thundered, rattling the Place of Skulls! I ought to remember,
seeing I was on duty there. Nazareth was it, now? Why, to be sure--I
know my letters, and it was writ plain enough and high enough. Jesus
of Nazareth, who saved others, but could not save himself--that was
it--one of three rogues condemned. Well, he laid an embargo on thee,
did he? You see this spear----”
He paused, in the very act of lifting his javelin, and sat staring
stupidly at it. Its point was tipped with crimson.
“The rising sun!” muttered the goatherd, and, getting suddenly to his
feet, stood gazing seawards. The soldier came and stood beside him.
The whole wide valley, while they spoke, had opened to the morning
like a rose, the clustered hills its petals, its calyx the deep lake,
the lights upon it dewdrops shining at its heart. And there upon the
dim waters, swinging close inshore, was a fisherman’s boat, its crew
gathering in an empty net.
Now the two on the hill stood too remote to distinguish sounds or
faces, while the conformation of the rocks hid the shore from their
view. But of a sudden, as they looked, the forms in the boat started
erect, and, all standing in a huddled group, appeared to gaze
landwards. And instantly, as if they had received therefrom some
direction, they seized and cast their net the other side of the boat
and drew on it, and the watchers saw by their straining muscles that
the net was full. Perceiving which, one of the fishermen, a burly
fellow, quitted his hold of the cords, and, leaping into the water,
floundered for the shore and disappeared.
“What now?” said the soldier. “Do they spy and seek us?” He muttered
vacantly, and glanced again at his spear-head, and shook the haft
impatiently. But the sunrise would not be detached from it.
Now the goatherd ran to a cleft which commanded the shore below, and,
glaring a moment, returned swiftly, his face alight.
“Rabboni,” he said excitedly, “it is the man of Nazareth himself come
back, and he ascendeth the hill towards us, and the spell will be
removed from me so that I shall taste fish once more.”
But the words were hardly out of his mouth when the soldier seized his
arm, and, dragging him to the shelter of a great boulder at a
distance, forced him to crouch with him behind it, so that they might
see without being seen. And so hidden, they were aware of a shape that
came into the firelight, and it was white like a spirit of the hills
and waters, and it stretched its hands above the embers, so that they
leaped again.
And the goatherd heard the soldier mutter in his ear:
“A practical man--you say you are a practical man! Now, who is it?”
“Jesus of Nazareth,” he answered.
But the soldier looked at his javelin and it ran with sunrise.
“That cannot be,” he said, “for seven days ago I opened his side with
this spear as he hung upon the cross, and there is the blood to
testify to it.”
“I know nothing about that,” said the goatherd; “my palate is
sufficient evidence for me. Look where they come and lay their fish
upon my embers. The very savour of their cooking tells me I can taste
again. It is Jesus, sure enough!”