Straightway his worthiness Herhor directed his adjutant who carried
the mace to take charge of the vanguard in place of Eunana. Then he
commanded that the military engines for hurling great stones leave the
road, and that the Greek soldiers facilitate passage for those engines
in difficult places. All vehicles and litters of staff-officers were
to move in the rear.
When Herhor issued commands, the adjutant bearing the fan approached
Pentuer and asked,--
"Will it be possible to go by this highway again?"
"Why not?" answered the young priest. "But since two sacred beetles
have barred the way now, we must not go farther; some misfortune might
happen."
"As it is, a misfortune has happened. Or hast thou not noticed that
Prince Rameses is angry at the minister? and our lord is not
forgetful."
"It is not the prince who is offended with our lord, but our lord with
the prince, and he has reproached him. He has done well; for it seems
to the young prince, at present, that he is to be a second Menes."
"Or a Rameses the Great," put in the adjutant.
"Rameses the Great obeyed the gods; for this cause there are
inscriptions praising him in all the temples. But Menes, the first
pharaoh of Egypt, was a destroyer of order, and thanks only to the
fatherly kindness of the priests that his name is still
remembered,--though I would not give one brass uten on this, that the
mummy of Menes exists."
"My Pentuer," added the adjutant, "thou art a sage, hence knowest that
it is all one to us whether we have ten lords or eleven."
"But it is not all one to the people whether they have to find every
year a mountain of gold for the priests, or two mountains of gold for
the priests and the pharaoh," answered Pentuer, while his eyes
flashed.
"Thou art thinking of dangerous things," said the adjutant, in a
whisper.
"But how often hast thou thyself grieved over the luxuries of the
pharaoh's court and of the nomarchs?" inquired the priest in
astonishment.
"Quiet, quiet! We will talk of this, but not now."
In spite of the sand the military engines, drawn each by two bullocks,
moved in the desert more speedily than along the highway. With the
first of them marched Eunana, anxiously. "Why has the minister
deprived me of leadership over the vanguard? Does he wish to give me a
higher position?" asked he in his own mind.
Thinking out then a new career, and perhaps to dull the fears which
made his heart quiver, he seized a pole and, where the sands were
deeper, propped the balista, or urged on the Greeks with an outcry.
They, however, paid slight attention to this officer.
The retinue had pushed on a good half hour through a winding ravine
with steep naked walls, when the vanguard halted a second time. At
this point another ravine crossed the first; in the middle of it
extended a rather broad canal.
The courier sent to the minister of war with notice of the obstacle
brought back a command to fill the canal immediately.
About a hundred soldiers with pickaxes and shovels rushed to the work.
Some knocked out stones from the cliff; others threw them into the
ditch and covered them with sand.
Meanwhile from the depth of the ravine came a man with a pickaxe
shaped like a stork's neck with the bill on it. He was an Egyptian
slave, old and entirely naked. He looked for a while with the utmost
amazement at the work of the soldiers; then, springing between them on
a sudden, he shouted,--
"What are ye doing, vile people? This is a canal."
"But how darest thou use evil words against the warriors of his
holiness?" asked Eunana, who stood there.
"Thou must be an Egyptian and a great person, I see that," said the
slave; "so I answer thee that this canal belongs to a mighty lord; he
is the manager and secretary of one who bears the fan for his
worthiness the nomarch of Memphis. Be on thy guard or misfortune will
strike thee!"
"Do your work," said Eunana, with a patronizing tone, to the Greek
soldiers who began to look at the slave.
They did not understand his speech, but the tone of it arrested them.
"They are filling in all the time!" said the slave, with rising fear.
"Woe to thee!" cried he, rushing at one of the Greeks with his
pickaxe.
The Greek pulled it from the man, struck him on the mouth, and brought
blood to his lips; then he threw sand into the canal again.
The slave, stunned by the blow, lost courage and fell to imploring.
"Lord," said he, "I dug this canal alone for ten years, in the night
time and during festivals! My master promised that if I should bring
water to this little valley he would make me a servant in it, give me
one fifth of the harvests, and grant me freedom--do you hear? Freedom
to me and my three children!--O gods!"
He raised his hands and turned again to Eunana,--
"They do not understand me, these vagrants from beyond the sea,
descendants of dogs, brothers to Jews and Phoenicians! But listen,
lord, to me! For ten years, while other men went to fairs and dances
or sacred processions, I stole out into this dreary ravine. I did not
go to the grave of my mother, I only dug; I forgot the dead so as to
give freedom with laud to my children, and to myself even one free day
before death. Ye, O gods, be my witnesses how many times has night
found me here! how many times have I heard the wailing cries of hyenas
in this place, and seen the green eyes of wolves! But I did not flee,
for whither was I, the unfortunate, to flee, when at every path terror
was lurking, and in this canal freedom held me back by the feet? Once,
beyond that turn there, a lion came out against me, the pharaoh of
beasts. The pickaxe dropped from my hands, I knelt down before him,
and I, as ye see me, said these words: 'O lord! is it thy pleasure to
eat me? I am only a slave.' But the lion took pity, the wolf also
passed by; even the treacherous bats spared my poor head; but thou, O
Egyptian--"
The man stopped; he saw the retinue of Herhor approaching. By the fan
he knew him to be a great personage, and by the panther skin, a
priest. He ran to the litter, therefore, knelt down, and struck the
sand with his forehead.
"What dost thou wish, man?" asked the dignitary.
"O light of the sun, listen to me!" cried the slave. "May there be no
groans in thy chamber, may no misfortune follow thee! May thy works
continue, and may the current not be interrupted when thou shalt sail
by the Nile to the other shore--"
"I ask what thy wish is," repeated Herhor.
"Kind lord," said the man, "leader without caprice, who conquerest the
false and createst the true, who art the father of the poor, the
husband of the widow, clothing for the motherless, permit me to spread
thy name as the equal of justice, most noble of the nobles."[1]
[1] Authentic speech of a slave.
"He wishes that this canal be not filled in," said Eunana.
Herhor shrugged his shoulders and pushed toward the place where they
were filling the canal. Then the despairing man seized his feet.
"Away with this creature!" cried his worthiness, pushing back as
before the bite of a reptile.
The secretary, Pentuer, turned his head; his lean face had a grayish
color. Eunana seized the man by the shoulders and pulled, but, unable
to drag him away from the minister's feet, he summoned warriors. After
a while Herhor, now liberated, passed to the other bank of the canal,
and the warriors tore away the earth-worker, almost carrying him to
the end of the detachment. There they gave the man some tens of blows
of fists, and subalterns who always carried canes gave him some tens
of blows of sticks, and at last threw him down at the entrance to the
ravine.
Beaten, bloody, and above all terrified, the wretched slave sat on the
sand for a while, rubbed his eyes, then sprang up suddenly and ran
groaning toward the highway,--
"Swallow me, O earth! Cursed be the day in which I saw the light, and
the night in which it was said, 'A man is born!' In the mantle of
justice there is not the smallest shred for a slave. The gods
themselves regard not a creature whose hands are for labor, whose
mouth was made only for weeping, and whose back is for clubs. O death,
rub my body into ashes, so that there, beyond on the fields of Osiris,
I be not born into slavery a second time."