第26章

Moreover they told their story from the very beginning, when they had entered Egypt hundreds of years before and were succoured by the vizier of the Pharaoh of that day, one Yusuf, a powerful and clever man of their race who stored corn in a time of famine and low Niles.

This Pharaoh was of the Hyksos people, one of the Shepherd kings whom we Egyptians hated and after many wars drove out of Khem. Under these Shepherd kings, being joined by many of their own blood, the Israelites grew rich and powerful, so that the Pharaohs who came after and who loved them not, began to fear them.

This was as far as the story was taken on the first day.

On the second day began the tale of their oppression, under which, however, they still multiplied like gnats upon the Nile, and grew so strong and numerous that at length the great Rameses did a wicked thing, ordering that their male children should be put to death. This order was never carried out, because his daughter, she who found Moses among the reeds of the river, pleaded for them.

At this point the Prince, wearied with the noise and heat in that crowded place, broke off the sitting until the morrow. Commanding me to accompany him, he ordered a chariot, not his own, to be made ready, and, although I prayed him not to do so, set out unguarded save for myself and the charioteer, saying that he would see how these people laboured with his own eyes.

Taking a Hebrew lad to run before the horses as our guide, we drove to the banks of a canal where the Israelites made bricks of mud which, after drying in the sun, were laden into boats that waited for them on the canal and taken away to other parts of Egypt to be used on Pharaoh's works. Thousands of men were engaged upon this labour, toiling in gangs under the command of Egyptian overseers who kept count of the bricks, cutting their number upon tally sticks, or sometimes writing them upon sherds. These overseers were brutal fellows, for the most part of the low class, who used vile language to the slaves. Nor were they content with words. Noting a crowd gathered at one place and hearing cries, we went to see what passed. Here we found a lad stretched upon the ground being cruelly beaten with hide whips, so that the blood ran down him. At a sign from the Prince Iasked what he had done and was told roughly, for the overseers and their guards did not know who we were, that during the past six days he had only made half of his allotted tale of bricks.

"Loose him," said the Prince quietly.

"Who are you that give me orders?" asked the head overseer, who was helping to hold the lad while the guards flogged him. "Begone, lest Iserve you as I serve this idle fellow."

Seti looked at him, and as he looked his lips turned white.

"Tell him," he said to me.

"You dog!" I gasped. "Do you know who it is to whom you dare to speak thus?""No, nor care. Lay on, guard."

The Prince, whose robes were hidden by a wide-sleeved cloak of common stuff and make, threw the cloak open revealing beneath it the pectoral he had worn in the Court, a beautiful thing of gold whereon were inscribed his royal names and titles in black and red enamel. Also he held up his right hand on which was a signet of Pharaoh's that he wore as his commissioner. The men stared, then one of them who was more learned than the rest cried:

"By the gods! this is his Highness the Prince of Egypt!" at which words all of them fell upon their faces.

"Rise," said Seti to the lad who looked at him, forgetting his pain in his wonderment, "and tell me why you have not delivered your tale of bricks.""Sir," sobbed the boy in bad Egyptian, 'for two reasons. First, because I am a cripple, see," and he held up his left arm which was withered and thin as a mummy's, "and therefore cannot work quickly.

Secondly, because my mother, whose only child I am, is a widow and lies sick in bed, so that there are no women or children in our home who can go out to gather straw for me, as Pharaoh has commanded that we should do. Therefore I must spend many hours in searching for straw, since I have no means wherewith to pay others to do this for me.""Ana," said the Prince, "write down this youth's name with the place of his abode, and if his tale prove true, see that his wants and those of his mother are relieved before we depart from Goshen. Write down also the names of this overseer and his fellows and command them to report themselves at my camp to-morrow at sunrise, when their case shall be considered. Say to the lad also that, being one afflicted by the gods, Pharaoh frees him from the making of bricks and all other labour of the State."Now while I did these things the overseer and his companions beat their heads upon the ground and prayed for mercy, being cowards as the cruel always are. His Highness answered them never a word, but only looked at them with cold eyes, and I noted that his face which was so kind had grown terrible. So those men thought also, for that night they ran away to Syria, leaving their families and all their goods behind them, nor were they ever seen again in Egypt.

When I had finished writing the Prince turned and, walking to where the chariot waited, bade the driver cross the canal by a bridge there was here. We drove on a while in silence, following a track which ran between the cultivated land and the desert. At length I pointed to the sinking sun and asked if it were not time to return.

"Why?" replied the Prince. "The sun dies, but there rises the full moon to give us light, and what have we to fear with swords at our sides and her Highness Userti's mail beneath our robes? Oh! Ana, I am weary of men with their cruelties and shouts and strugglings, and Ifind this wilderness a place of rest, for in it I seem to draw nearer to my own soul and the Heaven whence it came, or so I hope.""Your Highness is fortunate to have a soul to which he cares to draw near; it is not so with all of us"; I answered laughing, for I sought to change the current of his thoughts by provoking argument of a sort that he loved.