JOSHUA.

Te Aroha News, Volume VIII, Issue 491, 23 July 1890, Page 3

JOSHUA.

A STORY OF Egyptian - Israelitish Life. By GEORGE EBERS, Author of “ Uarda,” “An Egyptian Princess," etc. Now First Pdreishei). (Copyright 1889 by S. S. McClure). CHAPTER I. •Go down, grandfather. I will keep watch.’ But the old man to whom the words ware spoken shook his shaven head. * But up here you will get no rest.’ * And the stars ? Or even below ; rest, in such times as these ? Throw my cloak over me. Rost, in Buch a fearful night!’ * You are so cold ; and your hand and the instrument shako.’ ‘ Then steady my arm. The lad willingly obeyed the request; but after a short space he exclaimed : * It is all In vain. Star after star ia swallowed up in black clouds. Ah, and the bitter cry of the city comes up. Nay, it comes from our own house. I am sick at heart, grandfather, only feel how hot my head is. Come down, perchance they need help.’ ‘Thatiain tho hands of the gods, and my place ia here. But there, there, eternal gods I Look to the north across the lake ! No, more to the westward. They come from the city ct the dead !’ ‘Oh, grandfather, father, there!’ cried the youth, a priestly neophyte, who was lending his aid to an elder whose grandson he was, tho chief astrologer of Amon-Ra. They were standing on the watch-tower of the temple of tho god at Tanis, the capital of the Pharaohs, in the north ot the land of Goshen. As he spoke ho drew away his shoulder on which the old man was leaning. • There, there ! Is tho sea swallowing up the land ? Have the clouds fallen on tho earth to surge to and fro ? Oh, grandfather,may the immortals havemercy! the nether world i 3 yawning ! Tho great serpent Apep is come forth from tho city of the dead ! It comes rolling past the temple. I eee it, I hear it! The great Hebrew’s threat is being fulfilled ! Our race will be cut off from the earth. The serpent! Its head is sot toward the south-east. It will surely swallow up the young sun when it riseß in the morning !’ The old man’s eye followed the direction of the youth’s finger, and ho, too, could discern that a vast, black mass, outline was lost in the darkness, came roiling through the gloom, and he, too, heard with a shudder the creature’s low roar.

Both stood with eye and ear alert, staring into tho night ; bub the star-gazer’s eye was fixed not upward, but down, across the city to the distant sea and level plain. Overhead all was silent, and yet not all at rest, for tho wind swept the dark clouds into shapeless masses in one place, while in another it rent the grey shroud and scattered them far and wide.

Tho moon was not visible to mortal ken, but tho clouds played hide and seek with the bright Southern stars, now covering thorn, and now giving their rays free passage. And as in the firmament, so on ear'll thore was a constant change from pallid light to blackest darkness. Now the glitter of theheavenly bodies flashed brightly down on the sea and estuary, on the polished granite sides of the obelisks in tho temple Erocincts and the gift copper roof of the ling’s airy palace; and again, lake and river, the sails in tho harbour, the sanctuaries and streets of tho city, and the palmstrown plain surrounding it, were all lost in gloom. Objects which the eye tried to rest on vanished in an instant, and it was tho same with the sounds that met the ear. For a while tho silence would be as deep as though all life, far and near, woro hushed or dead, and then a piercing shriek of woo rent tho stillness of tho night. And then broken by longer or shorter pauses, that roar was hoard which the youthful priest had taken for the voice of the serpent of the nether world ; and to that the grandfather and grandson listened with growing excitement.

The dusky shape, whose ceaseless movements could be clearly made out whenever the' stars shot their beams between the striving clouds, had its beginning out by the city of the dead and the strangers’ quarter. A sudden panic had fallen on the old man as on the young one, but he was quicker to recover himself, and his keen and prectised eye soon discerned that it waß not a single gigantic form which was rising from the necropolis to cross the plain, but a multitude of moving creatures who seemed to be surging and swaying to and fro on the meadow land. Nor did the hollow hum and wailing come up from one particular spot, but was audible now nearer and now more remote. Anon he fancied that it was rising from the bosom of the earth, and then again that it fell from some airy height. Fresh terror came upon the old astrologer. He seized his grandson’s hand in his right hand, and pointing with his left to tho city of the dead, he cried in a trembling voice : 4 The dead are too many in number. The nether world overflows, as the river does when itß bed is too narrow for tho waters of the south. llow they swarm and sway and surge on ! How they part, hither and thither. These are the ghosts of the thousands whom black death had snatched away, blasted by the Hebrew’s curse, and sont unburied, unprotected from corruption, to descend tho rungs of tho ladder which leads to the world without end.’

‘ Yoa, ifc ia they !’ cried the other, in full belief. He anatched his hand from the old man’s grasp and struck hia fevered and burning brow, exclaiming, though hardly able to speak for terror: ‘They—the damned ! The wind has blown them to the Bea, and its waters spew them out and cast them on the land again, and the blessed eurth rejects them and drives them into the air; The pure ether of Shoo flings them back to the ground, and now—look, listen ! They are groaning as they seek the way to the desert. ’ •To the fire !’ cried the eldor. 4 Flame, purify them ; water, cleanse them !' The youth joined in the old priest’s form of exorcism, and while they chanted it in unison the trap door was lifted which led to this observatory on the top of the highest gate of the temple, and a priest of humble grade cried to the old man : • Cease thy labours. Who cares now for the stars of heaven when all that has life is being darkened on earth V The old priest listoned speechless, till the messenger went on to say that it- was the astrologer’s wife who had sent for him, and then he gasped out: ‘Horn! Is my eon then likewise Stricken?

The priest then bent his head, and both his hearers wept bitterly, for the old man was bereft of his first-born son, and the lad of a tender father.

But when the boy, trembling with fever, fell sick and sorrowing on his grandfather’s breast, the elder hardly freed himself from his embrace and went to the trap door; for although the priest had announced himself as the messenger of death, it needs more than the bare word of another to persuade a father to give up all hope of life for his child. The old man went quickly down the stone stair®, through tho lofty halls and wide courts of the temple, and tho lad followed him, although his shaking knees could scarcely carry his fevered frame. The blow which had "fallen within his own little circle had made the old man forget the fearful portent which threatened the whole world perhaps with ruin ; but the boy could not get rid of the vision, so when ho had passed the first court and was in sight of the outermost pylons, to his terrified and anxious soul it seemed as though the shadows of the obelisks were spinning round, while the two stone statues of King Ramoses on the corner piers of tho great gate beat time wit!) the crook in his hand. At this the lad dropped fever-stricken on the ground. A convulsion distorted his features and tossed his slender frame to and fro in frantic spasms ; and the old man, falling on his knees, while he guarded the curly head from striking the hard stone flags, moaned in a low voice ; * Now it has fallen on him !’

Suddenly ho collected himself and shouted aloud for help, but in vain, and again in vain. At last his voice fell; he sought consolation in prayer. Then he heard a sound of voices from the avenue of sphinxes leading to the great gate, and new hope revived iu his heart.

Who could it be who was arriving at so late an hour?

Mingled with cries of grief the chasting ot priests fell on his ear, the tinkle and clatter of tho metallic sistrum shaken by holy women in honour of the god, and the measured footfall of men praying as they marched on.

A solemn procession was approaching. The astrologer raised his eyes, and after glancing at the double lino of granite columns, colossal statues and obelisks in the great court, looked up, in obedience to the habits of a lifetime, at the starry heavens above, and in the midst of his woe a bitter smile parted his sunken lips, for the gods this night lacked the honours that were their due.

For on this night—the first after the new moon in the month of Pharmutee—tho sanctuary in former years was wont to be gay with garlands of flowers. At the dawn of day lifter tin's moonless night, the high festival of the spring equinox should begin, and with it the harvest thanksgiving. At this time a grand procession marched through the city of • the river and harbour, as prescribed by tho Book of the Divine Birth of the Sun, in honour of the great goddess Neith, of Ronncut, who bestows the gifts of the field, and of Horus, at whose bidding the desert blooms ; but to-day the silence of death reigned in the sanctuary, whoso courtyards should have been crowded at this hour with men, women and children, bringing offerings to lay on the very spot where his grandson lay under the hand of death.

A broad beam of suddenly fell into the vast court, which till now had been but dimly lighted by a few lamps. Could they be so mad as to think that the glad festival might be held in spite of tho nameless horrors of the past night ? Only the evening before the priests In council had determined that during this pitiless pestilence tho temples were to be ioft unadorned and processions to be prohibited. By noon yesterday many had failed to attend, because tho plague had fallen on their households, and the terror had now coma into this very sanctuary, while lie, who could read the stars, had been watching them in their courses. Why else should it have been deserted by the watchmen and other astrologers, who had been with him at sun3CR, and whose duty it was to keep vigil here all night ? He turned once more to tho suffering boy with tender anxiety, but instantly started to his lceb, for the gates were opened wide and the light of torches and lanterns poured into tho temple court. A glance at the sky showed him that it was not long past midnight, and yet his fears were surely well grounded—these must be the priests crowding into the temple to preparo for the harvest festival. Not so.

For when had they come to the sanctuary for this purpose chanting and in procession ? Nor were these all servants of the divinity. The populace had joined them. In this solemn litany he could hear the shrill wailing of women mingled with wild cries of despair such as he had never before, in the course of a long life, heard within these consecrated walls. Or did his senses deceive him ? Was it tho groaning horde of unresting souls which ho had seen from the observatory who wero crowding into the sanctuary of the god ?

Freeh horror fell upon him ; he threw up his arms in prohibition and for a few moments repeated the formula against the malice of evil spirits ; but he presently dropped his hands, for he marked , among the throng some friends who yesterday, at any rate, had been in the land of the living. Foremost, the tall figure of the second prophet of the god, then the women devoted to the service of Amon-Ra, the singers and tho holy fathers, and when at last, behind the astrologers and pastophoroi, he saw his son-in-law, whose home had till yestorduy been spared by the plague, he took heart and spoke to him. But his voice was drowned by the song and cries of the coming multitude.

The courtyard was now fully lighted ; but everyone was so absorbed in his own sorrow that no one heeded the old astrologer. He snatched tho cloak off hia own shivering body to make a b3ttor pillow for the boy’s tossing bead, and while he did so, with fatherly care, he could hear among the chanting and wailing of the approaching crowd, first, frantic curses on the Hebrews, through whom these woes had fallen on Pharaoh and his people, and then, again and again, tho name of the heir to the crown, Prince Ramcses ; and the tone in which it was spoken, and the formulas of mourning which were added, announced to all who had ears to hear that the eyes of the first-born of the King on his throne were also sealed in death.

As he gazed with growing anguish on his grandson’s pale face, the lamentations tor the prince rang out afresh and louder than ever, and a faint sense of satisfaction crept into his soul at the impartiality of death, who spared nob the sovereign on his throne any more than the beggar by the wayside.

He knew now what had brought this noisy group to the sanctuary. He went forward with as much haste as his old limb 3 would allow to meet the column of mourners, but befox-o he, could join'" them he saw the gatekeeper and his wife come out, of the gatehouse, bearing between them on a mat the corpse of a boy. The husband held one end, his frail, tiny wife held the other, and the stalwart man had to stoop low to keep their stiff burden in a, horizontal position that it might not slip down towards the woman. Three children closed fcli* melancholy party

and a little girl holding a lantern led the way. No one, perhaps, would have observed them but that the gatekeeper's wife shrieked forth her griefs so loudly and shrilly that it was impossible nob to hear her cries. The second prophet of Amon turned to his companions, the procession came to a standstill, and, as some of tho priests went nearer to the body, the father cried in a loud voice: Away, away from the plague-stricken ! Our first-born is dead i’

The mother, meanwhile, had snatched tho lantern from her little daughter, and, holding it so as to throw a light on the face of the dead boy, she shrieked out: ‘ The god hath suffered it to come to pass. Yen, even under our own roof. But it is nob his will, bub the curse of tho stranger in the land that has come over us and our lives. Behold, this was our first born ; and two temple servants have likewise been taken. One is dead already ; he is lying in our little room yonder ; and there—-see, there lies young Ramus, the grandson of Ramcri, the star-reader. We heard tho old man calling, and saw what was happening, but who can hold another man’s house up when his own is falling about his oars? Beware, while it is yet time, for tho gods have opened oven the temple gates to the abomination, and if the whole world should perish I should not be surprised and never complain—certainly not. My lords and priests, lam but a poor and humble woman, but am I not in the right when I ask : Are our gods asleep, that a magic spell has bound them ? Or whnt are thoy doing, and where are they, that thoy leave ua and our children in the power of the vile Hebrew race ?’ Down with them ! Down with the strangers ! They are magicians ; into the sea with Mesa,* the sorcerer !’ As an echo follows a cry, so did these imprecations follow the woman’s curse, and Honiecht, tho old astrologer’s son-in-law, captain of the archers, whose blood boiled over at tho sight of his dying, fair young nephew, brandished his -short sword, and cried in a frenzy of rage: ‘Follow me, every man who has a heart ! At them ! Life for life! Ten Hebrews for each Egyptian whom their sorcerer has killed !’ A 9 a flock will rush into the tire if only the ram leads the way, the crowd flocked to follow the noble warrior. Tho women pushed in front of the men, thronging the doorway, and as the servants of the sanctuary hesitated till they should know the opinion of the prophet of Amon, their leader drew up his majestic figure, and said deliberately : ‘ All who wear priests’ robes remain to pray with me. The people are the instrument of heaven, and it is theirs to repay. We stay here to pray for success to their vengeance.’ CHARTER 11. Bail:, the second prophet of Amon, who acted as deputy for tho now infirm old head prophet and high priest Ruie, withdrew into the holy of holies, and while tho multitude of the inforior ministers of the god proceeded to their various duties, the infuriated crowd hurried througli tho streets of the town to the strangers’ quarter. As a swollen torrent raging through a valley carries down with it everything in its way, so the throng, as they rushed to their revenge, compelled everyone on their way to join them. Every Egyptian from whom death had snatched his nearest and dearest was ready to join the swelling tide, and it grew till it numbered hundreds of thousands. Men, women and children, slaves and free, borne on the wings of their desire to wreak ruin and death on the do tested Hebrews, flew to tho distant quarter where they dwelt. How this artisan had laid hold of a chopper or that housowifo had clutched an axe they themselves scarcely know. They rushed on to kill and destroy, and they hud nob sought tho weapons they needed; they had found them ready to their hand. The first they hoped to fall upon in their mad fury was Nun, a venerablo Hebrew, respected and beloved by many—a man rich in herds, who had done much kindness to the Egyptians ; but where hatred and revenge make themselves heard, gratitude stands shy and speechless in the background. His large estates lay, like the houses and hula of the men of his race, to tho west of Tanis, the strangers’ quartor, and were the nearest of them all to the streets inhabited by the Egyptians themselves. At this morning hour Nun’s flocks and herds were wont to be taken, first to water, and then to the pasture; so the large yard in front of his house would bo full of cattle, farm men and women, carts and field im- : plements. Tho owner himself commonly ordered the going of his beasts, and he and his were to be the first victims of the popular Yage. The swiftest runners had already reached his spacious farm, and among them Horneebt, tho captain of the archers. Thore lav the house and buildings in the first bright beams of tho morning sun, and a brawny smith kicked violently at the closed door, but there was no bolt, and it flow r open so readily that he had to clutch at the door post to save himself from falling. Others pushed by him into tho courtyard, among them the archer chief. But what was the meaning of this ? Had some new charm been wrought to show the power of Mesu, who had brought such terrible plagues already on tho land, and display the might of his god ? The yard was empty, absolutely empty ; only in their stalls lay a few cattle and sheep, slain because they had suffered some injury, while a lame iamb hobbled away at the sight of the intruders. Even the carts and barrows had vanished. The groaning and bleating crowd which the "star-gazer had taken to be tho spirits of the damned, was the host of the Hebrews, who had fled by night with all their herds under the guidance of Moses. The leader dropped his sword,-and it might have been thought that the scene before him was to him an agreeable surprise, but his companion; a scribo from the King’s treasury, looked round the deserted courtyard with the disappointed air of a man who has been cheated. Tho tide of passions and schemes which had risen high during the night ebbed under tho broad light of day. Even the soldier’s easily-stirred ire had subsided to comparative calm. The mob might have done their worst to the other Hebrews, but nob to Nun, whose son Hosea (Joshua) had been bis comrade in battle, one of the most esteemed captains in the field, and a private friend of hia own. If Hornecht had foreseen that his father’s farmstead would be the first spot to be attacked he would never have led the mob to their revenge and once more in his life he bitterly rued that he had been carried away by sudden wrath to forget the calm demeanour which beseemed his years. And now. while some of the crowd proceeded to rifle and pull down Nun’s deserted dwellings, men and women came running in to say that no living soul was to be found in any of the other houses near. Some had to toll of yelling cab 3 squatting on vacant bea r th*, °f beasts past service found slaughter© l l ßn '*' i broken household gear, till at last the aniyry

r Mesu is the Egyptian form pf the name pf Motes,

crowd dragged forward a Hebrew with hia family, and & grey - haired, halt-witted woman whom they had hunted out among some straw. Tho old woman laughed foolishly, and said that her people had called her till they were hoarse, but Mehela knew better; and as for walking, walking for ever,as her people meant to do, that she could not; her feet were too tender, and she had not even a pair of sandals. The man, a hideous Jew, whom fow even of his own race would have regarded with pity, declared, first with humility bordering on sorvility, and then with the insolent daring that was natural to him, that be had nothing to do with the god of lies in whose name tho impostor Moses had tempted away his people, but that he and his wife and child had always boen friends with the Egyptians. As a matter of fact he was known to many, boing a usurer, and when tho rest of his tribe had taken up their staves he had hidden himself, hoping to pursue his dishonest dealings and come to no loss.

But some of his debtors were among the furious mob ; and even without them he had nob a chance for his file, for he was the first object on which the excited multitude could prove that they wore in earnest in their revenge. They rushed on him with yells of rage, and in a few minutes tho bodies of the hapless wretch and his family lay dead on tho ground. No one knew who had done the bloody deed ; too many had fallen on tho victims at once, .' Others who had remained behind were dragged forth from house or hovel, and they were not a few, though many had time to escape into the country. These all fell victims to the wrath of the populace; and while their blood was flowing, axes were heaved, and doors and walls were battered down with beams and posts to destroy the dwellings ot the detested race from tho face of the earth.

The glowing embers which some furious women had brought with them were extinguished and trodden out, for the more prudent warned them of the danger which must threaten their own adjoining dwellings and the whole city of Tanis if tho strangers’ quarter was sot in flames. Thus the homes of the Hebrews were spared from fire, but as the sun rose higher the site of the dwellings they had deserted was wrapped in an impenetrable cloud of white dust from the ruins, and on the spot where bub yesterday thousands of human boings had had a happy home, and where vast herds had slaked their thirst by fresh waters, nothing was now to be seen but heaps of rubbish and stone, while broken timber and splintered woodwork strewed the scorching soil. Dogs and cats, abandoned by the fugitives, prowled among the ruins, and were presently joined by tho women and children who horded in the beggars’ hovels on the skirts of the neighbouring necropolis, and who now, with their hands over their mouths, poked among the choking dust and piles of lumber for any vessels or broken victuals which the Hebrews might havo left behind and tho plunderers have overlooked. In the course of the afternoon Baio was borne in his litter past the scene of devastation. He had nob come hither to feast his eye on the sight of the ruins, but because they lay in the nearest way from the city of the dead to his own home. Nevertheless, a smile of satisfaction curled his grave lips as he nobed how thoroughly tho populace had done their work. What he himself had hoped to see had not indeed been carried out; the leader of the fugitives had evaded their rovengo, but hatred, though it is never satiated, can be easily gratified. Even the smaller woes of an enemy are joy, and tho priest had just quitted the mourning Pharaoh, and though he had not yet succeeded in freeing him completely from the bonds laid upon him by th© Hobrew soothsayer, yet lie had loosened them.

Three words had the proud, ambitious man murmured to himself again and again —a stiff-necked man, not wont to talk to himself—as ho sat alono in tho sanctuary, meditating on what had happened and on what had to be don©; and those three words were : * Bless me also.’

It was Pharaoh who had spoken them, addressing Ihe petition ; and that other not old Ruie, the pontiff and high priest, nor Baie himself, the only men living whose privilege it could be to bless tho king, no ; but the worst of the accused, the stranger, the Hebrew Mesu, whom ho hated as h© hated none other on earth.

‘ Bless me also !’ That pious entreaty which springs so confidingly from the human soul in anguish had pierced his soul like a dagger-thrust. He felt as though such a prayer, addressed by such lips to such a man, had broken tho staff in the hand of the whole priesthood of Egypt, had wrenched the panther skin from its shoulders, and cast a stain on all the nation he loved. He knew Mesu well for one of the wisest sages ever produced by the schools of Egypt; he knew full well that Pharoah was spellbound by this mar., who had grown up in his house, and had been the friend of the groat Rameses, his father. He had seen the monarch pardon misdeeds in Mesu which any other man. were he the highest in the land, must have expiated with hia life ; and how dear must this Hebrow havo been to Pharaoh—the sun god on his earthly throne—when ho could compel the King, standing by the deathbed of his son, to uplift his hands to him and implore him : ‘ Bless me also !’

All this he had told himself and weighed with due care, and still lie, Baie, could not, would not yield to the powerful Hebrew. He had regarded it as his most urgonb and sacred duty to bring destruction on him and his whole l’aco. To fulfil that duty he would not have hesitated to lay hands on the throne; indeed, in his eyes, by the utterance of that blasphemous entreaty * Bless me also,’ Pharaoh Aienephtah had forfeited his right to the sovereignty. Moses was the murderer of Pharaoh’t firstborn. whereas he himself and the venerable high priest of Amoti held the weal or woe of the deceased youth’s soul in their hands. And this weapon was a keen and a strong ono, for he knew how tender and irresolute was the King’s heart. If the high priest of Amon—the only man who stood above him —did nob contravene him in some unaccountable fit of senile caprice, it would be a email matter to reduce Pharaoh to submission, but the vacilating monarch might repent to-morrow, of what he resolved ore to-day, if the Hebrews should again succeed in coming between him and his Egyptian counsellors. Only this very day, on hearing the name of Moses spoken in his presence, the degenerate son of Raineses the Great had covered his face and quaked like a frightened gazelle, and to-morrow he might curse him and pronounce sentence of death against him. He might perhaps indeed be moved to do this, but even then by the day after he would very surely recall him and beseech his blessing once more. Avvav with such a monarch 1 Down with the feeble reed who sat on the throne, down bo the very dust 1 Baie had found a fitting successor among the princes of the blood royal, and when the time Should come—when Rule, the high priest of Amon, should cross the boundary of the time of life granted to man by the . gods and close his eyes in death—f hen ho, Baie bimsolf, would fill his place; anew life should begin for Egypt, and Moses and his bribes were doomed*

As the prophet thus meditated a pair of ravens fluttered around his head, and then, croaking loudiy, alightod on the dusty ruins of one of the wrecked tenements. His eye involuntarily followed their flight and perceived that they had settled on the body of a dead Hebrew, half buried in rubbish. And again a smile stole over his cunning, defiant features, a smile which the inferior priests who stood about his litter could by no means interpiet. (To be Continued.)