Chapter VI

Keeping to the south, they passed that day through some long-neglected orchards, lying upon the outskirts of a town almost in ruins, sparsely inhabited by a degraded population of mingled Greek, Egyptian and Libyan blood. Satyrs and fauns in the fig-groves pelted them with ripe fruit in return for a volley of stones thrown by the Saracens.

"What are they?" asked Florens of Hazaël, puzzled at the sight of these strange semi-human beings, sprung from the iniquities of forgotten peoples; covered with hide, and having horses' ears and tails, or goatish horns and hairy legs, ending in cloven hoofs. But Hazaël muffled the child's eyes and dragged him roughly away.

The groves of the dying city left behind, the ground became rugged, bare and stony. That night the camels grazed upon the _safsaf_ weed, after the next they might have to rely upon the fodder they carried. A milky mirage made the scrub-bushes of the distant plain appear as tall as sycamores. Passing through them, they barely reached the knees of the Saracens who went on foot. White snails covered them, glistening like some strange pale fruit amidst their foliage. These the young Saracens gathered and threw into a bag with salt. Thus purged, they explained, these snails were excellent eating either roasted in the ashes or stewed.

On their left as they travelled, a pearly haze tinged with jade-green signified the vegetation of the banks of the Nile. Ranges of low hills in the south were vested in violet, and palest primrose. The sun smote fiercely, yet when the shadows of men and beasts were shortest, the children of the Desert, as though enlivened by the burning atmosphere, quickened their steps and those of the camels and even began to sing. They passed through part of a petrified forest, the thickest trunks of the stone trees being of the girth of a man's thigh. A herd of gazelle broke from covert, Mafa Oabu slung a stone after them, and a doe followed by a young fawn fell with a broken leg. A Saracen slit the throat of the mother, and would have killed the fawn also, had not the boy Florens begged with tears that the little creature should be given into his care.

"It will die," said Hazaël, "without milk to nourish it!" And he signed to Ephraim, who took charge of the little creature, meaning to slaughter it after the ritual of his people, so that it might lawfully be used for food.

They passed Saracen grave-mounds and trains of camels, and rested at another well where were more camel-trains being loaded with iron vessels of water to carry into the Desert to the military outposts. Near the well was a fortress garrisoned by Roman legionaries. Roman officers driving chariots hailed the Jew, with whom they seemed acquainted, to ask the news from Alexandria. The moon rose early, and rode high before the caravan, as the blood-red disc of the sun sank into the invisible western sea. A mist rose from the burning ground about the legs of the Saracens and the camels, so that they seemed to wade through the waters of an opaque milky lake. That night the Saracens ate the meat of the doe-gazelle roasted on sticks before the fire, and drank boiled broth. And Ephraim killed the fawn, and dressed the meat in the Jewish way, saving the delicate dappled skin to make a belt and hanging purse for Florens. But even the promise of the belt did not pacify the boy.

"I would have reared it and tamed it too," he said, changing colour: "You are cruel!" Nor would he taste of the flesh of the fawn, nor had Hazaël, in concern for the boy's distress, any great appetite for Ephraim's cookery.

Dew did not drench the tents that night, nor soak the heavy striped mantles worn by the three Saracens. The breath of the Desert filled the lungs, the sun poured down like molten brass, the hard red ground ascended under the feet, and travelling became difficult, owing to ridges of petrified coral and banks of fossil shells and sponges. Urged by the whistling of the Saracens the camels exerted themselves painfully. This haste was of necessity, as the water began to thicken and grow murky in the goatskins. That night they rested three hours and travelled instead of sleeping. Before dawn they found the track they pursued wind among low broken hills, rising to jagged bluffs and full of yawning chasms. When the day broke, they perceived on looking back, these low hills magnified by a mirage to a towering range of mountains. Florens cried out in wonder. But the old Saracen made signs that the boy should be silent, as Djinni, Afrits and phantoms of the Desert inhabited the chasms, and resented the presence of beings of the human race. Skeletons of camels, and the mummy-dry bodies of men were found upon the track they followed. Mafa Oabu said that these were the remains of travellers who had offended the Djinns.

Now they descended a steep ravine, the sides of which were clothed with petrified forests. The pass ended in desert, the hot reddish expanse of which, was broken by the glittering shield-shaped basin of a lake. This lake was salt, the Saracens explained by gestures, and the travellers, who sickened at the stench and taste of the putrid water in the goatskins, moistened their cracked lips with a few drops, and turned away their parching eyes from the tormenting sight.

At the bottom of the defile appeared now the white tents of a Roman outpost, the eagled standard set up under a little wooden penthouse, close to the quarters of the officer in command. A square wall of rocks enclosed the encampment, which was protected by an encircling trench. Not far off were seen camels feeding, and the low black tents of a tribe of nomads, of mingled Ethiopian and Arab race.

Now soldiers approached bringing water to the travellers, yellow and muddy and full of the larvae of flies. Filtered through a cloth, they drank of it eagerly. The soldiers were fever-smitten, and covered with scabs and swellings, from the stings of poisonous insects which swarmed amidst the herbage on the borders of the salt lake. Red fruit grew on tall thorny bushes, a thin fodder-grass showed with the _safsaf_ upon the arid dunes. Springs of the brackish water were to be found here, by digging holes of six feet deep in the sandy gravel. Wild-duck haunted the lake-borders; those of the Roman soldiers who were bowmen, habitually shot the birds for a change of food. That night a black-and-white lamb, purchased by the Jew Hazaël from the camp of the Ethiopians, was sacrificed to the moon, and eaten by Mafa Oabu and his men.

They filled the water-skins with the turbid fluid, and left the Roman outpost by the salt lake on the following night. The heat grew fiercer towards daybreak. Waves of burning reddish gravel rose about them to the height of the head of a man. Mingled with the gravel were yellow crystals, perfectly spherical and glittering in the moonlight. The boy begged to be allowed to dismount and gather these stones, which the Saracens collected for the adornment of their women. To pacify Florens the Jew bought a handful or so from the young men.

They crossed a low range of broken hills, and at noon saw Mount Nitria and a mirage of two salt lakes. Pied birds of grey-and-white with long tails, appeared towards evening, feeding on minute winged insects that rose from the burning sand, and signalling to each other with sharp, whistling calls. Jackals howled during the hours of rest, and, looking back when they had quitted the place of their encampment, they saw it alive with these foul creatures of prey.

Now the ground became paved with slabs of shining mica. Bushes of wormwood, tamarisks and thorny shrubs with red fruit, eatable by men and greedily devoured by camels, grew in the friable red soil at the base of stony cliffs. Herds of gazelle grazed here. Hills shaped like cones with broken tops rose up on either side of them. Towering rocks of black basalt looked like giant Ethiopians menacing the caravan with uplifted clubs and spears. The full moon rose in radiance whilst the sun was sinking over the unseen western ocean, amid splendours of amber, topaz and ruby, sapphire and emerald.

They marched before day. The Libyan sun had never burned with fiercer intensity. For fear that the boy would swoon and fall from his camel, Hazaël transferred him to his own. The young Saracens ran by the wearied beasts, whistling to them to march in line,--singing songs and jesting clumsily to distract the thoughts of the wearied travellers. Hazaël said within himself:

"When upon the hump of an accursed camel I fry alive in the sun of Libya, shall I be solaced because a cricket chirps at the doorway of mine ear?" Yet he pretended to listen with pleasure, and bade the exhausted child take notice how the shadows of the Saracens gambolled beside them like black monkeys on the rocks. But the boy, feverish from the bites of the swarms of flies beside the salt lake, or sickened by the muddy water, drooped more and more. Sometimes he revived sufficiently to reiterate:

"Shall we really find my father when we reach the journey's end?"

Or he would vary the question by asking:

"Shall I have thy son Levi and thy little Leah to play with there?"

To which the Jew, tender as a woman, and fearful of increasing the child's distemper by thwarting him, would reply:

"If God willed it, thy father would be waiting to receive thee. If the All Highest commanded, thy playmates would be there also. All things are disposed and directed by the Almighty."

"Where is He?" the child asked. Hazaël answered:

"He is at the zenith and at the nadir. He encompasses the world with His fingers, and takes up His abode in the hearts of holy and pious men."

"May a little boy see Him? Shall I see Him?" the child queried.

And Hazaël answered, groaning in spirit at the thought of the eternal burnings destined for the soul of this innocent, who must be reared in the heresy of Christianity:

"The Cherubim gaze perpetually on Him, and know no weariness!"

The child seated on the pad before him, felt the heaving of his breast, turned in his supporting arms, and looked up into his gloomy countenance. Then, seeing the black brows, knotted over the bloodshot eyes, the strange convulsion that twisted the mouth, and the haggard temples and hollow cheeks bedabbled with sweat, Florens grew pale and stared at him in fear.

"Are you angry?" he faltered, and Hazaël forced his brows to unbend, and his lips to smile as he answered:

"Perhaps, but not with thee!"

"That is well," returned the boy, "for I would have you love me as much as you love Levi and little Leah!"

"Then be content," said Hazaël's deep voice, "for even as these do I love thee!"

Yet as he answered in gentle words, the spirit of some dark forefather who served Canaanitish idols with bloody rites ages before the Lawgiver received the Divine revelation upon the holy Mountain of God--tempted Hazaël to pluck away the sinewy arms that sustained the child in front of him--and let him fall to certain death upon the stones beneath the camel's feet.