in the way as he was returning into his palace. And when he refused to listen to them, Moses was consumed with anger at this fresh insult to the Lord. He snatched up two handfuls of soot or ashes from out of a kiln, used in the baking of pots and glass-work, that stood near, and before the very eyes of the king tossed them on high and sprinkled them towards heaven.

‘Lo, now: watch thou and wait!’

The ashes were scattered; a light wind carried the dust of them hither, thither, and dispersed it far and wide. And behold, there broke out on the bodies of man and beast foul boils and swelling blains, inflaming the skin. Nor did the courtiers and noblemen of Pharaoh’s household escape this malady, nor even his priests and magicians.

For when one morning early, after days of weary waiting, Moses once more demanded an audience of the king, not one of the magicians was present. They were disgraced and in deep despondency, and their very faces were so disfigured by reason of the boils upon them, that they were ashamed to show themselves and be humbled before him.

Yet again Moses warned Pharaoh of what would ensue if he continued to ignore and defy the will of God. He foretold that on the morrow there would descend such a storm of hail on Egypt as had never been witnessed since the foundation of the kingdom. Pharaoh himself affected to be unmoved, and answered him disdainfully. But many of his counsellors and officers of state who were present, having taken to heart the wonders that had already been revealed, had come to fear the Hebrews and the God they worshipped. They gave orders secretly to their servants that from daybreak till nightfall on the morrow not one of their herdsmen was to drive his cattle afield. Let him keep them safe in shed, and himself indoors.

Pharaoh slept uneasily that night, fell into a fitful slumber a little before dawn, but awoke again early and rose from his bed to look out from his window at the skies of morning. A scene of splendour and ill-boding met his gaze. Mounting into the vacancy of the heavens and borne upon a wind counter to that which breathed fitfully then died down and rose again on the earth, vast leaden clouds, domed and turreted and utterly dwarfing in their majesty even the temples and palaces of the city, were lit with the silvery radiance of the rising sun.

They towered higher and higher until the whole firmament was concealed, and the light died. And it was as though morning were retreating into the glooms of night. And as Pharaoh watched, out of the hush and stagnancy of the heavens a tempest of wind suddenly swept across the city, and the livid dark was riven by a burst of flame, dazzling his eyes, so that he clapped his hands over them to shut out the glare. For a few moments he stood blinded and motionless, while the very stones of his palace trembled beneath him at the crash of thunder.

And after the thunder came a storm of hail. It whitened instantly as if with hoarfrost the whole valley lying on either side the looping waters of the great river. Throughout the confines of Egypt the steady tumult of its falling could be heard even above the reverberations of the thunder, and the fire of the lightning ran along upon the earth, now hoary with hailstones of ice. The men and the cattle that had escaped the pestilence and that were exposed to this tempest of hail fled in panic for shelter, smitten as they ran by its sharp-edged shards of ice. Within a few minutes from its first onset the crops of ripening barley were utterly ruined, and the blue-flowering flax was beaten to the ground and laid low. The fields of wheat and of spelt that were as yet only in the green blade alone escaped. Never had the like of it been seen before in Egypt.

In the midst of the tempest Pharaoh sent in hot haste for Moses. He sat pale and trembling, his voice scarcely audible in the din of the thunder and the hail, while the lightnings glimmering overhead filled the great chamber with their wild blue light. And he confessed that he had sinned.