had sinned. He sued them to forgive the affront of which in his haste he had been guilty when at their last audience with him they had been driven by his servants from out of his presence.

‘I do entreat thee,’ he implored Moses, ‘to mediate between me and the Lord Jehovah yet once again, that he remove this atrocious plague from Egypt. It is unendurable to me. That done, I will decide how what thou askest may best be achieved.’

They left him, and he withdrew himself, his mind in torment, and waited for what the day might bring forth. The Lord God heard Moses’ prayer. There came a wind from the west, streaming between earth and sky, and the locusts were drawn up in its flood of air and swept like dust from off the floor, and perished in the watery waste of the Red Sea. The fringes of its foam upon the sands of the shore were black with them.

And when Pharaoh was assured that this new danger, like the plagues that had preceded it, was at an end, his mind and mood abruptly changed. He hardened his heart and returned to his stubborn connivings.

In my own chosen time, he thought within himself, I will consider and will decide this matter. These rebellious Hebrews must be taught that neither they nor their God can compel me to take action against my will. Let them wait until I choose to be gracious. He showed no sign of keeping the solemn protestations he had made to Moses, and did nothing.

Nor did Moses himself as in days gone by appear again before Pharaoh. He too made no sign. He waited in patience—knowing too well this stubborn and feeble king to believe he would keep faith with him.

In due season the will of God was revealed to him. There came a day when he stretched out his rod not over the waters or the dust of Egypt but towards heaven. And at his word the violent and burning wind called Hamsin that springs up from out of the south, from the waste of Libya, began to blow, lifting with its blasts the sand and dust of the desert in billows so dense and lofty that the sun’s radiance in mid-heaven, from a brilliant orange, dwindled to a circle red as blood and fainter than that of the moon, and then vanished.

There arose also dense emanations of vapour from out of the ground and the low lands of the river, and all Egypt lay canopied in a hot and unnatural night, in a darkness which may be felt. Finer than crystals of snow the sand borne in on the wind silted through every crevice and cranny and mingled with the Egyptians’ victuals, and with their wine and drink. At the distance of a few paces man’s shape was blotted out; all sense of direction was lost, so that none dared venture out of doors or stir in the streets. Even within the houses the heated air stifled throat and lungs, and the inmates went groping and stumbling, with nought but their feeble lamps to pierce the gloom. For three days continually they saw not one another, neither rose any from his place to go abroad.

But in the land of Goshen the sun as usual rose and set, and there shone clear the natural light of day.

Towards the close of the third day Pharaoh sent for Moses. After long and fevered debate with his advisers, he was wearied out. Divided in policy, they were at their wits’ end; the wiser among them urging him to be rid of the Hebrews for good and all, and to defy the will of God no longer; the rest, obstinate and futile as himself, counselling him to temporize. As was his usual practice, he gave way in a little and trusted to his subtlety.

The lights that had been brought to illumine the great chamber of audience flared dimly in the thick and heated air, scarcely piercing its hollow vault of gloom. And Moses when he was brought into the presence of the king drew nearer to the throne than hitherto. He made obeisance, rose and stood mute. The wafting of the fan-bearers stirred on his cheek. He fixed his eyes through the murk upon Pharaoh’s countenance as the king addressed him.


  By PanEris using Melati.

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