The sight filled them with fury. Urging on their horses with lash and cry, they pressed forward in their battalions at their utmost speed. Their iron rumblings shook the air. Else all was still; for the wind that had filled their ears with its hollow trumpetings throughout the night had fallen to calm.

And as the foremost chariots drew near to the sea-shore, the sun rose, dazzling clear in the stilled air of the morning. It showed for an instant its full orb of splendour above a louring accumulation of cloud that lay on the horizon in the south-eastern quarter of the heavens.

But only for a moment, for the clouds mounted swiftly up after it into the skies, borne on by lofty winds, and now far below them a hot breeze of the desert began to stir, whipping the sand into scurrying whirls and puffs, that swept up like the dancing of phantoms, then fell to earth again.

Having come to hightide-mark on the sea-shore, the charioteers made no pause, but drove on furiously into the bed of the sea, following the pitted track from shore to shore left by the multitude of Israel. But the silt was sodden, the advance slow, and they strove in vain to keep rank and order. Daylight now had dimmed, for clouds were massed on high and obscured the zenith. The morning was black with storm.

And the angel of the Lord looked down from out of the pillar of cloud upon the chariots of the Egyptians. And the angel of the Lord in his splendour troubled and discomfited the Egyptians. Lightnings rent the gloom, and the thunder thundered, with torrents of rain. And when they were come into the midst of the bed of the sea, the wheels of their clogging chariots sank deep into the soft sand, so that they drave heavily. The horses, flecked with foam and affrighted, reared, plunged and stumbled; some bared their teeth and whinnied; and many of the pins that held wheel to axle were snapped asunder, and the wheels fell away. And now, however wildly the leading charioteers, with their stooping bowmen, lashed and shouted, they made but little progress; and they were dazed and confused by the tumult of the storm.

And some among them, who feared the power of Moses and the wrath of God, were suddenly seized with terror and turned back in their tracks, crying ‘Away! Back! Away! The Gods are against us! Jehovah fights against us!’

But still those in the rear continued to press on. And in this mellay they struggled one against another in fury and consternation in the midst of the bed of the sea, their hearts pierced with dread of they knew not what danger, their one desire being to regain dry land and flee back away into Egypt. But still their captains urged them on.

Then Moses in the presence of Israel stretched forth his hand toward the sea. And behold there sounded out of the distance—above the din and tumult of the rain and thunder, and the shouts of the charioteers—the roar of water. In a liquid wall of crystal its lightning-lit torrent swept surging back into its customary channel. The Egyptians heard; they turned faces haggard with fear, and knew in their souls the doom that was upon them. But too late; snowy with foam the sea, in its course and strength, swept down upon them in one vast billow, and returned into its bed. Its waves met over them, and submerged them in the deeps, and not one of them remained alive.

Thus the Lord God saved Israel that day from the vengeance of Pharaoh and the armies of Egypt; and the corpses of the charioteers were flung up by the tide of the sea before their eyes, and the sea shore was strown with their dead. And all Israel was filled with awe and wonder. They believed in their inmost hearts in the Lord, and in his faithful servant Moses, and rejoiced with an exceeding great joy.

In the peace that followed the storm Moses and Aaron and the elders of Israel gathered the people together in a solemn assembly.

And Miriam, the prophetess, took a timbrel in her hand, and the women of Israel went out after her with dancing and music, and sang to the Lord a song of joy and triumph and thanksgiving. And these were