The King looked grimly out to sea. “You may have the ships. As for the men, I think there are none left in Gebal.”
There was the sound of approaching feet in the corridor, and Zayin arrived, breathless and sweating.
“Is it victory or defeat?” the King asked, not waiting for Zayin to kneel.
“Victory, Your Majesty!” replied Zayin. “We repulsed the Egyptians with many casualties. But why have you ordered us to retire?”
The King looked no happier, and seemed to be talking to himself. “So, many Egyptians have been killed. It might have been better to have received them with open arms, and had Pharaoh as our friend.”
Zayin stood dumb, incredulous that the news of his victory should be received in this way. “But, Your Majesty!” he said at last. “They came to destroy us! Your orders were to—”
The King was on his feet, looking out to sea, with his back to the men in the room. He interrupted Zayin’s words. “The Egyptians have come to destroy us. The Mitanni have come to destroy us. The Cretans have come to destroy us. The gods know whether these three great empires have conspired together to annihilate our city, or whether it is only a cruel joke of Fate that they come all at one time. But what can one city do against an empire, let alone three! We cannot sit and await destruction. We have fought, and shown our mettle. The time has now come to talk terms. Send for the High Priest.”
The High Priest had been lurking near by and it did not take long for him to come. The King turned to him. “High Priest, the three great empires of the world are set on destroying us. What is your counsel?”
The High Priest had his plan ready. “Your Majesty, we must, of course, make peace with Pharaoh, as I have always said. His gods are ours, his learning is ours. He will protect us against our other enemies.”
Zayin interrupted, “How can you make peace with an army of soldiers who want nothing but vengeance for their defeat?”
“There are customs,” said the High Priest. “They must be met by an embassy of peace. Gold and jewels must be sent as gifts, and before them must go the maidens of the city and of the Temple, singing and dancing to show that they mean peace.”
Nun spoke slowly, “So we are to send our maidens to take the brunt, since our men cannot do so? And do we ever see our young women again?”
“Have you seen the desert wolves that make up the army of Pharaoh, High Priest?” cried Zayin. “Our soldiers were frightened to look at them. Are we then to send our sisters to cope with them?” Both Zayin and Nun were thinking of Beth.
“It is a custom,” shrugged the High Priest. “If we seek peace, we must purchase it.”
All looked at the King for a decision, but the King was looking out to sea, and his face told them nothing. Nun’s eyes, too, turned to the western horizon, expecting the sight of Cretan sails. Zayin moved to catch a possible glimpse of his army returning from the coast and perhaps of the pursuing Egyptians. The sergeant looked grimly northward.
What they saw—and not one of them at first believed his eyes, for each thought it was only an image of his sinking hopes—what they saw was the sea in retreat from the coast.
Quite smoothly and quietly, the calm sea was sinking. On the coast, great stretches of sand and weed-covered rocks were appearing, which had never emerged above tide level before. The water of the harbor was running out of the harbor mouth like a river, leaving a sight never previously seen on this almost tideless coast: ships lying over on their sides in the mud, timbers of sunken vessels and broken stone columns emerging from the green slime.
The four men turned and looked at each other, and knew that they had each seen the same thing. And then for a few moments it seemed as if a giant hand had taken the whole palace and shaken it until it quivered, so that pillars rocked upon their pedestals and great stones in the walls ground one against another. Each of them stood petrified, only their eyes turning from face to face. And then they saw that beside the High Priest was standing another bearded, priestly figure, the Chaldean. It was he who spoke first.
“It is the sign! It is the sign for which I have been waiting. Lord of Gebal, men of Gebal, the day of destruction is here. Flee from your city! Flee to the mountains! Flee, O Giblites, you have but a little time to save yourselves from destruction fiercer than the arms of your enemies!”
The King turned, glaring at the intruder.
“This is the Chaldean sage I spoke of, Sire,” said Nun hurriedly.
But he was vehemently interrupted by the High Priest. “Is it not enough that the earth is shaken and the sea flies from the coast?” cried the High Priest. “Must we also suffer false prophets and imposters in our hour of peril?”
Once again, the Chaldean spoke in a level but urgent voice. “I foretold doom to the Cretans. They put me in prison for my pains and I vowed not to speak again. But, King of Gebal, I must speak now for the hour is already upon you. Your one hope is to abandon your city—”
“And leave it to our enemies from the North and West?” hissed the High Priest. “Who paid you to speak thus?”
The Chaldean spoke back calmly. “What means the destruction of your people and your city to me, High Priest? For myself, I have little fear of death, but I feel no need to seek it within your walls. Those who will take to the mountains with me, let them come. To those who choose to stay, I say farewell, for I shall not see them again.” And he bowed to the King and walked from the chamber.
When all men are in doubt, they will listen to one who seems sure of what he is saying. And for Nun it was the behavior of his element, the sea, and the sickening sight of the ships in the harbor abandoned in the mud that decided him. Besides, he had faith in the sage with whom he had shared such strange experiences. “Zayin,” he cried, “I go to summon our family and take them to the mountain, and all who can may follow me.” He ran from the room, and to the crowd of amazed palace servants and courtiers who were milling around the courtyard he cried out in the words of the Chaldean, “To the mountain! To the mountain! Abandon the city! Abandon the city!”
Remembering just in time that Beth was to be found not at home but at the Temple, he ran to the quarters of the Temple maidens. Ignoring the shrieks of “Sacrilege!” at his irruption, which seemed to cause as much panic as the earthquake itself, he found Beth, took her hand, and pulled her after him. They hurried back together through the courtyard. As they did so another terrible shock rocked the ground and the tall obelisk with the inscription to Abishram toppled from its plinth and broke on the stones of the yard. They ran from the palace gates and down the narrow streets to their home, calling all the time to their amazed neighbors “To the mountain! To the mountain! There’s no safety here!”
Standing before the house, bewildered, they found Resh and their aunt and the other women. Nun looked at Beth. She was pale and out of breath, but she seemed to be more in command of her senses than the rest of the family. “Beth,” he said urgently, “see that they pack a few necessities—just food and some wraps, nothing else—and lead them out of the back way toward the mountain. Can I trust you to do that?” Beth nodded, and giving her hand a squeeze he rushed off to the harbor. It was his duty at least to warn the crews of the ships. As he ran along the quays he saw that the water was now returning, not wave by wave as when the tide turns on ocean shores, but welling up over the rocks and pouring back through the harbor mouth in a great surge. He found his own crew, and others standing in consternation at the sight. “Abandon everything!” he commanded. “Save yourselves! There is nothing we can do here.”
“The sea’s returning, Master.” It was his boatswain who spoke. “Can’t we put to sea—I’d trust it more than this shivering soil!”
For a moment Nun felt the man might be right; but he had lost his usual faith in the sea. “Look after your families, men,” he cried. “Take them to the mountain. Those are your orders. Save the people of Gebal! The rest must look after it
self.” And as they ran from the harbor they saw to their horror that the water was not stopping at the high-water mark, but was gradually and with a deadly calm lapping the quays and swamping the warehouses.
As Nun passed through the poor quarter round the docks, yet another fierce shock made him stagger in the street and brought many of the roofs of the houses tumbling down. Everyone was now out of their houses, and he did his best to calm the panic and direct them, by families, to the mountain. Farther on he heard another voice raised above the wails and shrieks of the bewildered citizens, repeating the same message: “To the mountain! To the mountain!” To his amazement it was the Chaldean, standing prophet-like on a flight of steps, urging the population to seek safety.
Nun made his way through the throng to the Chaldean. “Come, sir,” he cried. “Surely you have done enough for the people of Gebal. Save yourself! Follow your own good advice! Let me accompany you to the mountain.”
The streets were so crowded that Nun decided it would be quicker through the open spaces of the palace and the Temple courtyards. The guards had long since abandoned their posts at the palace gates and no one stopped them, but standing in the middle of the great court, by the side of the sacred pool, from which the water now flowed was a solitary figure. The High Priest!
“Will you not save yourself now, Your Reverence?” Nun called as he tried to intercept their flight. The High Priest said nothing as he planted himself squarely before them, his eyes flaming with fury.
“This is no place to stay, Your Reverence,” said Nun. He cared little whether the High Priest saved himself or not, but he could not ignore him.
“This place,” hissed the High Priest, “is the holy place of El, of Reshef, and of Balaat-Gebal. Though all the city, the King included, may choose to abandon it at the word of a traitor, for me it is a place to stay. When all is done, this is but an earthquake. I have known them before during the many years the gods have permitted me to live. Three shocks, and it’s over, and the work of rebuilding must begin. But this time our enemies will be in possession, because you, Son of Resh; have listened to one who was sent from the East to betray us. May they pay you well for it, Chaldean!” And the High Priest turned his back.
For a terrible moment Nun doubted, and wondered if the High Priest might not be right. He looked at the face of the Chaldean beside him, but in it he saw the last thing that he expected. He saw compassion, and when the sage spoke there was sorrow in his voice. “Farewell again, High Priest of Gebal,” were the Chaldean’s words. “Pray to your gods that you may be right. But I fear we shall not meet again.”
Together Nun and the Chaldean made for the land gate of the town, and then up the track among the olive orchards and terraces. As the track became steeper he began to realize what an old man his companion was. He moved slowly and painfully, and Nun, who was no mountaineer himself, had often to help him. But whenever they met families who had settled themselves on the lower slopes, the Chaldean urged them to go higher, higher. Where the pine woods began, they came upon Resh and the aunts resting at the base of a great rock, while Beth stood anxiously looking out from the top of it. Nun was relieved to see them, but the old man cried urgently, “Bid them climb higher, bid them seek the tops of the foothills, the level spaces! There is no trust in the rocks and cliffs now.”
Nun began to protest. “Surely this rock has stood for ages above Gebal! What can be safer?”
But the sage said, “Indeed, that rock may have stood for ages, but when the hour of destruction comes, who knows what rock will stand?”
So Nun urged his family and the other Giblites upward to the rounded tops of the foothills and the flat lands before the mountains themselves began. He settled Resh and the older women on a gentle slope that gave a view of the city below and the sea coast to the North and South, and told Beth that he was going to search for Zayin, and the King.
As he scrambled across the face of the hill toward the South, his heart stood still as he saw a line of hundreds of figures winding across the other side of a valley, with the sun glinting on their armor and weapons. An army! Then he realized it must be Zayin’s army coming up from the direction of the Dog River. And yes, at the head of them was a figure mounted on a horse. Zayin must have ridden down the coast and diverted the army up into the hills.
Nun went ahead to meet his brother, meaning to advise him as to the safest places on the hills. In the glaring heat of the afternoon, the population of Gebal was sorting itself out, family by family, over the bare hillside. Mothers were still anxiously asking after children they had mislaid in the exodus from the city, crying children were being led from group to group, looking for their parents. Old people were being settled comfortably on the ground, babies were being fed, women were already wandering in search of water, young boys were running and climbing over the rocks, carried away by the excitement of the moment and pursued by the angry cries of their parents. But those families that were already quietly settled, and lonely individuals who had nothing to do but sit and wait, eyed Nun as he passed among them and asked, “What next, Son of Resh? What is going to happen?” But Nun himself had not yet had time to consider the question.
Zayin was already disposing his troops when Nun came up to him; but on Nun’s advice he ordered them to move on up to the level ground, and to make his headquarters with the remainder of the family from where there was a view of all the terrain below. And on their way back they saw, among the latecomers from the city, another party of armed men, accompanied by some gray heads, and carrying a litter.
“Palace guards!” exclaimed Zayin. “It must be the King himself.” And meeting him they directed the litter bearers to the hilltop where the King was ensconced on a throne-shaped rock.
Then a silence seemed to fall over the hills, on which the entire population of the city of Gebal were spread in the hot, still afternoon. The persistent voices of the grasshoppers, crickets, and cicadas seemed to be asking, over and over, “What next? What next?”
Beth, sitting between her brothers, looked anxiously at Nun, and murmured, “There have been no more shocks since the three we felt in the town.” Her voice sounded a question that must have been in many minds. Had all this alarm been over a few minor tremors? Who was going to be first to admit a false alarm? They looked at the Chaldean, but he seemed to be watching the western horizon with such intensity that there was no room for doubt in his face.
Then a mutter seemed to run through the crowd on the northern side of the hill, and people began to crane their necks and point excitedly up the coast. Zayin and Nun stood up to look in that direction. Round the foot of the farthest headland to the North they could just make out a black line, but what really caught the attention were intermittent flashes of reflected sunlight.
“Armor,” said Zayin briefly. “The enemy from the North.”
“What are we going to do?” asked Nun, aghast.
Zayin merely looked at him. At the very same moment a breathless soldier came running up from the direction of the southern wing of the army. “General Zayin,” he gasped. “They come! They come!”
“I have seen the army of the North,” said Zayin curtly.
“No, my lord, the Egyptians! They are advancing from the Dog River. You may see them from that hill.”
The messenger looked at the General, as if expecting an order. Zayin looked at Nun. They both looked at the Chaldean, who still seemed to be standing in a trance, his eyes fixed on the West.
“We are to stand, here, like spectators at a ritual, and see our city occupied?” asked Zayin with a set face. There was no one who could reply “The participants are not yet ready for the ritual,” said Nun, his eyes, too, on the western sea. “We await the Cretan fleet.” With his hand he shaded the sun from his eyes. Were they deceiving him, was he imagining what he expected to see, or were there tiny grains scattered over the taut blue silk of the sea, moving imperceptibly from the hazy
horizon toward the shore?
As they stood there, frozen immobile in the hot afternoon, it was Beth who broke the spell. Leaping to her feet she cried, “Zayin, Nun! you can’t stand there and do nothing!” And the two brothers were both on the point of giving way to the same impulse to hurl themselves down the mountainside, had not there come at that moment a great cry from the Chaldean sage. He was standing erect with both arms outstretched toward the western sky.
“BEHOLD! IT HAS BEGUN!”
The sun stood halfway down the sky, in the dead middle of the afternoon. But out of the horizon haze, a little north of west, there was climbing a dense black cloud in the form of a towering Giant. With monstrous speed it reached the height of the sun, solid black from base to head, then continued to spread as quickly across the sky to north and south, until the sun itself was glaring through a reddish-yellow mist, and then was blotted out completely by a blanket of intense black. Now all the western sky was black, and the sea was black beneath it. As the hot rays of the sun were cut off, a deathly chill seemed to fall over the mountainside, and a great wail of terror arose from the Giblite multitude as they flung themselves to the ground and cowered before the awful spectacle.
Then came the earth shock, compared with which the previous tremors had been the slightest twitches of a sleeping Giant. Prostrate against the solid rock, the Giblites felt repeated blows shaking the roots of the mountain, as if monstrous limbs were striking upward through the earth’s crust, hacking their way through. All minds were numbed, but what was left of Nun’s recalled the western isle and the Giants that were said to be imprisoned beneath it. Indeed, the very mountain chain seemed to be breaking up: cliff faces and escarpments were wrenched loose, and great crags rolled over and over into the valleys or into the sea, and the Giblites who had been unwise enough to settle on hanging rocks or shelter beneath them were carried down to their death or crushed in their headlong course.
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