CHAPTER XV.
The morning found the fugitive by the Sea of Galilee. Massive ruins lined the road along its western and northern shores. These were the memorials of the days before the Babylonian captivity. Blocks of stone, pretentious in size and over-ornamentation, evidently dated from the age of the great Solomon. Other blocks were inferior imitations of these, and were made, doubtless, in the times of the later kings. Within the foundations of an ancient palace were loose stone cabins, belonging to the poor inhabitants, who gained a precarious living by adding to the scanty yield of the ground the better gleaning of the sea. Here and there clumsy fishing-boats, drawn upon the beach or floating idly on the water, told of the decadence of the arts and enterprise that had marked preceding times. Only nature was untouched by the degenerating influences of the age; and, fair as upon the day of its creation, lay the water, unrippled by the slightest breeze, mirroring the deep blue of the sky, like an immense piece of lapis-lazuli, in the setting of the encircling mountains.
The silence and motionlessness of the sea imparted themselves to Hiram. The rush of events and the intense excitement of the past few days had almost exhausted the active energies of his mind. As the strained strings of an over-used lyre give no sound, so he seemed no longer able to respond to even the rude alarms of danger. He was fleeing now, not with any sense of fear, but solely with the momentum of past impulses, as the heart sometimes continues to throb and the lungs to heave when conscious life has ceased. He realized his own mental condition. He felt the moral inertia. He said to himself: "I believe I would not move if Egbalus pointed his sacrificial knife at my heart. I could walk into the arms of Moloch." He could understand somewhat how the priests succeeded in preparing their human victims for unhesitating obedience at the fatal moment. He saw how the will becomes paralyzed by the strain of the previous terror, and how the wretched devotees lose the susceptibility to recoil even at the steps of the altar, as the leaves of the sensitive-plant, frequently rubbed by the fingers, no longer shrink at the touch.
In this condition of mind, the stillness of the sea was very congenial to Hiram. It invited him as a kindred spirit. Out upon its placid bosom he could rest, without the necessity of arousing himself every moment to pass judgment on things that appealed to his suspicion. There, too, after yielding himself for a while to the soothing influences that lulled the air and water, he could plan for the future, instead of taking his cue, as heretofore he had been compelled to do, from the movements of his pursuers. Should he go across the desert to Damascus? to the plains of Babylon? to the court at Susa, and throw himself beneath the protecting shadow of the Great King? to the solitude of the Sinaitic mountains? Or should he seek the coast of the Great Sea, and cross to Greece? Whither, when, with a few more turns, like those of the hunted fox, he shall have thrown the Baal-hounds off the scent?
And Zillah! How her fair face shone in every bright thing he looked upon, and her frightened, agony-drawn features stared at him out of every gloomy object! There was so much to think about. And on the sea he could think. Perhaps Jehovah would help him think, or maybe speak to him. Such a beautiful lake as this must be sacred to him who is god of mountains and water and sky alike. Yonder where the sea blends with the distant shore, and the shore rises until it blends with the sky—surely that must be the meeting-place of earthly and heavenly influences, if gods ever commune with men.
Musing thus, he observed a fisherman's hut near by. One wall had once belonged to some palatial structure; the others were made of such broken stones as a man might carry from the heap of ruins that lay about it. The doorway of the hut was faced on the one side with a column of marble; on the other, with a polished slab of granite. In front of the hut was an oven; the half of a huge porphyry vase, inverted, served for the fire-back, and gave direction to the draught. On some coals a woman was broiling fish. On a flat stone, lying half in the fire, and covered with ashes, a man was baking thin sheets of yellow dough, to be subsequently rolled into loaves of bread. Several others were lounging near, sleeping and bedraggled with the fishing of the past night. They welcomed Hiram with a grunted salâm.
"Peace be to you!"
"Peace!" "Peace!" said one and another, scarcely raising their eyes, as if the apparition of a Persian soldier were too common to awaken interest. An elderly man, coming from the hut, eyed the new-comer more attentively.
"Another man from the coast of the Great Sea, eh! Our Persian masters are hiring Phœnicians to be soldiers as well as sailors. But it takes more than change of skin to make a wolf of a fox; and a man from the coast can never pass with me for one from beyond the desert. The west wind blows you fellows inland as it does the salt-water gnats. But sit by, and the Lord bless you! especially if your purse is lined with darics."
Though this speech was not assuring, Hiram, with his recent memories, could not distrust a Jew. He gave his entertainers some good-natured repartee, though their words had cut far deeper than they knew.
"Stranger!" said one, "tell us your story of that miracle at Tyre."
"I have not heard from Tyre for many a day," replied Hiram. "I am in the king's business, and have been going up and down in your land for a time. What was the miracle?"
"Ha! ha! Think of old Benjamin telling the news to a Phœnician who boasts that he knows everything! Why, they were going to offer up some prince or other—or was it a priest, Ephraim? No matter which. Well! the gods saved them the trouble. The sun grew bigger and bigger, and came down nearer and nearer, until he opened his mouth and swallowed up prince, priests, and five-score attendants. I would not believe it but that Ephraim here, who had drunk plenty of leben that same day, says he saw the sun come bobbing down at him while fishing on the lake."
Hiram surprised himself at the heartiness with which he laughed at the story, and matched it with one he pretended to have heard some Jews relate as belonging to their national traditions. "Your great general, Joshua, one day was taken with a chill in the midst of a battle. He could not even give the commands, but only chattered with the cold. Then he bethought him to order the sun to come down and hang just over his head. It floated there like a red-hot shield until he had killed every man among the enemy. But who told you of the miracle at Tyre?"
"Why," said Benjamin, "the priests themselves. Two were along here yesterday."
"They were not priests," said Ephraim.
"They were, though," rejoined Benjamin. "Mother Eve once mistook a snake for an honest creature; but I know a snake's wriggle and a priest's wriggle, in whatever disguise they may be. You could not be a priest of Baal if you tried, stranger. Your face is too honest. But those fellows yesterday—at least one of them—could not cast his priest's skin, though he was dressed like a merchant. He looked as if he wanted to glide down under the stones there, as they say the Baalite priests live half the time in the vaults under their temples, pulling strings to make their gods move, and talking up through holes to answer the prayers of the silly people."
"What were they doing here in the Jews' land?" asked Hiram.
"They said they were searching for a young Tyrian who had fallen heir to a fortune, who was travelling hereabouts, and did not know his good luck. May be you are the happy man."
"I wish I were," replied Hiram, "if for no other reason than to get rid of a very disagreeable journey. I must cross the lake at once, and go as far away as Bozrah. The king's business keeps one as lively as a flea. I must have a boat."
"You have only to pick it out; we have enough lazy fellows to sail it," replied Benjamin, rising and looking along a row of boats.
"I would go alone," said Hiram. "I can leave with you the price of the boat against my getting wrecked, or being swallowed by this terrific sun of yours, whose heat must make him thirsty enough to drink up your little sea."
"Despise not its littleness," replied the Jew. "It is as strong as the very dragon in the sky when it gets to rolling and writhing under the Lord's frown."
"A Phœnician can tame any sea 'twixt Tyre and Tartesus. The heaviest winds that roar over Galilee would be only as the song of a sea-bird to a sailor on the main," said Hiram.
"Leave, then, your money, and sail it or sink with it, as you like," replied the rough fisherman.