In spite of the sand the military engines, drawn each by two bullocks, moved in the desert more speedily than along the highway. With the first of them marched Eunana, anxiously. "Why has the minister deprived me of leadership over the vanguard? Does he wish to give me a higher position?" asked he in his own mind.
Thinking out then a new career, and perhaps to dull the fears which made his heart quiver, he seized a pole and, where the sands were deeper, propped the balista, or urged on the Greeks with an outcry.
They, however, paid slight attention to this officer.
The retinue had pushed on a good half hour through a winding ravine with steep naked walls, when the vanguard halted a second time. At this point another ravine crossed the first; in the middle of it extended a rather broad canal.
The courier sent to the minister of war with notice of the obstacle brought back a command to fill the canal immediately.
About a hundred soldiers with pickaxes and shovels rushed to the work. Some knocked out stones from the cliff; others threw them into the ditch and covered them with sand.
Meanwhile from the depth of the ravine came a man with a pickaxe shaped like a stork's neck with the bill on it. He was an Egyptian slave, old and entirely naked. He looked for a while with the utmost amazement at the work of the soldiers; then, springing between them on a sudden, he shouted,
"What are ye doing, vile people? This is a canal."
"But how darest Thou use evil words against the warriors of his holiness?" asked Eunana, who stood there.
"Thou must be an Egyptian and a great person, I see that," said the slave; "so I answer thee that this canal belongs to a mighty lord; he is the manager and secretary of one who bears the fan for his worthiness the nomarch of Memphis. Be on thy guard or misfortune will strike thee!"