"I know."
Issachar looked at Yubra as though wishing to ask something else.
"You will see for yourself and know," Yubra said in answer to that silent question, and walked away.
Issachar lay down by the bonfire, wrapping his cloak round him, but could not go to sleep for thinking about the prophet. There was something in Yubra's words and reservations that suggested the mysterious smile of Khu-Zeshep, the Shining Terror. He dropped asleep just before daybreak; he vaguely heard the distant roar of the lion and remembered the voice crying in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.'
Merik's son, too, could not go to sleep that night: he kept looking as though in prayer at the mother with the child asleep between the lion paws of the Sphinx.
Tabitha's ass dozed, hanging its head. The flame of the dying fire seemed to stand like a fine and sharp sword in the still air. From the low-lying meadows down by the river came the melancholy call of the hoopoo. The stars grew dim and twinkled like flames blown out by the wind. The sky turned white and rosy and there glowed in it a star, pure and dazzling like the sun. A red-hot ember blazed up in the misty gorge of the Arabian Mountains and the first ray of the sun lighted the Sphinx's face.
The baby woke up and cried. The mother gave him the breast. Then she held him up, showing him the sun. The boy laughed and stretched out his arms as though he would seize the sun.
The same mystery was in the smile of the baby as in the smile of the Sphinx. User fell on his face and worshipped Baby Horus—the Shining Terror.
Issachar woke up when the sun had already risen above the palm trees. He jumped up, afraid of having slept too late and missed the prophet.
Some people were hurrying past him.