The cable, taut like a string, cut into men's shoulders even through the felt pads; perspiration dropped from their faces bent low over the ground; their muscles were strained; the veins on their foreheads were ready to burst; their bones seemed to crack with the incredible effort. And the giant, at rest for ever with a gentle smile on the flat lips, was only slightly moved from time to time. A doleful song, accompanied by laboured breathing, broke out like a moan from a thousand breasts:
Heigh-ho, pull and drag, pull and drag!
Heigh-ho, step along, step along!
When we've pulled an inch or two
We'll have earned a drink of beer,
We'll have earned a loaf of bread.
On and on with steady tread!
Make the heavy burden fly.
Now, brothers, here we go!
Have another try—
Oho!
"These, too, will not have long to suffer: the slaves shall be set free," Yubra thought.
From the road he turned into Teshub Street. This part of Thebes, by the Apet Risit harbour, was populated by the worshippers of the god Teshub—boatmen, carpenters, rope-makers and other working people, as well as by tradesmen and inn-keepers.
The dark grey huts, looking like wasps' nests, made of the river mud and reeds, were so flimsy that they came to pieces after a good rain. But it only rained once in two or three years and, besides, it cost next to nothing to build such a hut afresh. Not only the poor, but people of moderate means, lived in them, in accordance with the Egyptian wisdom: our temporal home is a hut, our eternal home is the tomb.
The walls giving on to the street had no windows, except a little one with a movable shutter in the front door for the porter; the name of the owner was written over it in coloured hieroglyphics. All the other windows were at the back. On the flat roofs could be seen the conical clay granaries and the wooden frames over the skylights, facing north, "wind-catchers" for catching the north wind—"the sweetest breath of the north."
The inn of Itacama the Hittite, where Nebra was having his supper, stood at the very end of Teshub street, not far from the Hittite Square.
Instead of a signpost there was over the door a clay bas-relief representing a Canaan labourer sucking beer through a reed from a jug, and an Egyptian woman, probably a harlot or a tavern keeper, sitting opposite him; the hieroglyphic inscription said: "He comforts his heart with the beer Haket, Heart's seduction."
As he was going into the tavern Yubra turned round to the beggar woman and called to her:
"Wait a minute, my dear; I will bring you some bread!"