No more he fled from the anger of Semiramis toward the east, but strayed in circles, while the heat-waves danced before his eyes, causing a haze which blinded him, till through it ran the twisted fancies of a dream. Before him he spied a river gurgling through the sands—a deep, sweet river, where the cool palms waved upon its shores; so Ninus spread his arms and rushed toward it eagerly. Yet, at his coming, the waters fled away and melted as a morning mist dissolves; then the King fell prone upon his face, to bury his lips in a draught of the flaming sands. To his knees he rose and lifted his hairy arms aloft, whispering hoarsely to the gods on high; and unto Ninus came the gods!
He saw them on the far horizon's line, gaunt spirits sweeping down as the storm-king rides—red Ramân, prince of lightnings and the thunder-bolt—the lord god Asshur and his underlings of war and death; and even as Ninus had set a sin on the shoulders of these gods, so now they bore that sin, and the sin was in the likeness of Prince Menon who had come at last to reckon with his King. And the lord of the world would have burrowed in the sands to hide himself, but the spirit of a blind man pointed out the way, and Ishtar's spirit snapped the leash of her spirit hounds.
Straight at their prey they sprang, but the King was a King, and stood upon his feet to battle with them mightily—to fight as his hands had fought from childhood to declining years; yet now he was old and the glory of his strength was spent. He felt the teeth of Ishtar's hounds upon his throat, and, in his madness, knew not that the deathly grip was of thirst alone; so Ninus screamed and died—died battling, as the man had battled all his days, yet Menon's prophecy was a prophecy of truth.
* * * * *
When the red sun, weary of his raging, sank behind the desert's rim, Boabdul and Semiramis came upon the ending of their trail. The King! On his back he lay, his wide eyes staring at the heavens whence his judgment came. The body of a King! The shell of a spirit which had ruled the wills of lesser men, which had conquered all save the spirits of the gods alone, and, conquering, had used the world as a sandal for his lordly feet. The body of a King; yet now a King no more, but dust!
Semiramis looked down upon him, sorrowing—sorrowing because of one who had cheated her in life, as now he cheated her in death; but the Arab read another tale in that kingly heap of dust, and spoke to her in gentleness and in the ripened wisdom of his years:
"Grieve not, O Queen Shammuramat, because of a vengeance that is lifted from out thy hands. Grieve not, for of a truth King Ninus hath been crucified on a wall of the desert's wrath."
CHAPTER XXXI
THE CROWNING OF THE DEAD
Prince Ninyas, when he had brought his warnings to the King, fled not with him into Arabia, for he had no thought to risk his slothful bones in the peril of a war; therefore he hired a score of boatmen and was paddled up the Tigris till he came again to Nineveh.