All day, all night, she prayed, yet when the dawn came oozing from out the east, the face of Dagon was as a face of stone. The suppliant sat upon the temple steps, weary, warring with despair. With listless eyes she watched a beetle crawling at her feet, then, of a sudden, hope rose up and lived. She grasped the bug between her thumb and finger, holding it above the surface of the lake, while she closed her teeth as a gambler might at the whirl of his last remaining coin.
"Now this," she murmured to herself, "shall tell me of Dagon's will. If the beetle swim, I go! If he sink, I rot in Ascalon!"
She cast it in, smiling, for she knew right well that the bug must float, yet turning her back lest Dagon mark her knowledge of such things. For an instant the victim struggled pleasingly with leg and wing, while the smile of Semiramis broadened in its reach, to flicker, to fade, to die. A monster carp came upward with a rush. One snap, and the tempting morsel disappeared, thus making the fish-god's judgment clear, beyond the very hem of Redemption's robe.
Semiramis sat upon the temple's steps, her chin upon her hands, her eyes on a wheel of ripples that widened away from its hub of swift calamity. She pondered long, her thoughts like cats in trees, with Habal barking furiously below.
"He sank," she sighed. "Of a certainty he sank. I may not make it otherwise. And yet"—she paused to steal a glance at Dagon's face—"and yet the fool did swim for a little space. Mayhap—" Again she paused, then spread her hands and raised her eyes appealingly. "In truth my beetle proveth naught at all. For a space he swam. For a space he sank. Dagon, Dagon, what meanest thou in this?"
No answer came. Once more she pondered, her fair brow puckered with the lines of deep perplexity; till, presently, the truant colour raced to her cheek again and her great eyes lit with the flame of understanding.
"Ah!" she breathed. "Ah, now I see. Thou meanest, O wise and radiant one, that, sink or swim, must I do this thing. What!" she cried, "hast thou, thyself, not said it? And, lo! I am but a weak and foolish woman in thy power. Ah, Dagon, Dagon, thou art a crafty god, indeed!"
In haste Semiramis left the temple door, and, singing loudly, tripped toward her home. Her god had sent a sign. She was free to journey now as her heart desired. Free! And yet, a doubt came prowling after her—a watchful, sleepless doubt that dogged her steps, even as Huzim slipped upon her trail from his hiding-place behind a stone. On the hill she paused, to mutter to herself in a soothing tone:
"The sign is clear. Did I linger on in Ascalon, some evil might befall me, even as that carp arose to snatch my beetle in his greedy maw. Did Menon know, he would urge that I fly to him without delay."
She went her way and took up her song again, but paused to reason with a small brown toad that hopped across her path.