"Out with them, and mark ye, no lashes now. Leave the old and the nursing mothers."
The drivers disappeared into the narrow ways of the encampment, and Atsu, with the scribes at his wheels, drove out where the avenue of sphinxes would have led to the temple of Imhotep. Here was room for three thousand. He alighted and, with the scribes who stood, tablets in hand, awaited the coming of the Israelites.
The camp emptied its dwellers in long wavering lines. Into the open they came, slowly, and with downcast eyes, each with his remnant of a tribe. Though the columns were in order, they were ragged with many and varied statures—now a grown man, next to him a child, and then a woman. Here were the red-bearded sons of Reuben, shepherds in skins and men of great hardihood; the seafaring children of Zebulon; a handful of submissive Issachar, and some of Benjamin, Levi, and Judah.
"Do we not leave the aged behind?" the scribe asked, indicating Deborah who came with Judah.
"Give her her way," Atsu replied indifferently, and the scribe subsided.
The lines advanced, filling up the open with moody humanity. A scribe placed himself at the head of each column, and as the hindmost Israelite emerged into the field the movement was halted.
If an eye was lifted, it shifted rapidly under the stress of desperation or suspense. If any spoke, it was the rough and indifferent, whose words fell like blows on the distressed silence. Many were visibly trembling, others had whitened beneath the tropical tan, and the wondering faces of children, who feared without understanding, turned now and again to search for their elders up and down the lines.
The drivers distributed themselves among the Israelites and each with a scribe went methodically along the files choosing every tenth.
"Get thee to my house and bring me my lists," Atsu said to the soldier who was beginning on Judah. "I will look to thy work." The man crossed his left hand to his right shoulder and hastened away.
One by one nine Israelites dropped out of line as Atsu numbered them and returned to camp. He touched the tenth.