An Egyptian task-master, daintily attired, and mounted on a pure-bred steed of the desert, pranced to and fro, marshalling the band of workmen, threatening, and indeed striking hard with his whip, such as failed to obey his orders, either from weakness of body or inability to comprehend them. The sun was not a palm's-breadth above the horizon ere more than one pair of naked shoulders were already scored with blood. The lash was even raised for an instant over Sarchedon's head, but something in the Assyrian's eye must have altered its direction; for it curled round the massive neck and deep chest of Sadoc's elder son instead, who accepted his stripes with a sullen patience, that denoted some set purpose, some hope of vengeance at no distant date.
"Go to! ye are idle, ye are idle!" was the unceasing reproach of the pitiless Egyptian, while he hurried his gang forward at such a pace as disordered even the light-armed bowmen who formed their guard.
These Sarchedon recognised, by their shields and head-pieces, for a company which had fled before a handful of his own comrades, at the passage of the Nile by the Great King.
How strangely the past came back to him!—the fierce excitement, the restless variety, of war; the royal signet; the ride through the desert; Ishtar's loving face; and the Great Queen's maddening smile. It seemed impossible that he should be trudging on foot a peasant, a prisoner, a slave. O for an hour of Merodach!—a bowshot's start, with the horse's head turned towards home! He would have time, he thought, for one blow at that painted task-master, and so, hurling him to the dust, swing fairly into the saddle, and away!
He was roused from his dreams by the back of his companion's hand significantly touching his own, while it passed a rope into his grasp; and at the same moment a monotonous chorus broke on his ear, to which, while an Egyptian beat time with his hands, each Israelitish labourer lent as much voice as his lungs could spare from the severity of his toil.
Their day's work was to move a few cubits on its way the colossal image of Pharaoh, cut from a block of granite, destined to form at some future period the ornament of a tomb, grander, costlier, and more spacious than the palace in which he reigned. Sarchedon, looking upward at the ponderous image, with its long cunning eyes, its grave cruel face, its shapely limbs designed in the harmony of true proportion, could not but admire the resources that had thus hewn a mountain into a statue, and brought it inch by inch over many a weary furlong, to gratify the pride and enhance the glory of a king. Firm, erect, sedentary, its hands spread calmly on its knees, there was something in the very attitude of the giant that suggested power unquestioned, irresponsible, without pity, and without fear.
Levers were employed at every step to raise the weighty mass sufficiently for the insertion of rollers, on which it proceeded wearily, slowly, painfully, yet surely propelled by the efforts of a captive nation, whose straining muscles quivered under the labour, whose blistered hands burned over the cable, whose spirits were broken by slavery, as their backs were torn with stripes, yet whose voices, keeping time with their exertions, swelled a mournful cry in honour of their oppressor:
"Work, my brother, rest is nigh—
Pharaoh lives for ever!
Beast and bird of earth and sky,
Things that creep and things that fly—
All must labour, all must die;
But Pharaoh lives for ever!
Work, my brother, while 'tis day—
Pharaoh lives for ever;
Rivers waste and wane away,
Marble crumbles down like clay,
Nations dwindle to decay;
But Pharaoh lives for ever!
Work—it is thy mortal doom—
Pharaoh lives for ever!
Shadows passing through the gloom,
Age to age gives place and room,
Kings go down into the tomb;
But Pharaoh lives for ever!"