"Here," said Agron, "you shall be brought into the royal presence, with the rising of to-morrow's sun. You shall be sped on your way to Babylon under such a guard as may laugh Pharaoh and all his chariots to scorn, if indeed they dare thus pursue their venture into the land of Shinar. Fear not, my friends; you shall ride out of Ascalon almost as swiftly as you rode in, and I wish it had been the will of Nisroch that I might be permitted to accompany you."
"Are you then so weary of the City of Towers?" asked Sethos, smiling gaily on a group of women who were pelting him with flowers from an upper story. "It seems to me that here, as elsewhere, Ashtaroth shines down in light through the eyes of these southern damsels, and that Agron may bask in her beams no less pleasantly than at home."
"Ashtaroth!" repeated the other scornfully, "and the City of Towers! Say rather Shamash and the City of Fire! Where shall you find a palm's breadth of shade in the whole town at noon, or a green thing within a day's march of the walls? There was a fountain here over against us when we arrived; but the sun licked it up ere we saw him rise three times, dry and clean as a dog's red tongue licks a platter. For duty, it is watch and ward day by day, with your headpiece scorching the very hair off your brow, and alarms throughout the night, every time a camel tinkles its bell within or a jackal howls for hunger without. As to pleasure, if you care not to fly your hawks over a plain so barren that the very wormwood refuses to show a twig, or to follow a lion as sulky as yourself for lack of food, who burrows into a cave when you come up with him, you must be content to tie knots in your bowstring, and so keep count of the days of your captivity, as they pass by and bring no change."
"But you hold a high post," said Sarchedon absently, for his thoughts were still with the veiled figure that vanished so quickly from his sight. "You have a noble command, and great honour amongst men."
"And receive gifts from travellers entering in," added Sethos. "Caravans out of Egypt, merchants from the coast, spoilers of the desert, who must needs replenish quiver and sharpen steel, none can pass through without doing homage to the keeper of the gate, and his hand is never empty whose beard brushes the dust. Tell me, Agron, are there not bales of silk piled in thy dwelling, myrrh, spices, inlaid arms, and talents of gold, ay, and a captive maid or two, fresh and rosy as the dawn on those eastern mountains from which she comes?"
Agron laughed loud.
"How long would she abide with me at the gate, think you, after the prince had heard of her white skin and ruddy cheeks? No, my friends, wayfarers are driven from our walls as if they brought a pestilence in their very garments. For recompense, I have stern command and scornful look; for food, camel's flesh and dried locusts; for handmaiden, an Ethiopian wench, black and rough as a goat's-hair tent; and for drink—well, for drink—you are a king's cup-bearer, Sethos—I can give you, as you will presently confess, a skin of wine equal to the richest you ever pressed at dawn for thirsty old Ninus. May he live for ever! Hush, man! we are now within the royal gate, and none speaks here above his breath who values the safety of his tongue."
Thus cautioning his companions, Agron guided them through a massive portal, into the central fortress of Ascalon, constructed to hold a foe at bay even in the last extremity, were the outer walls destroyed, and the town itself razed to the ground.
As a bulwark against Egyptian aggression, and a check to the excesses of those wild tribes that, from the earliest period of history, seem to have made the desert their home, Ascalon had been fortified with all the appliances of defence which the experience of Ninus could suggest; and perhaps, as the birthplace of the queen whom he loved so dearly, had acquired in his eyes a fictitious value that caused him to regard it with jealous and constant supervision. Its central fastness was therefore in proportion to the strength of the whole place, nor did it fail to impress both Sethos and Sarchedon with feelings of awe and wonder, quite incomprehensible to the light-hearted captain of the gate. For Agron, this lowering fortress seemed but a dreary prison, only preferable to the tomb, because of the hope that he might at last resume life and light amidst the luxuries of Babylon the Great. Ascalon, as the queen remembered it, was a glittering city, beautiful in architecture, pleasant with verdant bowers, and ripening dates, and voice of rushing waters. As Agron found it, shorn of beauty to enhance its strength, it was a grim solemn citadel, denuded of palm and paradise to make room for frowning rampart and threatening tower, drained of its bubbling streams that they might fill its moats and ditches, retaining nothing of its ancient loveliness but the blue sea and the silver lake, that continued to mirror its rugged features in age truly and faithfully as the smiling freshness of its youth.
Making signs to them of silence and discretion, the captain of the gate led his comrades through a succession of massive portals and vaulted passages, to a chamber lined with cedar wood, taken, as it were, out of the wall itself, and lit but sparingly by an aperture communicating with the roof.