After a brief struggle the little garrison was overpowered and the fortress taken. The disarmed Egyptians, like their companions at the copper mines, were sent home. The prisoners were released and the lepers, whose quarters were in a side-valley beyond the mines—among them were those who at Joshua’s bidding had been brought here—were allowed to follow the conquerors at a certain distance.
What Hur, Miriam’s husband, could not accomplish, Joshua had done, and ere the young soldiers departed with Ephraim, old Nun assembled them to offer thanks to the Lord. The men under Hur’s command also joined in the prayer and wherever Joshua appeared Ephraim’s companions greeted him with cheers.
“Hail to our chief!” often rang on the air, as they marched forward: “Hail to him whom the Most High Himself has chosen for His sword! We will gladly follow him; for through him God leads us to victory.”
Hur’s men also joined in these shouts, and he did not forbid them; nay, after the storming of the fortress, he had thanked Joshua and expressed his pleasure in his liberation.
At the departure, the younger man had stepped back to let the older one precede him; but Hur had entreated grey-haired Nun, who was greatly his senior, to take the head of the procession, though after the deliverance of the people on the shore of the Red Sea he had himself been appointed by Moses and the elders to the chief command of the Hebrew soldiers.
The road led first through a level mountain valley, then it crossed the pass known as the “Sword-point “, which was the only means of communication between the mines and the Red Sea.
The rocky landscape was wild and desolate, and the path to be climbed steep. Joshua’s old father, who had grown up on the flat plains of Goshen and was unaccustomed to climbing mountains, was borne amid the joyous acclamations of the others, in the arms of his son and grandson, to the summit of the pass; but Miriam’s husband who, at the head of his men, followed the division of Ephraim’s companions, heard the shouts of the youths yet moved with drooping head and eyes bent on the ground.
At the summit they were to rest and wait for the people who were to be led through the wilderness of Sin to Dophkah.
The victors gazed from the top of the pass in search of the travellers; but as yet no sign of them appeared. But when they looked back along the mountain path whence they had come a different spectacle presented itself, a scene so grand, so marvellous, that it attracted every eye as though by a magic spell; for at their feet lay a circular valley, surrounded by lofty cliffs, mountain ridges, peaks, and summits, which here white as chalk, yonder raven-black, here grey and brown, yonder red and green, appeared to grow upward from the sand toward the azure sky of the wilderness, steeped in dazzling light, and unshadowed by the tiniest cloudlet.
All that the eye beheld was naked and bare, silent and lifeless. On the slopes of the many-colored rocks, which surrounded the sandy valley, grew no blade of grass nor smallest plant. Neither bird, worm, nor beetle stirred in these silent tracts, hostile to all life. Here the eye discerned no cultivation,—nothing that recalled human existence. God seemed to have created for Himself alone these vast tracts which were of service to no living creature. Whoever penetrated into this wilderness entered a spot which the Most High had perchance chosen for a place of rest and retreat, like the silent, inaccessible Holy of Holies of the temple.