Salathiel Leaves His Shelter
I had heard of phantom armies traversing the air, but the sky was serene as crystal. I climbed the hill, upon whose summit I recollected to have seen the ruins of an altar; gathered the weeds, and lighted them for a beacon. The flame threw a wide and ruddy reflection on the waters and the sky. I watched by it until morn. But the sound had died as rapidly as it rose; and when, with the first pearly tinge of the east, the coast shaped itself beneath my eye, I saw with bitter disappointment but the same solitary shore. The idea of another day of suspense was intolerable; I returned to my place of refuge; gave it that glance of mingled feeling, without which perhaps no man leaves the shelter which he is never to see again; collected a few fruits for my sustenance, if I should reach the desert; and with a resolution to perish, if it so pleased Providence, but not to return, plunged into the sea.
The channel was even broader than I had calculated by the eye. My limbs were still enfeebled, but my determination was strength. I was swept by the current far from the opposite curve of the shore; yet its force spared mine, and after a long struggle I felt the ground under my feet. I was overjoyed, tho never was scene less fitted for joy. To the utmost verge of the view spread the sands, a sullen herbless waste, glowing like a sheet of brass in the almost vertical sun.
But I was on land! I had accomplished my purpose. Hope, the power of exertion, the chances of glorious future life, were before me. I was no longer a prisoner, within the borders of a spot which, for all the objects of manly existence, might as well have been my grave.
I journeyed on by sun and star in that direction which, to the Jew, is an instinct—to Jerusalem. Yet what fearful reverses, in this time of confusion, might not have occurred even there! What certainty could I have of being spared the bitterest losses, when sorrow and slaughter reigned through the land? Was I to be protected from the storm, that fell with such promiscuous fury upon all? I, too, the marked, the victim, the example to mankind! I looked wistfully back to the isle—that isle of oblivion.
The Robber Camp
While I was pacing the sand that actually scorched my feet, I heard a cry, and saw on a low range of sand-hills, at some distance, a figure making violent gestures. Friend or enemy, at least here was man, and I did not deeply care for the consequences, even of meeting man in his worst shape. Hunger and thirst might be more formidable enemies in the end; and I advanced toward the half-naked savage, who, however, ran from me, crying out louder than ever. I dragged my weary limbs after him, and at length reached the edge of a little dell in which stood a circle of tents. I had fallen among the robbers of the desert, but there was evident confusion in this fragment of a tribe. The camels were in the act of being loaded; men and women were gathering their household matters with the haste of terror; and dogs, sheep, camels, and children set up their voices in a general clamor.
Dreading that I might lose my only chance of refreshment and guidance, I cried out with all my might, and hastened down toward them; but the sight of me raised a universal scream, and every living thing took flight, the horsemen of the colony gallantly leading the way, with a speed that soon left the pedestrians far in the rear. But their invader conquered only for food. I entered the first of the deserted tents, and indulged myself with a full feast of bread, dry and rough as the sand on which it was baked, and of water, only less bitter than that through which I had swum. Still, all luxury is relative. To me they were both delicious, and I thanked at once the good fortune which had provided so prodigally for those withered monarchs of the sands, and had invested my raggedness with the salutary terror that gave me the fruits of triumph without the toil.
A Girl’s Appearance
At the close of my feast, I uttered a few customary words of thanksgiving. A cry of joy rang in my ears; I looked round; saw, to my surprise, a bale of carpets walk forward from a corner of the tent, and heard a Jewish tongue imploring for life and freedom. I rapidly developed the speaker, and from this repulsive overture came forth one of the loveliest young females that I had ever seen. Her story was soon told. She was the granddaughter of Ananus,[41] the late high priest, one of the most distinguished of his nation for every lofty quality; but he had fallen on evil days. His resistance to faction sharpened the dagger against him, and he perished in one of the merciless feuds of the city. His only descendant was now before me; she had been sent to claim the protection of her relatives in the south of Judea. But her escort was dispersed by an attack of the Arabs, and in the division of the spoil the sheik of this little encampment obtained her as his share. The robber merchant was on his way to Cæsarea to sell his prize to the Roman governor, when my arrival put his caravan to the rout. To my inquiry into the cause of this singular success, the fair girl answered that the Arabs had taken me for a supernatural visitant, “probably come to claim some account of their proceedings in the late expedition.” They had been first startled by the blaze in the island, which by a tradition of the desert was said to be the dwelling of forbidden beings. My passage of the channel was seen, and increased the wonder; my daring to appear alone, among men whom mankind shunned, completed the belief of my more than mortal prowess, and the Arabs’ courage abandoned a contest in which “the least that could happen to them was to be swept into the surge, or tossed piecemeal upon the winds.”