The World's Desire

by H. Rider Haggard; Andrew Lang

The Wanderer heard, and smiled as a wolf smiles, but spoke no word. Thereon the great officers of Pharaoh took him and led him forth. They set him in a chariot, and with the chariot went a thousand horsemen; and soon Meriamun, watching from the walls of Tanis, saw the long line of desert dust that marked the passing of the Wanderer from the city which he should see no more.

The Wanderer also looked back on Tanis with a heavy heart. There, far away, he could see the shrine of Hathor gleaming like crystal above the tawny flood of waters. And he must go down to death, leaving no word for Her who sat in the shrine and deemed him faithless and forsworn. Evil was the lot that the Gods had laid upon him, and bitter was his guerdon.

His thoughts were sad enough while the chariot rolled towards the city of On, where the host of Pharaoh was gathering, and the thunder of the feet of horses echoed in his ears, when, as he pondered, it chanced that he looked up. There, on a knoll of sand before him, a bow-shot from the chariot, stood a camel, and on the camel a man sat as though he waited the coming of the host. Idly the Wanderer wondered who this might be, and, as he wondered, the man urged the camel towards the chariot, and, halting before it cried “Hold!” in a loud voice.

“Who art thou?” cried the captain of the chariot, “who darest cry ‘hold’ to the host of Pharaoh?”

“I am one who have tidings of the barbarians,” the man made answer from the camel.

The Wanderer looked on him. He was wondrous little, withered and old; moreover, his skin was black as though with the heat of the sun, and his clothing was as a beggar’s rags, though the trappings of the camel were of purple leather and bossed with silver. Again the Wanderer looked; he knew him not, and yet there was that in his face which seemed familiar.

Now the captain of the chariot bade the driver halt the horses, and cried, “Draw near and tell thy tidings.”

“To none will I tell my tidings save to him who shall lead the host of Pharaoh. Let him come down from the chariot and speak with me.”

“That may not be,” said the captain, for he was charged that the Wanderer should have speech with none.

“As thou wilt,” answered the aged man upon the camel; “go then, go to thy doom! thou art not the first who hath turned aside a messenger from the Gods.”