spoken to him had I
not been so flustered"; but of all types of lie this is probably the
most excusable. At all events, he said sufficient to induce the prince
to send his secretary to Egypt; and as a token of good faith Zakar-Baal
sent with him seven logs of cedar-wood. In forty-eight days' time the
messenger returned, bringing with him five golden and five silver vases,
twenty garments of fine linen, 500 rolls of papyrus, 500 ox-hides, 500
coils of rope, twenty measures of lentils, and five measures of dried
fish. At this present the prince expressed himself most satisfied, and
immediately sent 300 men and 300 oxen with proper overseers to start the
work of felling the trees. Some eight months after leaving Tanis,
Wenamon's delighted eyes gazed upon the complete number of logs lying at
the edge of the sea, ready for shipment to Egypt.

The task being finished, the prince walked down to the beach to inspect
the timber, and he called to Wenamon to come with him. When the Egyptian
had approached, the prince pointed to the logs, remarking that the work
had been carried through although the remuneration had not been nearly
so great as that which his fathers had received. Wenamon was about to
reply when inadvertently the shadow of the prince's umbrella fell upon
his head. What memories or anticipations this trivial incident aroused
one cannot now tell with certainty. One of the gentlemen-in-waiting,
however, found cause in it to whisper to Wenamon, "The shadow of
Pharaoh, your lord, falls upon you"--the remark, no doubt, being
accompanied by a sly dig in the ribs. The prince angrily snapped, "Let
him alone"; and, with the picture of Wenamon gloomily staring out to
sea, we are left to worry out the meaning of the occurrence. It may be
that the prince intended to keep Wenamon at Byblos until the uttermost
farthing had been extracted from Egypt in further payment for the wood,
and that therefore he was to be regarded henceforth as Wenamon's king
and master. This is perhaps indicated by the following remarks of the
prince.

"Do not thus contemplate the terrors of the sea," he said to Wenamon.
"For if you do that you should also contemplate my own. Come, I have not
done to you what they did to certain former envoys. They spent seventeen
years in this land, and they died where they were." Then, turning to an
attendant, "Take him," he said, "and let him see the tomb in which they
lie."

"Oh, don't let me see it," Wenamon tells