assing
through the water, now a foot deep over the road. Ephraim hurried to the
shore, called on the shepherds to follow him and, under his direction,
they helped drive the herds forward.

The attempt was successful and, amid the thunder and lightning, greeted
with loud cheers, the last man and the last head of cattle reached the
land.

The lepers were obliged to wade through water rising to their knees and
at last to their waists and, ere they had gained the shore, the sluices
of heaven opened and the rain poured in torrents. Yet they, too, arrived
at the goal and though many a mother who had carried her child a long
time in her arms or on her shoulder, fell upon her knees exhausted on
the land, and many a hapless sufferer who, aided by a stronger companion
in misery, had dragged the carts through the yielding sand or wading in
the water carried a litter, felt his disfigured head burn with fever,
they, too, escaped destruction.

They were to wait beyond the palm-trees, whose green foliage appeared on
the hilly ground at the edge of some springs near the shore; the others
were to be led farther into the country to begin, at a given signal,
the journey toward the southeast into the mountains, through whose
inhospitable stony fastnesses a regular army and the war-chariots could
advance only with the utmost difficulty.

Hur had assembled his shepherds and they stood armed with lances,
slings, and short swords, ready to attack the enemy who ventured to step
on shore. Horses and men were to be cut down and a high wall was to be
made of the fragments of the chariots to bar the way of the pursuing
Egyptians.

The pans of burning pitch on the shore were shielded and fed so
industriously that neither the pouring rain nor the wind extinguished
them. They were to light the shepherds who had undertaken to attack the
chariot-soldiers, and were commanded by old Nun, Hur, and Ephraim.

But they waited in vain for the pursuers, and when the youth, first of
all, perceived by the light of the torches that the way by which the
rescued fugitives had come was now a wide sea, and the smoke was blown
toward the north instead of toward the southwest--it was at the time of
the first morning watch--his heart, surcharged with joy and gratitude,
sent forth the jubilant shout: "Look at the pans. The wind has shifted!
It is driving the sea northward. Pharaoh's army has been swallowed by
the waves!"

The group of rescued Hebrews remained sil