d approached, and when he related his miracles the
prince seized his own head, exclaiming,

"I am the most hapless man in all Egypt! Very soon I shall find a
priest in my bed even. Whence did he come? Who was he?"

The black servitor could not explain this, but he said that the
priest's action toward the prince and toward Sarah was very friendly;
that the attack was directed not by Egyptians, but by people who, the
priest said, were enemies of Egypt, and whom he challenged to step
forward, but they would not.

"Wonders! wonders!" said Ramses, meditating, and throwing himself on a
couch. "My black slave is a valiant warrior and a man full of judgment.
A priest defends a Jewess, because she is mine. What a strange priest
he is! The Egyptian people who kneel down before the pharaoh's dogs
attack the house of the erpatr under direction of unknown enemies of
Egypt. I myself must look into this."

CHAPTER XI

The month Thoth has ended and the month Paofi (the second half of July)
has begun. The water of the Nile, from being greenish and then white,
has become ruddy and is rising continually. The royal indicator in
Memphis is filled to the height of two men almost, and the Nile rises
two hands daily. The lowest land is inundated; from higher ground
people are removing hastily flax, grapes, and cotton of a certain
species. Over places which were dry in the early morning, waves plash
as evening approaches. A mighty, unseen whirlwind seems to blow in the
depth of the Nile. This wind ploughs up broad spaces on the river,
fills the furrows with foam, then smoothes for a moment the surface,
and after a time twists it into deep eddies. Again the hidden wind
ploughs, again it smoothes out, whirls, pushes forward new hills of
water, new rows of foam, and raises the rustling river, wins without
ceasing new platforms of land. Sometimes the water, after reaching a
certain boundary, leaps across in a twinkle, pours into a low place,
and makes a shining pond where a moment earlier withered grass was
breaking up into dust heaps.

Though the rise of the river has reached barely one third of its
height, the whole region near the banks is under water. Every hour some
little height takes on the semblance of an island, divided from others
by a narrow channel, which widens gradually and cuts off the house more
and more from its neighbors. Very often he who walked out to work comes
home in a boat from his labor.

Boats and rafts appear