The 22 Letters (18 page)

The Chaldean came up to him muttering something about “Too old for this kind of thing.” But he seemed to be unhurt, and Nun took him by the arm and hurried him off toward the shore, and the ship.

They made their way in silence along a sandy track that led through cultivated ground behind the harbor, and came at last to the beach. The landscape was so peaceful under the setting moon, the air was so balmy with the scent of growing things, and the sea was so calm with its tiny wavelets falling softly on the sand, that Nun found it difficult to believe that he was still in great danger; he had to remind himself that he had not the slightest idea of how to get out of his predicament.

They walked along the beach until they were opposite the island. Nun judged it to be within easy swimming distance from the shore, though after misjudging the length of the rope he did not have too much confidence in himself. It was certainly near enough for him to be able to hear voices drifting over the water. Somebody on the island was singing—and then Nun clutched his companion's arm and stood listening. He knew the song, a doleful sailor's love-song from Gebal—and what was more, he knew the singer. There was surely only one man in the world who sang that song with always the same mistakes, and he knew just which member of his crew it was. So the crew, or at least some of it, were on the island too.

Nun took off his upper garment and handed it to the Chaldean in silence. His companion became agitated, put his mouth to Nun's ear and whispered, “I cannot swim!” as if fearful of being forced into some other impossible activity.

“Stay here!” breathed Nun. “Don't move. I'll come back for you.” And he slipped as quietly as he could into the warm clear water.

Gently he launched himself into deeper water and began to swim toward the island, trying not to break the surface with his arms. If the crew and the ship were on the island, there must be guards to keep them there, though they might have little reason to be vigilant in this peaceful spot. He made for the ship, which seemed silent and deserted, and after a while he was in its shadows and his movements were less conspicuous among the cluck of waves that surrounded the hull.

There was a rope hanging over the side, and Nun grasped it, hung on for a while listening hard, and then pulled himself painfully and carefully out of the water and into the ship.

For a time he was content to rest upon the planking, as if he had come home at last. But what to do next? He listened to the voices on the island. A regular sing-song was now shattering the peace of the night, and as far as Nun could make out there were Cretan songs as well as the songs of Gebal. Apparently the guards were joining in. This might be to his advantage, he thought. Then he froze as he saw a figure outlined against the stars, coming along the wooden jetty toward the ship.

The man carelessly put his foot on the bulwark of the ship, causing the whole vessel to roll, and jumped aboard. He started rummaging about among the stores stowed in the forepeak, cursing as he blundered against the timbers in the dark. The curses were from Gebal too. Nun took a chance and let out a low hiss to attract his attention. The man straightened up, and said in a normal voice, “Who's there?” and Nun recognized the tones of the boatswain.

“Shh!” hissed Nun. “It's I, Nun, the captain.” The boatswain came over to him and peered at him in the dark.

“That really you, sir? What are you doing here?”

“We're escaping, boatswain. Is all the crew here?”

“Yes,” came the reply. “All present, sir. They're treating us well enough, as you can hear. Having a good time. They call us their guests, but I reckon we're prisoners just the same.”

“You're right, boatswain. How many guards?”

“Fewer than we are, anyway. But they've taken away our weapons, and they're fully armed.”

“Could you rush them?” suggested Nun.

The boatswain considered. “I daresay we could, with things as they are. All very matey tonight. Why don't you join the party, sir? Guards wouldn't notice another Giblite among the rest of us.”

“Very well. But find me some clothing. It will look pretty odd if I appear naked.”

When the boatswain had found Nun a sailor's tunic, they went back together along the jetty and casually joined the party of Giblites and Cretan guards who were sitting around on the rocks by the light of one or two torches. No one took any notice of them in the gloom. It was not a very hilarious party, rather a means of whiling away the tedium of the hot night, it seemed. The Giblites had embarked upon one of their interminable, repetitive chorus songs—and Nun seized his opportunity. He joined a little group of sailors, and confident that whatever words might be sung would mean nothing to the Cretans, joined in the chorus loud and clear, but with his own words:

“I am your captain, I am Nun,

We must escape from Crete.

When this song ends, rush the guards!

Bind and gag them, keep them quiet!

Then to the ship without a sound,

And off we'll go to sea!”

The sailors' looked startled, and nearly stopped singing, but Nun kept the rhythm going with hand-claps. When he saw by their nods that they were understanding, he moved on to another group, and repeated the chorus to them. The words caught on, and he could see the men grinning and joining in the joke. As the song continued the original words of the chorus, were abandoned, and one by one the sailors joined in together with:

“When this song ends, rush the guards!

Bind and gag them, keep them quiet,

Then to the ship without a sound

And we'll away to sea!”

It was not poetry, but it was certainly popular. Clearly none of the guards understood the language: and to Nun's delight he heard some of the Cretans trying to join in the song parrot-wise, little knowing what they were inciting the prisoners to do.

The, presumably, sad old story of the girl that had loved a sailor drew to its end. The sailors rose to their feet as the final chorus was reached. Then with a united shout on the words “
We'll away to
SEA!” each Giblite jumped on the nearest Cretan soldier. The guards, too astonished to do anything, had their heads muffled in cloaks and their limbs secured with good sailors' knots before they knew what was happening.

“Keep singing, boys!” said Nun. If anyone was listening from the shore a sudden silence might raise suspicion. Keeping the regular chorus going as they made for the ship, the sailors unshipped the oars, cast off the moorings, and pushed off from the jetty. When the ship's head was pointed north to the open sea, Nun gave the order, “Heave away!” and the vessel leaped forward.

Then suddenly—“Avast! Hold water! Back her down!” Nun cried, to the bewilderment of the crew. “Ye gods! We've forgotten the pilot!”

They backed the ship over the short stretch of water to the shore. As they got as near as Nun dared, he could see the Chaldean standing patiently on the beach, holding Nun's clothes. “Come on, sir,” he called across the water, “you'll have to get a little wet.”

Without hesitating the Chaldean walked into the dead calm water until it was up to his shoulders and he was under the quarter of the ship. Then Nun and the boatswain quickly reached over and hoisted him aboard.

Once again Nun gave the order to row, and the ship moved away from the land. Soon as they moved farther out, they began to meet rougher water and could feel the breeze from which the mountains had hitherto protected them. Putting the steering-oar over Nun turned the ship's head to the East.

“Which stars for the eastern passage, Chaldean?” he sang out.

8

The Mine in the Desert

Aleph, the scribe, continues his journey—The Dead Sea—The Egyptian copper mines in the Sinai peninsula—Information of attack on Gebal by the Egyptians—The first inscription in the new alphabet—Pigeon post

When Aleph returned with Ish to Jericho, after their patrol in the mountains, they found everything in a state of turmoil. The column was already re-forming, getting ready to resume its march south. Though the soldiers of the patrol, and Aleph, and Ish, were weary, the commander of the column told them to prepare to leave at once and barely listened to their report on the hill tribes. Ish was roughly ordered to get his things packed, and Aleph was beaten for being late to fall in with the prisoners. The easy-going discipline of the previous part of the journey had vanished, and there was nothing but bad temper, cursing, and grousing. What had happened? Soon they were on their way again, marching due South. Aleph was surprised when an hour's march over the plain brought them to the shore of another sea. It was more than a lake, for though both sides were easily visible its ends could not be seen in the hot haze that hung over it. There was something strange about its waters, a leaden color even in the sunlight, and a sluggish motion to its waves, but the sight of it was refreshing as they journeyed along at the foot of the mountains on its eastern shore. The air was oppressive, the sun beat down and there was no vegetation at all, yet Aleph felt happier to be between the mountains and the sea again; and he promised himself the pleasure of a bath when they halted in the evening.

The sun was going down behind purple mountains on the far shore when they halted and prepared camp. Aleph approached the sergeant in charge of the prisoners.

“May I bathe?” he asked.

The sergeant exchanged a curious glance with some of the other soldiers. “Feel like a nice swim, lad?” he grinned.

“I can't swim,” Aleph said, “but I'd like to cool down after the march.”

“Better have a proper swim, hadn't he?” the sergeant said to the soldiers, and they laughed.

“But I can't swim,” repeated Aleph. “I'll just paddle in a shallow place.”

The sergeant turned cross. “You prisoners come to me and bother me with requests to go paddling like children! We'll give him paddle, won't we, men? All right, you four, see that this prisoner has his swim like a man. See that he dives in where it's good and deep.”

The four soldiers got up grinning and took hold of Aleph. “No, no!” he protested. “I don't want to swim, I can't swim. I don't know how.”

They dragged him to a rock overhanging deep water.

“Don't push me in! I can't dive! I'll drown!” cried Aleph.

When he struggled in panic they found a rope and tied his hands and legs and carried him bound to the water. “How can I swim if you tie me up?” moaned Aleph. Why had they suddenly decided to drown him? “You'll get into trouble if you drown a valuable prisoner,” he panted. “They need me in Egypt, I'm a scribe.”

The soldiers roared with laughter, swung him three times, and launched him into the water. His last hour had come, and he prepared himself to sink into chill depths and never breathe air again.

But what was this—mouth and nose full of the tastes of an apothecary's pots? Eyes smarting with salt? A warm sticky liquid that bore him up and left him floating ridiculously on the surface, while his arms and legs stuck up in the air, and to his ears came the shouts of laughter from the soldiers on the shore?

They left him in the Dead Sea until he drifted like a log to the shore. It was Ish who helped him out and untied him; he was none the worse except that he felt ridiculous and longed for a wash in fresh water to get rid of the salt from his body and clothes. But it was to be a long time before he would be able to do that.

Ish, as they sat talking that night in the camp, told him the reason for the sullenness of the troops and the despondency of the prisoners. The news had got round that they were not going to Egypt at all. There was a shortage of workers in the copper and turquoise mines of Sinai, and so the destination of both guards and prisoners had been changed.

Aleph was silent. Was he not even to see the palaces and temples of Egypt, after all this journeying?

“What is Sinai like?” he asked.

“I know a little about it,” Ish replied; “A God-forsaken wilderness of barren mountains, they say. Only a Pharaoh could condemn people to live there, and only copper and turquoise come out of it.”

It was a dreary march from then on. They came to hate this sea of dead chemical liquid, where no fish jumped, no birds hovered or dived, but when they left it there was even less relief for the eyes among the burning rocks. They climbed up again to plateau country, where the air was drier and more tolerable, then to a few oases and cultivated settlements, and at last to a port on what Ish said was an arm of the Red Sea. This was a real sea, apparently linked with the great ocean that surrounded the world.

Ish had sought out Aleph among the prisoners the day after they arrived, and found him looking longingly at the waves.

“If I got on a ship here, could I sail back to Gebal, do you think?” Aleph asked him.

“It is best not to torment yourself with such thoughts,” said Ish. “Besides, I think that would be impossible.”

“All the same,” said Aleph, “it looks the same as the sea at Gebal. It is some comfort.”

“I am glad,” said Ish, “for I fear I have little comfort for you. You must go your way to Sinai. And I—”

“You are not leaving us?” said Aleph anxiously.

“I am to take a ship to Egypt,” said Ish.

Aleph hung his head. “It is a good thing for you. I am happy for it,” he said at last.

“Perhaps we shall meet again,” said Ish encouragingly. “In Egypt, perhaps even in Gebal some day. And maybe some good will even come of your being in Sinai.”

They said their farewells, but Aleph felt they would not see each other again.

Aleph was never to remember much about the southward march to Sinai. He was not living, yet not dead; he had no friend, no hopes, and hardly any recollections. Existence was merely a matter of putting one foot before the other in the shimmering heat of the rocky desert, and collapsing into exhausted sleep at the end of each day. The one thing that reminded him that he was a person, with a life of his own, was the companionship of the incongruous bird in its cage, miraculously thriving despite all the rigors of the march. The effort to keep it alive was perhaps the only thing that kept him going. Perhaps it would have been kinder to have let it go before, but Beth's words ran through his head as if they were a solemn vow he had taken. “Let him go when you get to where you are going.” And while he still had to put one foot in front of another, he had not yet got there.

He was hardly aware of arriving at their destination, a valley like a great open oven among the baking mountains. Scorched slaves toiled in galleries digging out the copper ore and carrying it away in baskets on their heads; others suffered worse torments at the refinery, where the heat of the smelting furnaces was added to the fantastic heat of the sun. He looked dazedly at the infernal scene. Could anyone live long in such a place? Or had he perhaps died already and been sent to a region of eternal punishment?

Yet when he was led to his place of work he found that he was asked to do something even more impossible. He was being asked to work with his brain, although he felt that it had long ago oozed out in sweat through his scalp.

He was received by the chief of the clerks, a dried-up chip of a man. He asked Aleph if he could count and tally in the Egyptian manner and assigned him to the stockpiles of smelted copper from the refineries. The penalty for any deficiency or mistake was to be sentenced to stoking the furnaces. “They only last a few months there,” said the chief clerk. “That's why we're short of tally clerks at present.” It was some time before Aleph's slow brain worked out what he meant.

His name had to be registered on a big scroll of papyrus. When he said he came from Gebal, the chief clerk gave him a sharp look from his black gimlet eyes. “You've got yourselves to thank for this extra work, then, you Canaanites,” he said.

Aleph stood dumb and uncomprehending. The chief clerk went on speaking, not that he cared to enlighten this wretched Giblite, but in this outpost of exile he liked to keep his brain going by talking politics. “All the news comes here, you know, and none goes out. So there's no harm in me telling you. Tyre, Sidon, Gebal—these places have always belonged to Egypt. But since the revolution you've all wanted to be independent. Especially rude and defiant your King was, they say. That's why Pharaoh wants weapons to arm an expeditionary force. They're going to march up the coast and put things to rights. Going to raze Gebal to the ground and put your lot to the sword, I'm told. And we've got to sweat to make the copper.”

Slowly Aleph began to understand what the chief clerk was saying. It was not enough that he should suffer here but everything he did would be helping to make weapons that might be used against his own family.

“Get on with it, then!” snapped the clerk. “Don't stand there! You can start at once!”

Aleph turned away, but the chief clerk called after him, “What's this about a bird you've got? See that it's turned in at the temple, we're always short of sacrificial animals here.”

Aleph walked slowly out of the building to where he had left the pigeon in the cage, and looked at it without feeling. This was the end of his journey, sure enough. This was where he was going to. All he had to do was to open the door of the cage and let the bird go. That it would make his captors angry did not matter; he was glad to be capable of this small gesture, even though it would do him little good. Yet it was difficult to believe the bird would find its way back over all those weary marches to Gebal. Gebal? It existed in another world, and it was in another age that he had said good-bye so casually to his sister, that he had looked down upon the city from the height, that he had looked over the mountain range for the first time, and even felt a childish excitement at the prospect of seeing Egypt. And if her white pigeon were to arrive at the loft, what could it tell Beth of her brother's sufferings? Nothing. And if it could, would that make her happier? Perhaps it was too late anyhow, and Pharaoh's armies had taken Gebal by surprise and put it to the sword.

He picked up the birdcage and walked in a stupor to the sweltering warehouse where he was to work. In a corner was a rough table, papyrus rolls, pens, and ink. Other clerks were stacking ingots of copper in piles and morosely tallying them on the strips of papyrus. He looked at the thin papery strips, the pens, and the ink; then at the bird. What about the sign game he had played with his sister? How much of it, he wondered, did she remember?

Perhaps it was not too late to get a message through to Gebal—a message that would tell his sister what had become of him. At the same time it might warn the King of Gebal of the danger that threatened the city. But it was unheard of, to send a message through the air a distance of many weeks' marches. Fearful doubt told him it was preposterous, but he
had
to believe it was possible. It was possible, and that was enough to make him forget the oppressive heat and the hopelessness of his situation.

He must take no risks with his plan, nor arouse any suspicions. He put the birdcage inconspicuously in a corner and set immediately to work with the other clerks, piling ingots, checking and tallying them, packing them in panniers ready to be sent off by ass-train to the armorers in Egypt. It was exhausting work, physically and mentally, yet he kept a corner of his brain alive and apart, and through it paraded the signs that meant nothing in the world to anyone but him and his sister—the twenty-two letters. Could he remember them himself? He said their names over:

“Aleph—the ox

beth—the house

gimel—the stick

daleth—the door

the little man who said Ha!

waw—the peg

zayin—the weapon

(and where was he, Zayin, his elder brother?)

keth—the hurdle

teth—the ball of twine

yod—the hand

kaph—the palm branch

lam—the rod

mem—the water

nun—the sea serpent

(and the sailor, voyaging confidently over the seas)

samekh—the fish

ain—the eye

pe—the mouth

quoph—the monkey

resh—the head

(and he thought of his father, head of the family)

shin—the teeth

taw—the mark they put on the felled timber

and ssad—the grasshopper”

He recited the list over and over like a magic spell, and it gave him a marvelous confidence. And yet the words were not magic. There was no mystery to them: if you remembered them correctly, they were as sure as counting; it could not go wrong. Just put the first sounds together, and you could make any word in the language.