All Egypt showed up darkly in the coming day.
Kenkenes, in his couch of reeds, slept on peacefully. The mid-morning
sun shone in his face before he awakened.
He leaped to his feet, cramped and stiffened by his long inactivity,
and looked about him. Near by was a disturbed spot of wide
circumference. Here had the struggle taken place. Here, also, some of
the sand was stained with the blood of the Nubian, who had been wounded
by Rachel. Fresh footprints led toward the water. He followed them
with a wildly beating heart. There were no marks of a little sandal.
At the Nile edge the deep line cut by a keel was still visible in the
wet sand. His own boat and the other were gone. All other signs had
been obliterated, for the wind had been busy during the darkness.
Across the cultivated land, or rather the land which would have been
wheat-covered but for the locusts, he saw the huts of rustics, and to
each of these he went, asking of the pallid and terror-stricken tenants
if Rachel had come to them. Gaining no information, he went next to
Masaarah, appeasing his hunger with succulent roots plucked from the
loam beside the river. The quarries were deserted, the pocket in the
valley, where the Israelites had pitched their tents, was as solitary
as it had ever been.
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