The strait of Egypt was sore and the aid of the gods essential. The
priests had seized upon the site as a place of prayers, placed a tablet
there, commanding them, and a soldier to see that the command was
obeyed.
The soldier was in cavalry dress of tunic and tasseled coif, with pike
and bull-hide shield and a light broadsword. He was no ordinary bearer
of arms. He walked like a man accustomed to command; he turned a cold
eye upon too-familiar wayfarers and startled them into silence by the
level blackness of his low brows. Wealth, beauty, age nor rank won
servility or superciliousness from him. The Egyptian soldier was not
obliged to cringe, and this one abode by the privilege.
He was a man of one attitude, one mood and few words. The Memnon might
as well have been expected to smile. The earliest riser found him
there; the latest night wanderer came upon him. When the day broke,
after the falling of the dreadful night, the brave or the thirsty who
ventured forth saw him at his post, silent, unastonished, unafraid.
Once only the soldier had been seen to flinch. Merenra, now nomarch of
Bubastis, but whilom commander over Israel at Pa-Ramesu, paused one
noon with his train at the well.
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