Long wind-blown streaks crossed the zenith from east to west and
the setting stars were blurred. The moon had worn a narrowing circlet
in the night. Meneptah shook his head.
Suddenly some one in the ranks of the royal guard exclaimed to a mate:
"Look! Look to the southeast!"
Meneptah turned his eyes in that direction, as though he had been
commanded. There, above the spot where he had guessed the Israelites
to be, a straight and mighty column of vapor extended up, up into the
smoky blue of the sky. The tortuous shapes of the striations across
the zenith indicated that there was great wind at that height, but the
column did not move or change its form. It was further distinguished
from the clouds over the dawn, by a fine amber light upon it, deepening
to gold in its shadows. So vivid the tint, that steady contemplation
was necessary to assure the beholders that it was not fire, climbing in
and out of the pillar's heart. Egypt's skies were rarely clouded and
never by such a formation as this.
Meneptah turned his troubled eyes hurriedly toward the east. He must
not miss the sunrise. At that moment, unheralded, the disk of the sun
shot above the horizon as if blown from a crater of the
under-world--blurred, milky-white, without warmth.
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