“Breath of Ra! How many maidens and hapless youths think you Baltu brings to Thebes this trip?”
A sharp blow from the staff of the overseer cut short this soliloquy. Once again began the splashing of waters mingled with the droning song of the irrigation worker: “Life to this seed, O Waters, Breath of Osiris, Blood of Isis! Life to these our seedlings that we may eat and live to sing thy praises.”
The galley drifted slowly to the bank. The oars were drawn in; the great steering-oars alone guided her.
The emblem at the prow of the vessel showed her to hail from Tyre. Her freight, as Nakht had hinted, consisted in the main of hapless youths and maidens torn from the arms of their murdered parents, enveigled from their homes by false promises or bought outright in foreign slave-marts.
Among the jostling crowds gathered upon the embankment and overlooking the clustered vessels, stood Renny, the Syrian. His gaze was fixed upon the forms of two little children busily occupied in modeling dolls from the plastic Nile mud of the river bank. The children’s occupation had interested him since Renny, the Syrian, was a sculptor.
Renny was startled out of his state of artistic introspection by the harsh voices of a number of the foreign sailors. They had jumped ashore from the Tyrian galley and now sought to jostle their way up the steep and crowded bank.
While these swarthy adventurers drove in the mooring-stake, Renny’s eyes roamed along the deck of the galley itself. As he gazed at the ordered cases of merchandise, which had but recently been brought up on deck preparatory to their unloading, three figures emerged from a cabin door placed toward the stern of the vessel.
Renny instantly decided that the first of the three, a huge man heavily bearded and with a commanding eye and voice of thunder, was the master and probable owner of the vessel. The second was a dainty youth, of a nation unknown to Renny; the third a woman, by her robes a Syrian like himself.
The merchant made some remark in a tongue unknown to Renny and, at the same time, pointed shoreward. The trembling youth replied by throwing the long sleeve of his rich robe over his head, a gesture indicative of grief or despair.