And now the deep-tongued voice of labour swelled in volume, rolling upward in incessant waves of melody to where the King sat smiling on his tower. He listened to the roar of sharp command, commingled with the answering cries of slaves and the groan of laden carts. Far out across the plain he spied a train of sleds, each drawn by a thousand men, and creeping inch by inch through tawny sands; from the quarries in the south they bore huge blocks of basalt wherefrom strange effigies would be carven in the likeness of gods, of lions and of wingéd bulls. Beyond the wall King Ninus heard the humming din of Assyria's hosts encamped, the clank of arms and the rumbling tread of horse and foot. Within, he listened to the whine of ropes, to the creak of hoisting-cranes which lifted a world of brick and swung like living tentacles above the sweating pigmies down below. He heard the songs of boatmen on his black canals, a droning air that rose and fell, stilling the harsher cries of labour's pain, and seeming to chant the kingly builder's praise.
The heat of the summer sun poured down, a pitiless, parching blaze, while a horde of delvers bowed beneath their lashes and their loads. They staggered at their tasks, each praying to his gods for the shades of night to fall, when he slept like a beaten dog till dawn awoke him to another hell of toil.
And thus fair Nineveh grew, as if by magic, from the dust, the while a master-devil watched it from his tower. And the heart of Ninus swelled within him and was glad.
King Ninus, grandson of the mighty Shalmaneser, mounted his throne in youth, a throne which ruled a kingdom run to seed through the slothful reign of Shamashi-Ramân; yet as his grandsire's heart had beat for war alone, so beat the heart of Ninus, resting not till the glory of Assyria flamed forth again.
From the city of Kalah, crumbling in decay, he began his little conquests, conquering his neighbors and joining their strength to his, making them friends and allies rather than slaves who bowed beneath a yoke of might. He moulded their uncouth valor into ordered rule, exchanging their clumsy weapons for his better tools of war, till, presently, an army raised its head from out the mud of ignorance. A conquered people, so long as they paid him tribute and kept their covenants, were left in peace, their gods untroubled, their temples sacred to their own desires; but should they revolt, then Ninus and his grim, unpitying host returned, to leave their cities smouldering heaps upon the plain, the heads of their chiefs set up on poles by way of warning to all who entertained a similar unrest.