men."

So great was his mien and so glorious his face as he cried thus, and one
by one drew his long arrows forth and laid them on the board, that the
trembling Guards took heart, and to the number of fifty and one ranged
themselves on the edge of the daïs in a double line. Then they also made
ready their bows and loosened the arrows in their quivers.

Now from without there came a roar of men, and anon, while those of the
house of Pharaoh, and of the guests and nobles, who sat at the feast and
yet lived, fled behind the soldiers, the brazen doors were burst in with
mighty blows, and through them a great armed multitude surged along
the hall. There came soldiers broken from their ranks. There came the
embalmers of the Dead; their hands were overfull of work to-night, but
they left their work undone; Death had smitten some even of these, and
their fellows did not shrink back from them now. There came the smith,
black from the forge, and the scribe bowed with endless writing; and
the dyer with his purple hands, and the fisher from the stream; and the
stunted weaver from the loom, and the leper from the Temple gates. They
were mad with lust of life, a starveling life that the King had taxed,
when he let not the Apura go. They were mad with fear of death; their
women followed them with dead children in their arms. They smote down
the golden furnishings, they tore the silken hangings, they cast the
empty cups of the feast at the faces of trembling ladies, and cried
aloud for the blood of the King.

"Where is Pharaoh?" they yelled, "show us Pharaoh and the Queen
Meriamun, that we may slay them. Dead are our first born, they lie
in heaps as the fish lay when Sihor ran red with blood. Dead are they
because of the curse that has been brought upon us by the prophets of