With these words he finished his prayer, which, though boyish and
incoherent, gushed from the inmost depths of his heart. Then he sprang
with long leaps from the ruined tower to the barren plain at his feet,
and ran southward as fleetly as if he were escaping from captivity a
second time. He felt how the wind rushing from the north-east urged him
forward, and told himself that it would also hasten the march of
Pharaoh's soldiers. Perhaps the leaders of his people did not yet know
how vast was the military power that threatened them, and undervalued the
danger in which their position placed them. But he saw it, and could
give them every information. Haste was necessary, and he felt as though
he had gained wings in this race with the storm.

The village of Pihahiroth was soon gained, and while dashing by it
without pausing, he noticed that its huts and tents were deserted by men
and cattle. Perhaps its inhabitants had fled with their property to a
place of safety before the advancing Egyptian troops or the hosts of his
own people.

The farther he went, the more cloudy became the sky,--which here so
rarely failed to show a sunny vault of blue at noonday,--the more
fiercely howled the tempest. His thick locks fluttered wildly around his
burning head, he panted for breath, yet flew on, on, while his sandals
seemed to him to scarcely touch the ground.

The nearer he came to the sea, the louder grew the howling and whistling
of the storm, the more furious the roar of the waves dashing against the
rocks of Baal-zephon. Now--a short hour after he had left the tower--he
reached the first tents of the camp, and the familiar cry: "Unclean!" as
well as the mourning-robes of those whose scaly, disfigured faces looked