Belshazzar: A Tale of the Fall of Babylon
9781465664686
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
On a certain day in the month Airu, by men of after days styled April, a bireme was speeding down the river Euphrates. Her swarthy Phœnician crew were bending to the double tier of oars that rose flashing from the tawny current; while the flute-player, perched upon the upcurved prow, was piping ever quicker, hastening the stroke, and at times stopping the music to cry lustily, “Faster, and faster yet! Thirty furlongs to Babylon now, and cool Helbon wine in the king’s cellars!” Whereupon all would answer with a loud, “Ha!”; and make the bireme leap on like a very sea-horse. Under the purple awning above the poop, others were scanning the flying waves, and counting the little mud villages dotting the river-banks. A monotonous landscape;—the stream, the sky, and between only a broad green ribbon, broken by clumps of tassel-like date palms and the brown thatched hamlets. Four persons were on the poop, not counting as many ebony-skinned eunuchs who squatted silently behind their masters. Just as the flute-player blew his quickest, a young man of five and twenty rose from the scarlet cushions of his cedar couch, yawned, and stretched his muscular arms. “So we approach Babylon?” he remarked in Chaldee, though with a marked Persian accent. And Hanno the ship-captain, a wiry, intelligent Phœnician in Babylonian service, answered:—“It is true, my Lord Darius; in another ‘double-hour’ we are inside the water-gate of Nimitti-Bel.” The first speaker tossed his head petulantly: “Praised be Ahura the Great, this river voyage closes! I am utterly weary of this hill-less country. Surely the Chaldees have forgotten that God created green mountain slopes, and ravines, and cloud-loved summits.” Hanno shrugged his shoulders. “True; yet this valley is the garden of the earth. The Nile boasts no fairer vineyards nor greater yield of corn-land. He who possesses here a farm has a treasure better than a king’s. Gold is scattered; the river yields eternal riches. Four thousand years, the tablets tell, has the river been a mine of things more precious than gems. And we approach Babylon, rarest casket in all this vast treasure-house.”
