Джеймс Миченер - The Source

Disconsolate, he left the slaves and climbed out of the well, a tired, perplexed man. Turning his back pn the tunnels, on the flags that hung limp in the humid heat, he climbed the mountain seeking the high place where Baal lived, and there alone he lay face downward before the god of this earth, these rocks, these dark burrowings in the ground that seemed to have gone wrong. “Baal, show me the way,” he pleaded humbly. “I am lost in the deep earth like a pitiful mole and my eyes are blinded. Great Baal, guide me through the darkness.”

He stayed for many hours talking with the ancient god from whom his ancestors had derived much consolation, and as the night progressed on the high place, the stars moving across the heavens as Baal had long ago appointed them to move, Jabaal the Hoopoe felt his confidence returning, and he intensified his prayers; and as dawn came it seemed to him that Baal was giving his blessing. Then, as he started down the mountain, morning broke out of the eastern hills and its radiance filled the valleys of Galilee, showing the olive trees gray and beautiful, the birds winging from the tall oaks and the little town snug within its walls, with red flags fluttering slightly in the morning breeze, and the glory of that day was so profound that Jabaal fell to his knees and cried, “Yahweh, Yahweh! I am your child, your instrument. Use me as you will. Drive my head through the earth like a battering ram to accomplish your purposes, great Yahweh, who has given me this day.”

And he left the high place where he had talked with his gods, and he went to the cave of the well and once more laid himself flat in the tunnel to study the critical strings on which so much depended; and again he cried, “It has got to be right! It can be no other!” And he drove his slaves all day, working often at the rock face himself, and that evening when the slave on the wall signaled and the slaves in the well cried, “Hoopoe, Hoopoe! It is your turn,” he slammed his sledge against the rock nine times, but before he had finished there came from the other side, through feet upon feet of primeval rock, the unplanned hammering of another sledge, and the two captains beat upon the rocks, ignoring signals and hearing each other through the solid darkness. Men began to cheer, first in the well and then from the shaft and then all across the town, and flags were waved from the walls and after a while Meshab and Hoopoe met in the open field where the cords were approaching each other, and they knew where they were, and it was exactly as they had planned so long ago.

That night Hoopoe walked with the Moabite to their house by the edge of the shaft, and he bade the southern slave good night. He entered his portion of the house, where he bathed; he came into the room where Kerith had a fine meal waiting, but he was not hungry. “We have done it!” he told her with quiet exultation. “In a few weeks we shall meet.”

“I heard the shouting and ran to the shaft. Even the governor came and we were very proud.” And as she kissed him she whispered, “Today Jerusalem is closer,” and she begged him to eat. But he could not eat that night, and after a while he took his fair wife to bed, where he was soon the happiest man in Makor.

By sound testings Hoopoe and Meshab corrected their headings and set their teams to work on the final push that would unite the two test tunnels, but work was slowed by the fact that the iron tools required for chopping out the rock had been overused and were no longer effective. The two men decided that new tools were required, and to obtain them it was necessary that someone go into the Phoenician seaport of Aecho, which was the only source for iron tools in the area. Because bargaining for a just price was important, Hoopoe felt that he must go, and at first it was his intention to take Meshab along—as an earned reward for having dug his end of the tunnel properly—but the governor dissuaded him from this by pointing out that now more than ever it was essential to have skilled help on hand to supervise what seemed to him the critical stages of the work. Hoopoe was tempted to point out that the true critical stages had occurred seven months ago when he and the Moabite had studied their strings and had oriented their tunnels properly. “Anyone who can listen to sounds can finish the work now,” he said to his wife, but she supported the governor, and so when he started out for Aecho he was forced to go alone.

To have seen Hoopoe set forth on his exciting journey one would have thought that he was heading for some distant territory: even though the hot season was approaching he dressed in a long robe, wore a dagger, climbed on a donkey and waited while the caravan of two groats merchants formed up around him. He waved good-bye to Kerith as if he did not expect to see her for some years, called instructions to the Moabite, who stood on the wall, and saluted the governor. He kicked his donkey, gathered his robes about his knees and was off.

Aecho lay eight miles west of Makor, along an easy road that caravans had been traveling for thousands of years, but it was a mark of this land that throughout history Aecho and Makor were rarely held by the same nation. In most ages Makor marked the westward terminal of some inland people; in all conditions of the land strangers usually occupied the seaport. This year after long negotiation it happened to be Hebrew in Makor, Phoenician in Aecho; in other years it would be other combinations, for control of the sea was so vital that tribes and nations would fight to retain Aecho, whereas they usually lost heart when called upon to besiege Makor for even ten or eleven months; so that over a period of several thousand years, to go from Makor to Aecho was usually a trip of magnitude, an exploration into unknown ways and alien tongues.

Two miles west of Makor the caravan of the groats merchants came to a border guard, where Phoenician soldiers wearing iron shields inspected them, took away Hoopoe’s dagger, gave him a clay tablet receipt and grudgingly allowed him to pass. After a few more miles customs officials checked his possessions, noted the amount of gold he was carrying and gave him another clay tablet, which when presented on his return trip would insure his right to depart. The Phoenicians were polite but they seemed like powerful men who would tolerate no nonsense from strangers, and Hoopoe treated them with deference.

Soon he saw on the horizon the walled city of Aecho, rising from the plains at the point where the River Belus entered the sea. It was even then, in the years before it was moved westward to the hooked promontory where it would become famous in history, an enticing city, for ships from many parts of the Mediterranean came to its harbor and its shops contained a variety of goods matched only in the bazaars of Tyre and Ashkelon. It was through this port that the iron smelted in distant forges reached the Hebrews, and in the shops of Aecho, Hoopoe expected to find the tools his slaves needed.

At the gate to the city he was stopped for the third time, and the receipts given him by the outlying inspectors were filed against the day of his departure. He was warned that he must not get drunk; for the Phoenicians had found that whereas their men could drink copious amounts of beer with little damaging effect, visiting Hebrews after a few jugfuls were apt to become riotous. Hoopoe promised to behave and was allowed to enter the exciting world of Aecho.

He went first to the waterfront, which had charmed him as a child, and there he stayed for some time fascinated as before by the concept of a floating house that was able to drift across an open sea yet put into port whenever its sailors directed. He still could not understand the principle of the sail and wondered how sailors could slow the craft down when it approached land; he was delighted with the ships and the multitude of strange faces that looked down at him from the decks, and he was pleased to see that one of the boats was unloading a cargo of iron.