“Saidst thou two?” interrupted Zaphnath.
“Two of the lean and shrunken, but they ate the fat-fleshed, which were seven,” I answered, watching Zaphnath and the wise men closely, for he was translating to them phrase by phrase as I spoke. He faltered when I described the eating up of the fat cattle; there were wondering and inquiring looks among the wise men and a constant chattering in Kemish. I waited patiently for some time, then waving my coin I demanded,—
“Can none of the grey-beards declare the meaning to me?”
There were more consultations among themselves and with Zaphnath, and presently he said,—
“Before the wise men can declare thy dream, they demand to know whether the lean kine only slaughtered the sleek ones, or if they ate them wholly up? And were they filled and satisfied when they had eaten their fatter sisters?”
“In truth, I forgot to say that they devoured the fat kine wholly and completely, yet it could not be known that they had eaten anything, they were still so lean and ill-favoured.”
This caused even a greater chattering than before, and the youth finally asked,—
“Didst thou dream aught more, or is this all?”
“Truly I had another dream, but it was different. I thought that all the wheat in the field grew upon one stalk in seven great kernels; then a shrivelled and withered stalk began to spring up; when suddenly a rapping on my door awakened me, and I dreamed no more.”
The effect which this produced was most curious. Blank surprise, hidden cunning, anxious debating and uneasy hesitation, succeeded each other among the wise men. I watched it with great interest, and perceived the doctor’s satisfaction, but I again demanded the interpretation.
“Know, then, O dreamer,” answered Zaphnath, “that we understand not only the import of all that thou hast dreamed, but even what thou wouldst have dreamed hadst thou not been wakened! But, in spite of thy handsome offer, it doth not appear fit or proper to us that the interpretation of it should be made known to thee. Tell me, however, hast thou had conversation with any other person in Kem, save with me and with the wise men?”
“Thou knowest well, O Zaphnath, that I speak not the Kemish tongue, and can understand or communicate only through thy interpretation. I have spoken with no one on all of Ptah except through thee, and if thou wilt not declare my dream I care not, for while ye have been debating among yourselves I have learned its meaning!”
“Thou understandest it already!” he exclaimed. “Pray tell us, then, how thou hast learned it.”
“The chief wise man hath declared it to me in my own tongue!” I exclaimed, with a meaning look toward the doctor, who had been speaking to me to urge caution. “He saith that the seven sleek kine are the Kemish people, and the two lean and ill-favoured are we two from the Earth—for are not thy people larger and plumper than we!—and the seven denoteth their much greater number. But the dream meaneth that we two, poor and hungry, might eat up all your people and become their masters.”
There was still more delighted jabbering and excited comment. Then Zaphnath arose, and turning graciously to the doctor said to him,—
“Thy marvellous interpretation, O chief grey-beard, is most correct and wise, and it hath wholly eaten ours up! We quite agree with thy superior wisdom, for thou only hast read the dream aright!”
CHAPTER IX
Getting into the Corner
The doctor’s new official position carried with it the use of a spacious, rambling dwelling, situated just inside the gate where we had met Miss Blank. It was thus conveniently located for the doctor’s duties at the observatories on the plateau. Another house would have been assigned to me, but I preferred to live with the doctor, and I desired to keep my eye on those enormous stone structures which our telescope had quickly relegated to scientific uselessness.
We had established ourselves comfortably in this house, surrounded ourselves with a modest retinue of servants, and were rapidly becoming acquainted with Kemish life and manners. The doctor learned the language laboriously from the deposed wise man, who had no means of communicating with him except in the tongue he was teaching. Thus it happened that the doctor could teach me in a few hours in the evening what it had taken him all day to learn. Naturally I picked up the most common phrases used in receiving and handling the grain, by hearing them frequently; but I soon learned that I must pronounce them with exactly the same intonation and emphasis, or they were not understood. Knowing but one language themselves, they had no facility in recognising mispronounced words, or in guessing at the meaning of incomplete phrases on which I stumbled.
The most difficult thing I encountered was their method of telling the time. During the day it was reckoned rationally enough by the passage of the Sun, which was never obscured by clouds and could always be seen. Every house had a small hole in the roof, at a fixed distance from the floor, and the daily track and varying shape of the spot of sunshine thus admitted gave names to the periods of the day. There seemed to be a settled superstition that no house was fortunate unless this spot of sunshine entered by the door in the morning. For this reason the principal door in nearly every house was built in the west, so that the rising Sun would cast its spot first on the porch outside and then gradually creep in through the door, across the floor, and up the opposite wall late in the afternoon. Of course there were daylight periods in the early morning and late afternoon when the Sun was too low to cast a spot, and these were known by terms which are best translated “before the clock” and “after the clock.”
No one dared to make a social call while the Sun was still outside the door, but friends were best welcome when the Sun was just entering it. Moreover, whoever slept until the Sun had entered the door was looked upon as an irredeemable sluggard. The track of the spot from the door-sill to the wall opposite was measured by linear distance from the centre or noon-position of the spot. As in different houses the apertures through which the clock-light was admitted were always the same distance from the floor, such expressions as “two feet before noon,” or “a foot and a quarter after noon” (which I translate from the Kemish) always had a definite and exact meaning. The nearer the spot drew to noon the more exactly circular it became and the more slowly it moved. Therefore, very fine measurements were needed in the middle of the day, and an inch near noon represented nearly as much time as a foot in the morning or evening.
But the daylight methods were simplicity itself compared with the night methods, which were calculated on an entirely different system, based on the combined movements of the two moons, neither of which agreed or coincided with the movement of the Sun in any close degree. I urged upon the doctor, as one of his earliest duties, the necessity of reforming their calendar and establishing a uniform method of denoting the time, to extend throughout the day and night. But on this point he failed to agree with me.
“What are our seconds, minutes, hours, and weeks after all?” he queried. “They are only arbitrary and meaningless divisions of time, which we have found necessary because we have a very meagre heavenly clockwork; but here they have a very elaborate one. Our day is a rational period based on the Sun’s revolution. Here they have seen fit to give up the Sun-day to simplify matters and stick to a Moon-day. Their two contrary moons furnish a rational, if rather intricate, method of telling the time at night. They are best understood by imagining them to represent the two hands of a clock. The smaller moon is what may be called a ‘week hand,’ completing its revolution in five and a half Sun-days; which they have for convenience divided into six Moon-days of twenty-two hours each. The larger moon makes two complete revolutions in a day, just as the hour hand of a clock does; and it really makes but little difference that it travels around the dial in an opposite direction to that of the ‘week hand,’ or that they both gain two hours a day on the Sun. These are mere details, that one gets used to in the end.”