Moses, Man of the Mountain by Zora Neale Hurston Page A

you are ready to pay a large price for it. None of us ain’t got nothing, you know.”
    “I wish they would hurry and make up their minds on the price.”
    The old man crept closer and murmured in the ear of Moses.
    “Some folks got minds already made up that could help you.”
    “Why don’t they let me know, then? I am really in a big hurry to cross over.”
    “Take me for instance—I am poor and old too, so that the money would do me more good than anybody else around here.”
    “Have you a boat?”
    “No, my Prince. But I have something to tell you which you don’t need a boat to do if you will give me the money whilst the others are too far off to hear what we are saying.”
    Moses reached for his purse and gave generously. The man kissed the money in a sort of ecstasy and hid it in his clothes.
    “I never expected to be so rich!” he said in an exalted tone. “Now, I can have a funeral of the second class with a tomb. Oh, yes, my Prince, it is all a matter of the hour and the tide and you can wade across the sea.”
    “The Red Sea is a mighty place of waters. You are joking with me and I am in no mood for jokes.”
    “Don’t kill me, Suten-Rech, I wouldn’t dare to joke with such a big man as you. Look, you walk down the beach about two miles north and you come to a narrow neck of water, where the Red Sea joins the outer sea. It ain’t never very deep there at no time, and at certain times at low tide, the strait is just about dry. If a man started at the hour when the tide islowest, before it rushes back he could be on the other side—if the man was right peart in his walking. A sort of light trot would put you across there in no time.”
    Moses hurried away and broke into a run as soon as he was out of sight. The tide was receding, but he did not stand and wait for it. He pulled off his shoes and his shenti, the short skirt worn by the military men and began to wade across. All the time the water was shrinking away before him. So Moses felt himself moving Godward with an understanding of force and time. So he walked out with clean feet on the other side.
    Moses had crossed over. He was not in Egypt. He had crossed over and now he was not an Egyptian. He had crossed over. The short sword at his thigh had a jewelled hilt but he had crossed over and so it was no longer the sign of high birth and power. He had crossed over, so he sat down on a rock near the seashore to rest himself. He had crossed over so he was not of the house of Pharaoh. He did not own a palace because he had crossed over. He did not have an Ethiopian Princess for a wife. He had crossed over. He did not have friends to sustain him. He had crossed over. He did not have enemies to strain against his strength and power. He had crossed over. He was subject to no law except the laws of tooth and talon. He had crossed over. The sun who was his friend and ancestor in Egypt was arrogant and bitter in Asia. He had crossed over. He felt as empty as a post hole for he was none of the things he once had been. He was a man sitting on a rock. He had crossed over.

CHAPTER 11
    W hich way he was going when he got rested, Moses didn’t know. He knew where he had come from and what it meant, but where he was going was something else again. Oh, well, he had the rest of his life to strain with that subject. So he sat on a rock in the morning sun on the far side of the Red Sea and conferred with the Never Untrue, which in a common way of speaking people call Experience. In this way he walked backwards over his road from the palace to the seat on the rock in a strange nation. He looked back and the glance changed him like Lot’s wife.
    “How was a young man to know these things?” he thought out loud. “You have to go to life to know life. God! It costs you something to do good! You learn that by experience, too. If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other folks then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding. It