Page:Legends of Old Testament Characters.djvu/145

XXII.] The camel went to the perpetual fountain, and she drank it up, so that from that day forward from their spring they could get no water, and they suffered from thirst.

The Thamudites went to Saleh and said, "We need water!"

Saleh replied, "The fountain shall flow one day for you, and one day for the camel."

So it was agreed that the camel should drink alternate days with the people of the land, and that alternate days each should be without water whilst the other was drinking.

Then Saleh said, for he saw that the people hated the camel and her foal, "Beware that you slay not these animals, for the day that they perish, great shall be your punishment."

The she-camel lived thirty years among the Thamudites, but God revealed to Saleh that they were bent on slaying the camel, and he said, "The slayer will be a child with red hair and blue eyes." Now the Thamudites ordered ten midwives to attend on the women in their confinement, and if a child were born with the signs indicated by the prophet, it was to be destroyed instantly.

Nine children had thus been killed, and the parents conceived a deadly animosity against Saleh the prophet, and formed a design to slay him. One of the chiefs among the Thamudites had a son born to him with red hair and blue eyes, and the nurses would have destroyed it, but the nine men spake to the father of the child, and they banded together, and saved the infant.

Now when this child had attained the age of eleven, he became great and handsome; and each of the parents whose children had been put to death, when he saw him, said, "Such an one would have been my son, had not he been slain at the instigation of Saleh." And they combined to put the prophet to death. They said among themselves, "We will kill him outside the city, and returning, say we were elsewhere when he was murdered." Having formed this project, they left the city and placed themselves under a rock, awaiting his exit from the gates. But God commanded the rock, and it fell and crushed them all. Next day their corpses were recovered, but the Thamudites were very wroth, and said, "Saleh has slain our children, and now he slays our men;" and they added, "We will be revenged on his camel."