A courier rushes in from the priests, who from the highest hill had followed the course of the battle, and reports that on the left wing the troops of Mentezufis are visible, and that the Libyans are surrounded on three sides. "They would fly like deer if the sand did not hinder them." "Victory! May our chief live forever!" cried Pentuer. It was only two hours after midday. The Asiatic cavalry sing loudly, and send arrows into the air in honor of Rameses. The staff officers dismount, and rush to kiss the hands and feet of the viceroy; at last they take him from the saddle, raise him in the air, shouting,-- "Here is a mighty leader! He has trampled the enemies of Egypt! Amon is on his right, and on his left, who can oppose him?" Meanwhile the Libyans, pushing back all the time, had ascended the sandy hills on the south, and after them Egyptians. From out the cloud came horsemen every minute and rushed to Rameses. "Mentezufis has taken them in the rear!" cried one. "Two hundred have surrendered!" cried another. "Patrokles has taken them in the rear!" "Three Libyan standards are captured: the ram, the lion, and the sparrow-hawk!" More and more men gathered round the staff: it was surrounded by warriors who were bloody and dust-covered. "May he live through eternity! May he live through eternity, our leader!" The prince was so excited, that he laughed and cried in turn and said to his retinue,-- "The gods have been compassionate. I feared that we had lost. Evil is the plight of a leader; without drawing a sword and even without seeing, he must answer for everything!" "Live thou, O conquering commander, live through eternity!" cried the warriors. "A fine victory for me!" laughed Rameses. "I do not know even how they won it." "He wins a victory, and wonders how it came!" cried some one in the retinue. "I say that I saw not the face of the battle," explained the prince. "Be at rest, our commander," said Pentuer. "Thou didst dispose the army so wisely that the enemy had to be beaten. And in what way? Just as if that did not belong to thee, but the regiments." "I did not even draw a sword. I do not see one Libyan," complained the prince. On the southern heights there was a struggling and a seething, but in the valley the dust had begun to settle here and there, and a crowd of Egyptian soldiers were visible as through a mist, their spears pointed upward. Rameses turned his horse in that direction and rode out to the deserted field of battle, where just recently had been, the struggle of the central column. It was a place some hundreds of yards in width, with deep furrows filled with bodies of the dead and wounded. On the side along which the prince was approaching, Egyptians and Libyans lay intermixed, in a long line, still farther on there were almost none except Libyans.