The Galilean by Bernard Capes — Read

A solitary goatherd sat crouched on a slope above the Sea of Galilee. It was approaching morning, and he had lit a little fire on the rocks in order to roast his breakfast of fish. It was still dark, though the embroidered velvet canopy overhead was beginning to reveal a grape-like bloom along its eastern verge. Seven miles across, on the opposite shore, the lamps of Tiberias, minute and liquid, dripped threads of gold into the motionless lake; to the north the snows of Mount Hermon lay like a pillow to the quiet hills; everywhere was the swoon and stillness which characterise that last deep hour of slumber when sleep itself sleeps.

The smoke of the goatherd's fire rose in a thin, unbroken shaft; the hiss and explosion of its thorns were uttered in a subdued voice; he himself sat like a figure carved in old ivory. His arms and legs were bare; his only garment was a tunic of brown sackcloth; he was the gauntest man of his race in all Galilee. He suggested some grotesque vulturine fledgling rather than a human being, in his leathery skin, denuded scalp, prominent eyes, and great horny beak of a nose. Whatever juice there was in him must have been as brown and acrid as a walnut's.