XII
THE FORT OF THE ROCKS
At the bidding of Mattathias, the people passed hurriedly into the town. The stones of the street were torn up; some of them piled in heavy masses against the city gates; others carried to the walls, ready to be hurled down upon assailants. In vain did those returning from the knoll, where they had taken part in the heathen worship, seek admission. Their rapping and calls to their fellow-townsmen were answered by taunts. Mattathias insisted on their exclusion, lest there should be division in counsel and action, while he foresaw that there was no alternative other than fighting for their lives, or voluntarily surrendering themselves to the atrocities of the foe. A low wail of lamentation could be heard from hundreds of homes, like the murmur of a torrent. Now and then it broke into a sharp cry of defiance from maddened groups on the house-tops, as a torrent leaps and splashes high in air over some sharp obstacle that opposes its course.
The night that followed was one of fearful expectancy in Modin. The news of the assault upon the King's representative might bring the Greek soldiers, who were scattered along Bethhoron, in retaliatory vengeance. But the sentinels on the walls made no alarms. The next day the extemporized scouting parties reported no hostile movement. But it was certain that the authorities at Jerusalem would not long delay a blow which would vindicate their power, and the honor of the monarch.
In the little town all was confusion, for the inhabitants made preparations to migrate from their now insecure homes. The excitement increased as from the hills and valleys around their herdsmen hastily gathered the flocks, and drove them close to the city.
On the second night strange sounds floated everywhere through the darkness—the lowing of cattle, bleating of sheep, braying of asses, and the occasional grunt of camels resenting the unseemly hour of their lading. These moved eastward through the darkness, and later were followed by an exodus of the inhabitants from the town. Deborah noted the women, whose hands had scarcely lifted heavier weight than the distaff, now bowed beneath bulky loads of household stuff. Boys carried jars of provisions as big as themselves. Men, armed with swords, javelins, bows, and bludgeons, led the way, or deployed as guards on flank and rear of the unsteady column.
In the confusion little notice was taken of Deborah and Caleb, except as some one peered into their faces in the endeavor to identify them. They trudged along with a group of women and children, old men and cripples, whose slow pace excited impatience and an occasional unkind taunt from the stronger limbed.
In the company with Caleb hobbled a lad some years older than he. The feet of this boy were strangely malformed. Both were so twisted from their normal relation to his legs that his toes pointed very nearly backward. This infirmity and the weight of his heavy wooden sandals were, however, largely compensated for by the boy's muscular strength and alertness of faculty. With the aid of a stick, crotched at the upper end, he swung himself along the road and over obstacles in the fields which tangled legs better than his own. Only by the harsh words and cuffs of the men who were leading or guarding the multitude was the boy kept with the weaker folk. Now some sentinel, with hand to ear, pausing, and listening for the remotest sound of approaching soldiery, was startled by the rattling of the stones under the boy's feet and crutch. Now, again, he was hobbling along with the rear guard as valiantly as if his stick were the sword of Goliath of Gath.
Through the dim night the lame lad noticed that Caleb's gait was different from that of the others. His occasional stumbling and his clinging to his sister's hand excited the curiosity of his observer.
"Say, are you lame, too?" the strange boy asked.
"No, I am only blind, the Lord be praised!" replied Caleb.
"Only blind! Whew!" and a long whistle threaded the stillness of the march.
"Silence!" said a gruff voice.
"Can't you see a bit?"
"No, not as you see."
"Haven't you any eyes?" and the boy drew Caleb's face close to his. "Oh, such big eyes! and can't see? But such eyes must see somewhere. Maybe they are like my feet, that look in the direction they aren't going. Can't you see the inside of your head?"
Caleb laughed, and fell in with the mirthful mood of his companion.
"They say I can see out of my ears and from my finger ends."
"I shouldn't wonder," replied the lame boy. "And can you see as well in the dark as in the light?"
"Just as well."
"Whew!"
"Silence there!"
"Say, couldn't you and I have fun with the jackals?"
There was a pause.
"Say, can you see"—and the boy's voice sunk to a whisper—"can you see God? Or maybe the angels? What are they like? Like Judas? or old Mattathias? or like—like your sister there?"
Caleb protested against his companion's irreverence and ignorance.
"Well, at any rate, the angels see you."
"How do you know they do?"
"Because, blind as you are, you do not stumble half as much as I do. There, you stepped right over that rock that I nearly broke my heels on; and the Psalmist said of somebody, 'that the angels keep him from stubbing his toes.' Those are not the words, but something like them. But how can the angels lift you over the stones if they can't see you? Eh! But what's your name?"
"Caleb. What's yours?"
"Solomon; but they don't call me that. They call me Mephibosheth, because Mephibosheth was lame in his feet; that is, they call me Meph because the whole word takes too much breath, and folks need all they've got, especially in such travelling as this."
The night wore wearily away. Once old Mattathias joined the little group, but only for a few moments; for though the conduct of the expedition was left to the younger men, chiefly his five sons, the responsibility of the movement rested with the venerable priest. Once Judas came to them, but it was only to insist that the daughter of Elkiah should make use of a rude palanquin, which two strong-limbed men carried between them upon two poles. This Deborah refused, and, footsore and weary though she was, trudged by its side while the bearers conveyed a sick woman with her babe at her breast.
In the early dawn the fugitives threaded the wild, narrow ravine in the neighborhood of Michmash, once the scene of the adventures of Prince Jonathan, during the wars of Saul against the Philistines. As the day advanced, women and children sought rest and shelter among the caverns and chasms which made that region frightful in days of peace, but a welcome retreat to those whom the troublous times had ejected from better homes. Here, at Judas' advice, Mattathias decided to halt the little host. All fell to work building the defenses which they would surely need in coming dangers, and which became ever after famous as the eyrie whence the Maccabæan eagles, those sons of Mattathias, swooped down upon the Syrian prey.
Rapidly the natural rocks grew into an orderly fortification. Loose stone walls were built between the outcropping ledges, until a vast space was enclosed and divided into compartments, where a few defenders could withstand many assailants, and to capture which would be for the victors to fasten themselves into slaughter pens. Across the top of the natural chasms were laid poles covered with brushwood, which screened the people from the sun by day and from the dews by night. Great boulders scattered over the adjacent fields were connected by ditches, which were so roofed that, while they effectually obscured those passing beneath, they were at the same time pitfalls for any intruders. Each great rock thus became an outlying fortress, behind which, day and night, lay wary men.
At one place was a rude forge, where all sorts of iron implements were wrought into weapons; reversing the ancient prediction, for plowshares were now beaten into swords, and pruning-hooks into spears.
Day by day even the women and children were practised in archery, and learned to hurl the javelin and sling stones; while the men were drilled in companies to execute manœuvres which the genius of Judas devised, and which were especially adapted to warfare in the craggy battlements of the hills. Far and wide scouts answered one another with mysterious signals, quick flashes at night, and sounds by day in which the cries of birds and beasts were imitated according to a code prepared by Jonathan. The country for leagues about was thus practically under one eye and one voice of command.
One evening Judas came to the little enclosure of rocks which the respect and sympathy of the people had assigned to the privacy of Deborah. It was screened by a coarse matting, which served both as door and wall.
"This is no place for the daughter of Elkiah," said the young man. "I have come to ask that you allow half a score of our brave men to escort you to a spot of more safety and comfort. The strong castle of Masada, in the wilderness by the Sea of Salt, will prove impregnable to any attack. The journey will not be more difficult than remaining here."
Deborah expressed her gratitude. She looked at the upturned face of Caleb. It was pale and emaciate with fatigue and exposure.
"Surely, this is no place for the lad," she said, as she held his cheeks between her hands.
"As soon as the shadows darken the ravine yonder you will start?" inquired Judas.
Deborah for a moment made no response. She gazed upon the women and children about her.
"And these?"
"They must remain where they are, and share the fortunes of the men. It would be unsafe to move so many. Besides, the castle is a little one, and would not hold them. But you, if I mistake not, as the daughter of Elkiah, have claims of kinship with Ben Aaron, who occupies Masada."
Deborah sought the sky as if in prayer; then she said:
"Judas, call me no longer the daughter of Elkiah. Call me now only one of the daughters of Israel. Why should I flee to the castle when these, as worthy as I, have no such refuge?"
"But surely——"
"Nay, do not entreat me. Tell me, Judas, have you not a vow to live or die in defense of Israel?"
"Truly, as God lives!" said he, raising his right hand.
"Would you break your vow? Nay, do not answer. And I, too, have a vow—to die if God will take the sacrifice, with His people. Here I can serve, if not with those who fight, then with those who watch and care for the helpless. Take the lad, but here I must stay."
Caleb, who had been a listener, now uttered a cry such as never escaped him except when in some agony of pain. He flung himself into his sister's arms. No word passed between them, but there is a converse of hearts that needs no speech. She loosened his embrace.
"It is His will. My child, we shall not be separated. We will both stay."
Scarcely had she said this when cries of alarm rose without. Judas was instantly gone.
In an hour came Meph, utterly winded with his haste, but he managed with detached mouthfuls of breath to give the report of a wonderful encounter with the enemy. He declared that—
"The Greeks came along—a whole army of them—marching as stiff as a grove of palm-trees—shields on one shoulder and pikes on the other. All of a sudden whiz! whiz! whiz!—and they dropped in their tracks—lots of them did—as if they were bulrushes. The rest of them closed up, and put their shields together like a tent; but rocks came down on them like hailstones—and they broke and ran like hares."
With his crutch Meph mapped on the ground the plan of the battle, and then appealed to Caleb to predict that such a magnificent victory would be the end of the war. "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon is with us! The sword of the Lord and of Judas!" and he whirled his crutch in pantomimic extermination of the foe.
But, alas, such engagements were to be the almost daily experience of the patriots. The Greek bands were worsted by the intense bravery of the Jews, and the more shrewdly laid plans of their untrained but heaven-gifted leaders. In resisting these forays, and in their devoted care of the threatened people, the five sons of Mattathias won the titles which history has added to their names—John, the Good; Simon, the Wise; Judas, the Hammerer; Eleazar, the Sunburst; and Jonathan, the Crafty.
The incessant excitement wrapt the popular mind with a frenzy of religious enthusiasm and credulity. Much of the time was spent in prayer and song. The devoted people saw in the skill of their earthly champions only a fuller measure of that Divine Spirit whose impulse gave wisdom and valor, and whose invisible Presence was a surer defense than ten thousand phalanges of shields. As in the days of Elijah, so once more ardent souls saw, as Deborah had done, "the chariots of Israel and the horses thereof" in the embattled clouds at sunset and sunrise; and God in armor strode among the spectres of the night.
In such experiences, in which mental exaltation put on physical prowess, and the spiritual world was inwoven with the material—as we may believe the soul is knit with the body—passed a year in the "Fortress of the Rocks."