His determination to hide was confirmed by observing two Galli at a distance. They evidently had him in their eyes, for, though their road was different, they kept coming near, as if by subtle purpose. He raised his club, and, balancing it carefully, flung it far in the opposite direction, accompanying its flight with the cry of the shepherds when frightening a jackal. He ran at topmost speed after the missile. As he stooped to pick it up he noted that the Galli had turned back. He was safe from them, but would be safer if he learned the lesson, and made himself invisible. The old aqueduct might become his fortress. Peering out between its disjointed stones, he could inspect the field, and at any moment drop into a conduit and make his exit far beyond.
Night fell about him. Its shadows winged his feet, and its cool, crisp air freshened his vigor as he ran.
In the thickening darkness, a huge object loomed suddenly before him. Startled for an instant, he paused, but a second careful look enabled him to recognize it. It was the tomb of Hiram, his great ancestor, the most famous of all the kings of Tyre. Five centuries had drifted over it, wearing away the very stone as by the friction of the years, but only brightening the fame of him who lay within it.
If the living cherish the memory of the dead, do the dead have no interest in the living? It seemed to the young king as if the very dust within that great stone box must move with pity for him. Would the great king curse him for refusing to become a sacrifice to Baal for the welfare of Tyre? The mighty dead had been a worshipper of the gods of his people, but surely not with such cruel and bigoted frenzy as that of the priests now. The great Hiram had been the friend of the Judean kings, David and Solomon. He had built for them the temple of their God, Jehovah, though the Jews believed in no blood-loving Moloch; nay, they cursed the abominations of the Phœnician worship, as they cursed the other idols of the nations, and swept them from their land. Surely Hiram the Great would be a liberal monarch, were he living. A blessing seemed to drop into the young Hiram's soul from the white form of the marble, that clear-cut its shape out of the black night.
He climbed the lofty pedestal, and stood beside the upper shaft. It was but a moment he lingered, yet time seemed to halt, while the olden ages came back and passed in review before him, all grand with Phœnicia's prowess, since first his people taught the nations the alphabet, and pioneered the commerce of the world. Dark clouds came up on the horizon, and blotted out the bright early stars; and so, he thought, death's oblivion had buried one by one his ancestors, the kings of Tyre; yet their glory was untarnished, even as these stars will shine out again, and shine forever. But himself! Would not his flight from death blot his honorable memory in subsequent generations?
Suddenly the clouds parted, and the bright evening-star glowed in the east—the star of Astarte, Queen of Heaven, Goddess of Love. As he watched, it was again obscured. Then Hiram thought of Zillah, whose soul, purer than light, had set in his dark destiny. He clenched his hands as if to crush the edge of the stone beneath them, and swore a horrid oath, in which writhed all the black passions of his being; an oath at the star, at Astarte, at Baal, at all the powers that controlled the world, or at that blind chance that drifted its affairs. Then the star emerged again. It floated into a large lake of blue. Was it an omen? He worshipped it, and called it Zillah. He noted that it floated westward from over the Jews' land. Then he prayed:
"O spirit of Hiram, guide thy son! O spirits of David and Solomon, befriend the son of Hiram! O Jehovah, God of Israel, give me welcome to thy land!"
A wind stirred the dry grass that grew about the tomb. He leaped from the pedestal and ran. Turning from the highway, he threaded a path up a deep ravine. Moloch's fierce beams had drained its brook nearly dry; but in pools he found enough of tepid water to slake his burning thirst, and to wash away some of the heat of his throbbing temples.
Then on! He climbed the bank, that he might straighten his course. He passed a cave. Although he could see nothing within its dark opening, he knew that its walls were carved with symbols of the Egyptian religion, made during the passage of the army of a Pharaoh many centuries before. He prayed to all the gods of Egypt, if any might perchance be sojourning or travelling near. He knew that he believed in none, but, in his extremity, did not dare to admit his incredulity, lest peradventure they might be real; and he needed even the shadows to help him now.
Then on! A moment he stopped to placate with gentle tones a dog startled from sleep beside a shepherd guarding his flock. Again he turned far aside from the path, that he might avoid a tent whose lamp, burning all night, told that all its inmates were living. Inadvertently he came close to a hut shrouded in darkness, from which he was warned by the voices of wailing. He had no sympathy for such bereavement, since Nature, more kindly than men, had only exacted her due, and no horrid idol of Baal stood before the door.
The night seemed interminable, so many terrors massed before him, through which he must cut his way with naked soul. For men and beasts he had begun to lose fear, when suddenly a new menace appeared. The earth seemed to open before him. He descended a step or two cautiously. The ground was hot, and burned his bare feet. Strange! for the night air had chilled all else. The earth was hard and sharp, like the refuse heap near some factory of bronze. Chinks opened. Fire gleamed. Strangling gases were emitted. Had Moloch stirred up the gates of hell to join in pursuit of him? There came a roar not unlike that he had heard when passing the fire-vault of the idol, but deeper and more vengeful. The earth trembled. Great stones rolled down the sides of a precipitous bank, and with them he was hurled headlong. Whither?
"Moloch! Mercy!" was his cry.
Then all was dark.
A pleasing light shone through the darkness of that nether world into which Hiram had been so suddenly precipitated. The light was broken by soft shadows, as of gently fluttering leaves. The brightness made his eyeballs ache; the shadows soothed them, so that he could endure to look. Great protecting arms were stretched above him. These assumed the shapes of limbs of a terebinth-tree. Had he passed through the gloom of Sheol into some brighter realm of life? Perhaps the Greeks were right in their hope of the Isles of the Blessed, carpeted with perpetual verdure, gemmed with flowers, and canopied with softest skies. To one of these isles had his spirit floated? This could not be, for over him he clearly saw a dead branch of the terebinth, and there could be no decay in that happy world.
His illusions chased one another away, and were all gone when, attempting to move, sharp pains tortured him, and inflicted him with full consciousness that he was indeed in the body. He was lying upon a couch, soft with feathery balsam tips, and covered with a wolf's skin. This he could feel beneath his hands. He glanced about him. A low, but long and rambling, black tent of goat's-hair cloth stood by, its nearest end just at the edge of the shadow of the terebinth. The tent poles and cross ropes were so arranged as to form a roof of three gables, answering to the interior division into three compartments. Several rude but substantially built huts were evidently used for storing provisions. A stone enclosure served as a fold for sheep. Without these evidences of more permanent occupation, the tent would have indicated a settlement of those nomads who, with hereditary roving habits, have always lodged in the lands east of the Great Sea; or of those inhabitants of towns who adopt this mode of life during a portion of the year, that they may live among their flocks and herds on the mountain slopes, or cultivate a tract of rich meadow-land far away from their ordinary abodes.
Hiram had scarcely taken in so much of his surroundings, when he was aware that a light form moved suddenly and silently away from his side. He caught a glimpse of a white garment—the common dress of both sexes alike among the simple peasants. Had his observation been more alert, he would have detected a pair of most gracefully modelled feet, and limbs bare almost to the knees; a head uncovered, except for the rich mass of jet-black hair that was gathered loosely into a node at the back; a face of exquisite contour, swarthy from exposure, but radiant with health and kindliness.
"Father, he has waked!" rang out a sweet child-voice. And Hiram heard it add, subdued by distance and anxious emotion:
"Father! He will live again, will he not?"
A voice, strong and deep, but kindly even to tenderness, responded:
"Jehovah be praised! I will come."
A heavily built man approached the couch under the terebinth. He was slightly bowed with the years that had chronicled themselves by the gray lines in the long beard which fell far down upon his bare breast. His legs and arms were uncovered, and showed that strength had not deserted the slightly shrunken muscles. His face, though weather-beaten and wrinkled with cares as with years, was a beautiful one, beaming with intelligence and soulfulness; one of those rare faces that fascinate children, but can command men—such is the combination of affection and dignity they reflect from the abiding disposition behind them. His eyes were deep-set beneath heavy brows, and seemed the home of lofty and generous sentiments, suggesting those crystal springs in shady dells which good spirits have always been traditioned to inhabit.
"The Lord be with you, my son!" was the old man's hearty salutation, as he came and looked down upon the stranger.
"Are you not able to talk?" he kindly inquired, noticing that Hiram made no response, and unwilling to think his silence discourtesy, as it would have been regarded had the one addressed been fully himself.
Hiram stared at the face of the old man, in painful effort at recollection both of the questioner and of himself.
"Where am I?" he inquired, endeavoring to raise himself upon his elbow.
"Nay, be quiet, my son!" replied the other, laying him gently back upon the couch. "It is enough for this day that you know you are safe, and under the roof-tree of Ben Yusef."
"Ben Yusef? I do not know you." Hiram gazed intently at him, as if to replenish from the intelligent face his own vanished power of thought.
"Ay, Ben Yusef, of the tribe of Judah. You are, indeed, a stranger, not to know the tent of Ben Yusef, of Giscala."
"Giscala? In the Jews' land?"
"Ay, and in Galilee. You must have been badly hurt for so shapely a head as yours to have been knocked out of its whereabouts. I had thought Ben Yusef's tent as well known as yonder rocky pinnacle of Safed, which guides travellers from afar. But who are you, my son?"
Hiram glanced at his own herdsman's clothes. He felt the coarse texture. A tremor shook him, as if from the passing of some horrid dream. He replied:
"I am what you see me."
"Nay, my son, thou shalt not bear false witness, even of thyself," replied Ben Yusef. "A shepherd's feet are not so easily torn as yours have been. Your hair has the odor of ointments that are not of the cattle-pens, and your hands are not hard in the spots where the sling-strings cut. Besides, no sheep would have been so silly as to venture into the crater of Giscala for you to seek them there. The dumb beasts have fled from it for weeks past. The volcano is getting ready to break out again, and the lightest-headed bird will not even fly over it. Only a man driven by some demon to seek death would have plunged into it as you did. Besides, your speech is not that of the herdsmen; nor, for that matter, of any dwellers in the country about. It is that of the men of the coast. Though we use the same tongue, there is as much difference between our accents as there is difference between the grass that grows on these spring-fed meadows and that of the salt marshes by the sea."
Hiram showed evident alarm at these suspicions, and made an effort to rise, that he might venture another flight. The old man gently, yet strongly, restrained him, and placed his head again upon the bolster as he added, kindly:
"Nay, then, do not speak if the truth is not for my ears. Ben Yusef's tree is broad enough to shadow both you and your secret."
"But I must not burden your hospitality," said Hiram.
Ben Yusef knit his brows in evident displeasure, but quickly rejoined, with a smile:
"You shall not burden, but bless me, my son. Our patriarch Job said, 'The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me.' And never saw I man that was nearer perishing than you."
The old man raised his eyes reverently to heaven as he added:
"The Lord deal with me and mine as I deal with this stranger!"
It was the merriest of voices that interrupted this conversation:
"Abba!"
The syllables flowed with all the sweetness of bird notes, charged with the tenderness and fulness of human love.
"Abba! Abba!"
"Yes, my child."
"Shall I bring the drink?"
"Bring it."
The girl balanced a large jar upon her left hand, supporting it by the graceful shaft of her forearm, which in turn rested upon her right hand. The weight of the jar brought the muscles of her arms into graceful prominence, and her easy motion betokened that agile strength which is seldom displayed except by those whose freedom of life, as among peasants of mountain regions, makes work easy and exhilarating.
"The leben is all of the big goat's milk, and, with the leaven in it since yesternight, should be strong and quickening. Shall I give the drink?"
"No, my child. Haste with the supper. Elnathan will soon be in from the fields, and as hungry as Esau. Haste, and the memory of thy mother bless thee!"
As Ben Yusef watched his daughter retiring to the tent, a lusty halloo rang through the air, and a form appeared upon the hill-top. It seemed gigantic, so large a portion did it cut from the glowing western sky beyond; and, though it diminished as it approached, it still showed a strong, thick-set, over-tall fellow, in the first flush of manhood, the down on his chin hardly consistent with the gnarled muscles upon his legs and arms. He came at once to where Hiram lay, and accosted him with a good-natured familiarity which, though rough, did not conceal the essence of gentility that lay beneath it. He took Hiram's hand into his own, and pressed it as if feeling for the fitful pulse.
"I knew you would come to life rapidly when once you started. Judging from your running last night, you have wind enough to outstrip the death angel. I was yonder, watching the crater, when you dashed by me. You made a streak of light through the darkness as a flitting ghost does. I thought you must be Elijah, showing the other prophets how he ran when Jezebel and the priests of Baal were after him; and I believe you would not have stopped short of Beersheba if you had not tumbled into the crater. Couldn't you see it, or smell it, or feel it? Perhaps you had drunk too much leben among the sheep-boys in the mountains. They make it there strong enough to whirl a man's head off; but I never knew it to make one's legs fly as yours did."
"Hush, Elnathan!" interrupted the old man. "Your tongue runs faster than our guest's legs ever did, and makes as great blunders. What news from the mouth of Sheol, for the brimstone on your garments tells you have been there?"
"The volcano has been less active to-day, father; but neighbors Isaac and Hosea both think it will break out anew. They remember how it was years ago. The big mound is like the whale with Jonah in his belly. It only wants a little more tickling with the fire to vomit forth."
"Have you watched it all day?"
"No. As this poor fellow could not tell us what he was running from, I have been searching back on the path he came; but I can find nothing to harm one." He lowered his voice. "The fellow must have been crazed. No sane man would put that dirty shirt over so trim a body, or wear his hair, which is curled like that of a gallant from Tyre, under the filthy cap I found by him. I think he is from Tyre. They were to have had a great sacrifice—some say of the king himself. This man looks like some courtier who has gone daft with excitement. He surely thought the volcano fire was under some sacrifice to Moloch, for I heard him cry, as he fell, 'Moloch! Mercy!'"
"Do not breathe that thought, Elnathan," said Ben Yusef. "He is to us only what he seems. The Lord has been merciful to him. In Israel's land his secret belongs only to himself and our God. I charge you, Elnathan, by the Lord God of Abraham, who spared Isaac on Moriah, that you speak not your thought."
The night grew chill. Ben Yusef and his son carried the couch and the sick man under the shelter of the tent. Hiram was exhausted by his excited wakefulness, and soon fell into a slumber, during which the little household partook of their evening meal.
When he awoke he was conscious of the presence of the young girl alone, who sat under the lamp that hung at the doorway of the tent, and who answered his every movement with a look towards him. Ben Yusef and Elnathan sat without. A neighbor joined them. As he was approaching the tent, Hiram heard the father enjoin his son to make no mention of their stranger guest.
"He does not come to us as the angels came to Father Abraham at his tent door," said Elnathan.
"Who knows what form angels take?" replied the elder. "The angels came to Abraham's tent hungry and thirsty; why should not one come to us as a sick and wounded man?"
"From the way the volcano is acting," said Elnathan, pausing to listen to the rumbling earth, "I think he has come as the angels came to Lot in Sodom before the Lord destroyed that place with fire and brimstone. Maybe our guest will startle us before morning with the cry, 'Flee to the mountain!'"
They rose and welcomed their neighbor, with whom they conversed until late in the night, for the imminence of danger from the volcano suggested watchfulness.
From the conversation that Hiram overheard, supplemented by after-information, he learned much of the family history of his benefactor.
Ben Yusef's father had belonged to one of the captive families in Babylon, who, taking advantage of the decree of Cyrus, had returned with Zerubbabel to their ancestral land. Ben Yusef himself was born in Jerusalem; and, though he deemed himself a faithful Jew, had not chosen to resist the charms of a Samaritan maiden, a descendant of the colonists whom Nebuchadnezzar had sent from Hamath to repopulate the land made desolate by the deportation of the people of Israel. When Ezra, the Great Scribe, arrived at Jerusalem with his new bands of devotees, and endeavored to enforce his mandate against marriage with any not of pure Jewish stock, Yusef had opposed him, feeling at first that this was but a device by which the newly arrived would override the descendants of those who had originally returned with Zerubbabel. Though afterwards he became convinced of the honesty of Ezra's purpose, and of the sincerity of his patriotism in wishing to purge Judaism of all elements foreign to it, he could not believe, as many did, in the Great Scribe's inspired wisdom in this regard. So pure and strong was Ben Yusef's love for Lyda, his wife, so beautiful was she in character, so true even in her devotion to Israel's god, and so many blessings had she brought to him, that he could not expel the belief that Jehovah had indeed favored their union. To accede to Ezra's demand that he should divorce Lyda, or by any compact separate from her, seemed like striking the hands which God had extended in benediction upon them both. Lyda was not a concubine, as Hagar had been to Abraham. He therefore would not send her away, but chose rather to go with her when she was expelled from the gates of the city.
But still Ben Yusef was a Jew. He loved the traditions and shared the hopes of his people. He therefore would not leave the Sacred Land, but took up his abode in the far northern portion of it, among the Scythian colonists whom Nebuchadnezzar had settled there. He built no house for permanent abode, because he believed that the time would come when he should return to Jerusalem.
Lyda had died. His first mourning over, he proposed to return to the capital, but was confronted by the fact that her children would be counted as of impure blood by the aristocratic and stricter caste of Jews. He would not subject them to such disparagement, and therefore unpacked his already laden beasts of burden, drove again his stakes, and stretched his cords. The very names of his children were intended to be a protest against what he thought to be the narrowness of the Jewish rulers. "Elnathan" signified "Given of God," and when the little maiden came he called her "Ruth," after the famous Moabitish woman, whom the faithful Jewish Boaz wedded and made the ancestress of King David.
But no quarrel with the rulers at Jerusalem could alienate his patriotism or dim his larger hope in the coming glory of his people. His soul thrilled with all the good news of prosperity in the sacred city. He sent his contributions regularly for the temple service, and, when able, made his pilgrimage "thrice in the year" to the festivals. When, some twelve years before the date of our story, Nehemiah had come from Susa to assist in rebuilding the temple and the walls, Ben Yusef had met him on the way; indeed, had entertained the new governor as loyally as his purse and peasant habits made possible. This act had cost him much of the goodwill of his half-heathen neighbors, and forced him to a more isolated life than before; for he was now looked upon as neither Jew nor Gentile.
As Hiram caught partial information of what the reader now knows more fully, he felt that Ben Yusef was a man who might understand and sympathize with him in his expatriation, and consequently rested more complacently. Yet he was persuaded that it would be wise voluntarily to divulge his terrible secret to no one. If it were discovered, it would be time enough to acknowledge it, and claim the kinship which common persecution had made between him and his host.
The night passed in safety. The volcanic activity vented itself beneath the ground, which trembled as if ten thousand chariots were driven over it.
Strength came rapidly to the wounded man. He had prayed to Jehovah, and an answer came either directly from the "God of the land" or indirectly through the invigorating atmosphere of this hill-country; and was not Jehovah the "God of the Hills?" Surely Hiram had heard Ben Yusef singing a psalm of worship as the morning dawned: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh my help!"
Ben Yusef again and again indulged his curiosity in such questions of his guest as his sense of hospitality allowed. These Hiram cautiously answered. He admitted that he was from the coast; that he was in disguise and flight because of dissent from the doctrines of the Baalitish religion; that he had voluntarily reduced himself to the humble condition of a herdsman, rather than endure the degradation of his conscience.
To all this Ben Yusef responded with lofty and generous emotion. He eloquently told the story of ancient Israel; of the grand historic triumphs of Jehovah among his chosen people; of the great patriarchs; of the birth of his nation when, under Moses, the people had fled from Egypt; of the valor of the Judges; of the glory of the Kings; of the sins of the people in admitting Baalitish customs; of the Lord's heavy curse in selling the nation into captivity to Babylon; and of the return under permission of the Persians, the new masters of the world. He spoke, too, with prophetic rapture of the day that was sure to come, when a new King, greater than Solomon, the Lord's own gift to his people, would spread the nation from the Euphrates to the Great Sea; or, as their psalm had it, "from the river to the ends of the earth." The venerable man's face shone as he enlarged even that vision, and spoke of peace and righteousness filling all lands—even the fields breaking forth into singing.
The substance of this story of the Jews' land and people Hiram had heard before; but the old man's ardor impressed it with such vividness that the listener seemed to see the unrolling scroll of history merging into prophecy, and could not repress a feeling of the enthusiasm which the speaker conveyed with his words, his gestures, and his looks.
Two days passed. Hiram had recovered from the weakness, which came more from the shock of his emotions than from actual bruises. Ben Yusef read the thoughts of his guest as he would now and then suddenly start at some unusual sound, or hide within the inner room of the tent at the approach of any neighbor. His observant host guessed that the patient would be freer of heart if the day could be spent away from the possibility of meeting with men.
Hiram, therefore, as strength returned, eagerly accepted the proposal to accompany Ben Yusef in searching for some stray sheep upon the mountains. The bracing air and the exhilarating views tempted them on. They climbed the grand pinnacle of Safed. Here, nearly two thousand cubits towards the heavens, no one could follow without being observed. On the summit the old Jew gave wings to his memory and faith, as free and strong as the wings of the eagle that started from its eyrie on the crag. There, to the north, were the waters of Merom, by the shore of which Joshua smote Jabin, King of Hazor. There, to the south, stood Tabor, from behind which Deborah, the prophetess, with Barak for her captain, had deployed against Sisera, when the very stars swung from their courses, and beat the enemy with their baleful omens. Yonder, to the east, rose Carmel, a mighty altar of the Hebrew's faith, where Elijah had drawn fire from heaven to shame the priests of Baal. And there, far beyond, gleamed the waters of the Great Sea, making indentations upon the coast, but beaten back by the great docks of Tyre and Sidon, as Baalism washed away at times the true religion of Israel, but was beaten back by the valor and enterprise of God's true people. Down there, almost beneath their feet, shone the pearly surface of the inland Sea of Galilee, over which hung splendid prophecies yet to be fulfilled; for the great Isaiah had declared, "The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined."
The old man's purpose had been, at first, only the diversion of the thoughts of his companion, for he feared that his recent experience, whatever it had been, had really affected his mind. But as he spoke he became himself carried away with his theme. Hiram easily encouraged him to continue, and by his appreciative questions led him to speak of the higher spiritual truths of the Jews' religion. What he said of the human sacrifices especially interested his hearer.
"Our father Abraham, living among those who offered their children to the deity, was once allowed by the Lord to think that he, too, must offer his son. To the rocky dome of Mount Moriah he led his beloved Isaac; bound him upon an altar; raised the knife to slay him; when the Lord's voice cried to him out of heaven, 'Lay not thine hand upon the lad;' and, turning quickly, the trembling father saw a ram caught by the horns in a thicket, and offered it instead of his son. That rock is now the base of the great altar in the temple court at Jerusalem. All our worship means this—the Lord God is a Father. He wants no suffering sacrifice among men. If sin needs atonement, God's own gracious heart will make it. He wants only man's contrition and love. The Lord is my helper; not my hater. The Jews' sacrifice really means that there is no need of sacrifice, except what Heaven itself shall provide. It is an offering in gratitude, not in penalty; an offering to praise, not to appease, the Judge of all the earth."
Ben Yusef's face beamed with an almost unearthly beauty as he spoke. His voice trembled, but was sweetened, too, by the great depth of his emotion. He uttered no formality of faith. His words were no echo of men's thoughts. They had, as it seemed to Hiram, a double source of suggestion—from heaven above, and from the profound experience of the man's own soul.
Hiram could not help contrasting this peasant with the great Herodotus. The Jew's philosophy seemed deeper than the Greek's. And it was not only philosophy, but an inner life, a feeling, a knowledge. The Greek had pushed away some shadows; the Jew stood out in the light. The Greek's thoughts were formed with beauty, as his statues were carved from the stone; the Jew's thoughts were immense, and untrimmed by human art, like the rocky pinnacle of Safed upon which they stood.
Towards nightfall they descended the mountain, and were nearing the home tent.
"Listen!" said the old man, putting his hand upon the shoulder of his comrade. "That is the very soul of our religion—a song in the heart that sends a song to the lips, as the fountain comes bubbling from the full veins in the earth."
A sweet, strong voice rang up through the ravine, to the top of which they had come. Ben Yusef's eyes filled with tears. "So like her mother's voice," he said.
It was Ruth who was singing:
Before the girl stalked a great dog, large enough to tear a wolf. He pricked up his ears, stopped, threw back his head, then with a bound broke through the bushes and climbed the shaly bank to where his master and Hiram were standing. Ruth followed as nimbly as a goat.
"You will be so glad," said she to Hiram, "for somebody who knows you has found you. He described you exactly in face, and said you spoke the tongue of Tyre. He would not have me come to meet you, and when I started followed close behind, until Anax got between us. The dog sat right down before him, and showed his great teeth if the man moved a step."
Ben Yusef glanced quickly at Hiram, asking with his eyes a score of questions without the need of a word.
"Yes," replied Hiram, "I must fly at once. Only shield me by your discretion, as you have by your hospitality."
"You shall not fly from the tent of Ben Yusef," said the old man, with protesting vehemence. "My life will shield you, and, if the danger be great, in an hour Elnathan can summon a score of our neighbors. We have learned, in these troublous times, to combine for mutual protection. One bugle-call over these hills, and, as the stars come out one by one, but before you can count them all are there, so man after man, with ready weapon, will move out from the darkness and surround my tent. And woe to the intruder who cannot give our shibboleth."
"I cannot accept the protection of such brave men, nor yours, since it would surely be revenged by fiends who work in the dark, and who are relentless in their hatred. Let me fly while I may endanger only myself!" said Hiram, gratefully grasping Ben Yusef's hand.
"Wait at least until the night blackens. Secrete yourself anywhere. Elnathan will find you. You will know of his approach by the hoot of the owl he has learned to imitate. You may need his knowledge of by-paths. But, above all, in the land of Israel trust in Israel's God. He has said, 'Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by noonday.' 'He that keepeth Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.' Farewell until brighter days!"
Night fell too rapidly for Hiram to get far away. Nor was there need, for the base of the mountain had been torn by earthquake and freshet into a hundred hiding-places. The chief danger was from wild beasts rather than from men. He chose a deep cleft which he observed to have a double opening, from either of which he could depart if the other were menaced. He had not waited long before the hoot of an owl sounded.
"Amazingly natural!" thought Hiram. He had once prided himself upon his powers of mimicry, and now he would essay a trial of skill with Elnathan.
"Too-whoo! too-whoo!" he echoed back.
"Too-whoo!" rang out from a crag quite distant. A moment later it came again, but this time from another direction. Then from another.
"The peasant is more deeply learned in bird-speech than I," mused the listener. "He throws his voice from cliff to crag, from ravine to tree-top."
Hiram ventured another call. Scarcely had the sound escaped his lips when the air hummed; a pair of dusky wings whirred close to his head, and a black object settled on the edge of the rock above him.
"I did it well," he congratulated himself, "to have brought the bird to me as a mate. Welcome to my nest, Sir Owl, for I think you are a restless soul like myself."
The bird flew away. But other companionship came. A rattling of stones down the ravine told of some one's approach. Hiram's success with the former hoot emboldened him to challenge Elnathan again.
"Too-whoo!" rang and re-echoed.
"But what a shriek!" said a voice not far distant. "I have heard that the owls in these mountains are the ghosts of dead Jews let out of Sheol for a night airing."
"I can believe it, and that they are all damned ghosts, too, if that owl's voice shows his feeling," rejoined another.
The stones rattled again.
"The curse of Baal-Hermon on the traitor's head for leading us on such a road as this," said one who had evidently stumbled and fallen among the rocks.
"Call on some other god, for the mountain god must have spent all his curses in making such a land as this. Try Beelzebub, the god of flies, for it would take a gnat to find the king in these narrow paths, branching everywhere. But I don't believe he went this way. The girl gave him warning. He has gone back, or taken the road to Hazor, and will make for Kadesh and Baal-Gad, and across the spur of Hermon to the highway for Damascus. We will do better to follow that. The addle-headed lout at the tent said that was the way most open, and he must have told the king the same, for he hadn't wit enough to invent two ideas."
"But we cannot find that path; at least not until the moon rises. Let us wait here."
The two men sat down close to one of the openings of Hiram's retreat.
"The sacrifice should never have been at the image of Moloch. Melkarth is Lord of Tyre, and, had it been at the temple, Melkarth would never have allowed him to escape."
"If he did escape!" said the other.
"You doubt it, then?" replied his comrade.
"Yes, for it cannot be proved, and the people all believe that Baal took him."
"The people be cursed! But the priests do not believe it. Baal does wonders, but, so far as I have seen, he never does wonders that the priests cannot understand. And Egbalus himself shook his head when we asked him, and looked very wisely as he pointed to that tilting stone."
"True!" replied the other; "but Egbalus bade me explore that underground passage. I did so until I came nearly under the god, when the way was utterly blocked. No human being could have gone farther without being changed into a ghost."
"If he changed to a ghost, he will change back again; and I think some of our knives will find him to be as veritable flesh as ever butcher cut in the shambles. But, hist! Somebody comes."
"Too-whoo!"
"By the horns of Astarte! The owls are as big as horses here, judging from the way the sticks snap under their feet. An owl-headed man, I think. Back into the crevice!"
One of the pursuers came close to Hiram. In an instant a knife sank from the man's throat to his heart. A sharp cry was its only signal.
"What is it, comrade?" asked the other, feeling his way in to offer assistance.
Hiram, having by daylight observed the turn of the crevice, slipped out of the other opening, and, giving signal, joined Elnathan. A moment's consultation was sufficient for their plan. Each entered an opposite opening of the crevice. As the living priest confronted Hiram, Elnathan's strong fingers were upon his throat. The man struggled impotently, as a sheep might have done in the hug of a bear. They drew him into the open.
"Harm him not," cried Hiram. "He has never harmed thee. His life is mine. Know, thou villainous priest, if it will be any comfort to thee, that thou diest by the hand of thy king. And take my challenge to Moloch himself, if there be any such being in the world of the damned."
The sentence was not completed before the knife had done its double work.
Hiram in a moment recognized his own unwisdom in his hasty speech, and, turning to Elnathan, said:
"I cannot take back the words you have heard. They tell more than I should have told. But, as you saved my life once at the volcano, you can preserve it only by forgetting what you have heard. Pledge me this, as you trust your God for grace."
"Nay," said Elnathan, "I think I shall best serve you by remembering it. I could have guessed as much from what I overheard these two now dead priests say, if I had not guessed it before. The ravine beyond the tent is famous for its resounding walls. The crawl of a lizard can be heard a hundred cubits. These wretches took their supper at one end of the gorge. I was beyond the bend. They might as well have whispered into the end of a shepherd's horn. Your appearance as you lay on the cot under the terebinth, your mutterings in fevered sleep, and what these rascals said to each other, I put together into a story of the miraculous escape of King Hiram of Tyre from being burned alive to Moloch. Now, my good friend, we have no king in Israel. I swear to you, King Hiram, all the loyalty a Jew can offer to any Gentile—the loyalty of man to man. Your secret is mine, and my service is yours. So help me, God of Israel!"
Hiram was unable to respond at once to this. When he did, it was to grasp both the big hands in his own, and say: "But one other man like this lives."
"Ay, my father," said Elnathan.
"And one more," added the king.
He would have kissed the hands of Elnathan, but the noble fellow withdrew them.
The moon appeared at this instant, the leaves and limbs of the trees marking themselves in sharp and moving outlines against her huge red disk, as she shone through the mists that hung over the low-lying lands by the Sea of Galilee.
In the excitement and previous darkness, Hiram had not noticed that Elnathan was strangely transfigured. He was dressed as a Persian soldier. He wore a stiff leather hat, whose round top projected forward; a leather tunic, close-fitting, with long sleeves; leather trousers, which disappeared at the ankles within high-topped shoes. At his belt hung a short sword, or rather a huge dagger. He carried also a spear, the light shaft of which served as a support in walking.
"I have brought you these," said the Jew. "Years ago, when Nehemiah came from Susa to Jerusalem, one of the soldiers whom King Artaxerxes had sent with him sickened on the way and died at my father's tent. These were his trappings. He begged that he might be buried in the winding-sheet, according to the custom of the Jews, whose faith he had embraced. Your herdsman's shirt is not a prudent disguise, especially since some of your pursuers have already tracked you in it. Besides, your very figure belies it. Sword-play and sceptre-holding give a different grace from that of clubbing swine; and it would take full twelve moons to grow a head of hair shaggy enough to make even a sheep look at you without suspicion. Our good King David might as well have played the shepherd with his crown on."
As he talked Elnathan divested himself, one by one, of his martial garments, and made Hiram put them on.
"And now, have I not performed a princely part myself?" said he, laughing. "For it was our Prince Jonathan who, when he had found out that David was really born to be a king, 'stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.'"
Elnathan then described carefully the paths leading eastward; the deep, winding wadies that debouched into the Sea of Galilee; the rock of Akhbara, rising five hundred cubits, like an enormous castle, cut by nature into a hundred hiding-places; the towns on the shore of the little sea. He gave the names of men of kin to the house of Ben Yusef, or known to be trusty, to whom Hiram might appeal in case of extremity. To Hiram's repeated pledges to reward him as a king should, when better days came, the Jew replied:
"The Lord is our reward in all things."
"Tell me," asked Hiram, "does your God teach you to do such things as you and your father's house have done to me, a stranger? for it was not to a king, but to a stricken wayfarer, you did it from the first."
"Yes, it is the command of our God, who taught it by the holy men he has raised up to lead our people. Our patriarch Job said: 'The stranger did not lie in the street: but I opened the door unto the traveller.'"
"But," interposed Hiram, "if the stranger were not merely a stranger; rather one, like myself, of a hostile race, as you Jehovites must regard the Baalites of the coast?"
"In heart you are not of Baal. Our God knows his own; and he has given to some of his people a wondrous power of detecting all true souls. My father, Ben Yusef, through much communing with the Lord, seems to be possessed of such spiritual sight. As you lay under the terebinth, before you came to your senses, my father cautioned us, saying: 'The favor of the Lord is upon this stranger. What we do unto him will be as if done unto our God.' Besides, did not the Lord give your life into my keeping when he bade me look the moment you fell into the crater? Did he not give me daring to go down into its very fires, and strength to carry you out? I have looked into that pit of brimstone since, and surely man alone could not have rescued you. And did not our God, at my prayer, give back your breath, that the hot air had burned out of you? Your life is mine, and must I not guard it as I would my own life? If harm should come to you through my neglect, I would not dare to pray to our God again as long as I live."
"Strange people!" said Hiram, half musing within himself. "In the tent of a shepherd I have learned more than all the world could teach me. I know nothing of gods, but I can pray one prayer to the God of Israel. It is, that he will bless the house of Ben Yusef forever."
"Amen! And the throne of Tyre!" said Elnathan, as the two heartily embraced, and stood gazing a moment into each other's moonlit faces.
Hiram started on his way. He had gone but a few paces, when the Jew recalled him.
"I may serve you further. Let me go with you, or let me follow you, that I may watch for you against dangers."
"It must not be."
"Then give me some sign by which, if evil comes upon you, I may know that you have need of me."
Hiram paused a moment before he replied:
"Then let the sign be the mark of a circle. Farewell!"
He quickly disappeared through the shadows of the night.
The morning found the fugitive by the Sea of Galilee. Massive ruins lined the road along its western and northern shores. These were the memorials of the days before the Babylonian captivity. Blocks of stone, pretentious in size and over-ornamentation, evidently dated from the age of the great Solomon. Other blocks were inferior imitations of these, and were made, doubtless, in the times of the later kings. Within the foundations of an ancient palace were loose stone cabins, belonging to the poor inhabitants, who gained a precarious living by adding to the scanty yield of the ground the better gleaning of the sea. Here and there clumsy fishing-boats, drawn upon the beach or floating idly on the water, told of the decadence of the arts and enterprise that had marked preceding times. Only nature was untouched by the degenerating influences of the age; and, fair as upon the day of its creation, lay the water, unrippled by the slightest breeze, mirroring the deep blue of the sky, like an immense piece of lapis-lazuli, in the setting of the encircling mountains.
The silence and motionlessness of the sea imparted themselves to Hiram. The rush of events and the intense excitement of the past few days had almost exhausted the active energies of his mind. As the strained strings of an over-used lyre give no sound, so he seemed no longer able to respond to even the rude alarms of danger. He was fleeing now, not with any sense of fear, but solely with the momentum of past impulses, as the heart sometimes continues to throb and the lungs to heave when conscious life has ceased. He realized his own mental condition. He felt the moral inertia. He said to himself: "I believe I would not move if Egbalus pointed his sacrificial knife at my heart. I could walk into the arms of Moloch." He could understand somewhat how the priests succeeded in preparing their human victims for unhesitating obedience at the fatal moment. He saw how the will becomes paralyzed by the strain of the previous terror, and how the wretched devotees lose the susceptibility to recoil even at the steps of the altar, as the leaves of the sensitive-plant, frequently rubbed by the fingers, no longer shrink at the touch.
In this condition of mind, the stillness of the sea was very congenial to Hiram. It invited him as a kindred spirit. Out upon its placid bosom he could rest, without the necessity of arousing himself every moment to pass judgment on things that appealed to his suspicion. There, too, after yielding himself for a while to the soothing influences that lulled the air and water, he could plan for the future, instead of taking his cue, as heretofore he had been compelled to do, from the movements of his pursuers. Should he go across the desert to Damascus? to the plains of Babylon? to the court at Susa, and throw himself beneath the protecting shadow of the Great King? to the solitude of the Sinaitic mountains? Or should he seek the coast of the Great Sea, and cross to Greece? Whither, when, with a few more turns, like those of the hunted fox, he shall have thrown the Baal-hounds off the scent?
And Zillah! How her fair face shone in every bright thing he looked upon, and her frightened, agony-drawn features stared at him out of every gloomy object! There was so much to think about. And on the sea he could think. Perhaps Jehovah would help him think, or maybe speak to him. Such a beautiful lake as this must be sacred to him who is god of mountains and water and sky alike. Yonder where the sea blends with the distant shore, and the shore rises until it blends with the sky—surely that must be the meeting-place of earthly and heavenly influences, if gods ever commune with men.
Musing thus, he observed a fisherman's hut near by. One wall had once belonged to some palatial structure; the others were made of such broken stones as a man might carry from the heap of ruins that lay about it. The doorway of the hut was faced on the one side with a column of marble; on the other, with a polished slab of granite. In front of the hut was an oven; the half of a huge porphyry vase, inverted, served for the fire-back, and gave direction to the draught. On some coals a woman was broiling fish. On a flat stone, lying half in the fire, and covered with ashes, a man was baking thin sheets of yellow dough, to be subsequently rolled into loaves of bread. Several others were lounging near, sleeping and bedraggled with the fishing of the past night. They welcomed Hiram with a grunted salâm.
"Peace be to you!"
"Peace!" "Peace!" said one and another, scarcely raising their eyes, as if the apparition of a Persian soldier were too common to awaken interest. An elderly man, coming from the hut, eyed the new-comer more attentively.
"Another man from the coast of the Great Sea, eh! Our Persian masters are hiring Phœnicians to be soldiers as well as sailors. But it takes more than change of skin to make a wolf of a fox; and a man from the coast can never pass with me for one from beyond the desert. The west wind blows you fellows inland as it does the salt-water gnats. But sit by, and the Lord bless you! especially if your purse is lined with darics."
Though this speech was not assuring, Hiram, with his recent memories, could not distrust a Jew. He gave his entertainers some good-natured repartee, though their words had cut far deeper than they knew.
"Stranger!" said one, "tell us your story of that miracle at Tyre."
"I have not heard from Tyre for many a day," replied Hiram. "I am in the king's business, and have been going up and down in your land for a time. What was the miracle?"
"Ha! ha! Think of old Benjamin telling the news to a Phœnician who boasts that he knows everything! Why, they were going to offer up some prince or other—or was it a priest, Ephraim? No matter which. Well! the gods saved them the trouble. The sun grew bigger and bigger, and came down nearer and nearer, until he opened his mouth and swallowed up prince, priests, and five-score attendants. I would not believe it but that Ephraim here, who had drunk plenty of leben that same day, says he saw the sun come bobbing down at him while fishing on the lake."
Hiram surprised himself at the heartiness with which he laughed at the story, and matched it with one he pretended to have heard some Jews relate as belonging to their national traditions. "Your great general, Joshua, one day was taken with a chill in the midst of a battle. He could not even give the commands, but only chattered with the cold. Then he bethought him to order the sun to come down and hang just over his head. It floated there like a red-hot shield until he had killed every man among the enemy. But who told you of the miracle at Tyre?"
"Why," said Benjamin, "the priests themselves. Two were along here yesterday."
"They were not priests," said Ephraim.
"They were, though," rejoined Benjamin. "Mother Eve once mistook a snake for an honest creature; but I know a snake's wriggle and a priest's wriggle, in whatever disguise they may be. You could not be a priest of Baal if you tried, stranger. Your face is too honest. But those fellows yesterday—at least one of them—could not cast his priest's skin, though he was dressed like a merchant. He looked as if he wanted to glide down under the stones there, as they say the Baalite priests live half the time in the vaults under their temples, pulling strings to make their gods move, and talking up through holes to answer the prayers of the silly people."
"What were they doing here in the Jews' land?" asked Hiram.
"They said they were searching for a young Tyrian who had fallen heir to a fortune, who was travelling hereabouts, and did not know his good luck. May be you are the happy man."
"I wish I were," replied Hiram, "if for no other reason than to get rid of a very disagreeable journey. I must cross the lake at once, and go as far away as Bozrah. The king's business keeps one as lively as a flea. I must have a boat."
"You have only to pick it out; we have enough lazy fellows to sail it," replied Benjamin, rising and looking along a row of boats.
"I would go alone," said Hiram. "I can leave with you the price of the boat against my getting wrecked, or being swallowed by this terrific sun of yours, whose heat must make him thirsty enough to drink up your little sea."
"Despise not its littleness," replied the Jew. "It is as strong as the very dragon in the sky when it gets to rolling and writhing under the Lord's frown."
"A Phœnician can tame any sea 'twixt Tyre and Tartesus. The heaviest winds that roar over Galilee would be only as the song of a sea-bird to a sailor on the main," said Hiram.
"Leave, then, your money, and sail it or sink with it, as you like," replied the rough fisherman.
Hiram's experience enabled him to select the best among the boats, though it was one of the smallest. A package of smoked fish, a pile of thin bread cakes, and a bag of dates sufficiently provisioned his craft; and within a few moments he had pushed from shore.
As he did so he observed two strangers approach the group he had left. They conversed a little with the fishermen, then suddenly turned and watched his receding boat. Though several hundred cubits away, he could not mistake the bearing of one of them, who had not the stiff manner of a man used to toil in the fields, nor the firm but elastic step of a soldier, nor the swinging gate of a sailor, nor yet the dignified grace such as is soon acquired by a merchant, whose attire this man wore. Hiram appreciated the keen detective instinct of Benjamin, for he too could not mistake the priest of Baal under that secular disguise. The mental habit of doing everything by indirection comes to impart itself to the physical motions, just as habitual secretiveness and hypocrisy show themselves in the face. Besides, the temple service calls for little use of the muscles, and an old priest's body is not symmetrically developed. That would-be merchant could have come from nowhere but some temple. His every motion seemed ajerk with the bigotry of his business.
Hiram felt a tinge of pride in his powers of observation that was not, perhaps, fully warranted; for, though he had no recollection of having done so, he had often seen this same man among the priests at Tyre. It was a case of unconscious memory.
The other man was not so unique a specimen; indeed, having seated himself while the other was walking about and gesticulating, he was in better concealment. "But crow flies only with crow, and priest with priest," thought the king.
Hiram had gained two furlongs from the shore, when the men came to the boats and prepared to follow him. Only heavier craft than his were left; but there were two rowers against one. They rigged the long oars, one swivelled on either side of the vessel, and each requiring the full strength of a man to wield it. One oarsman was awkward, but the other, by strength and skill, made up for the deficiency of his comrade, and by an alternate strong pull and back-water dip of the blade kept the boat steadily ploughing ahead, and slowly gaining upon the fugitive.
For Hiram to reach the eastern shore before being overtaken was impossible. He laid his plan. It was this: at the moment of contact to turn suddenly, and with the prow of his boat crash against the oar of the inexpert priest, break it, and glide off, leaving the heavy craft at the disadvantage of having but one propelling blade. The odds would then be with him.
Suddenly a dark shadow fell upon the water near the western shore, just beneath the gap in the hills. The shadow elongated itself like a serpent emerging from its hole. Beneath it the water began to roll in billowy convolutions. The turmoil spread until, within a few moments, the entire lake was transformed into a vast caldron of boiling waters. The storm waves on the Great Sea were higher, but they were also longer, and more readily mounted than these. The Galilee boats, too, were utterly untrimmed for such an emergency, as the fishermen were accustomed to strike for land at the first sign of a storm, and danger made them alert to anticipate it. But to Hiram the wind-blow was a godsend. He invoked Jehovah's blessing, and raised to its place the log that was called a mast, and swung from it the heavy square sail of goat's hair.
Let the storm drive him where it would! He would rather die a victim of the elements than fall under the gloating hatred of Egbalus's crew of demons. But he did not expect to die. The storm-shriek was like a bugle blast, thrilling his courage. He shouted in triumph as he went bounding over the waves. A Tyrian king! A sea king, indeed, was he!
In the exhilaration of the moment he almost forgot his pursuers. But glancing back through the dense spray, he caught a glimpse of a heavy prow not far in his wake. Above it hung a great sail that seemed like some black-winged spirit driving it onward to fulfil its accursed mission. The vessel disappeared an instant in the blinding mist, only to reappear a full length nearer. A moment more, and fate would ring down the curtain upon this tragedy.
But Hiram determined that the exit should be a climax, if there were any ghostly spectators to applaud; and drawing his dagger, he caught it in his teeth, and waited. Fast as they flew, the waves rolled faster, and poured over the low stern of his vessel. Crossing a shoal, the huge billows mounted higher, and one of immense size hovered an instant in air, like the jaw of some great behemoth pursuing its tiny prey, then fell upon the boat, swallowing her in its remorseless maw.
Hiram was prepared for this, and, being a tireless swimmer, kept afloat while he was flung through the breakers. His pursuers came on. Being higher in the stern, the great waves caught and hurled their boat across the shoals. Hiram cursed all the gods when he saw that, and even taunted Jehovah as the hated craft flew past him.
But a moment later he became as pious a Jew as he had been a blasphemer; for the flying boat suddenly stopped; her mast bent forward; she swirled, careened, and sank.
Hiram could not see the shore through the blinding spray, but the billows were wings for him, and he was sure of holding out though the entire lake were to be crossed.
The wind in an instant died away. The spray as quickly ceased to fly from the broken crests of the waves. The billows rolled, but seemed to have lost their force. They lifted him gently, and allowed him to glide onward. The shore was there, not a hundred strokes distant.
But what was his consternation to see, scarcely three boat-lengths from him, a swimmer as strong as he. It became a race for life. Hiram had kept his dagger in his teeth. He dived, intending to come up beneath his antagonist and plunge the blade into his body. But either he miscalculated the distance, or the man, discerning his purpose, had swum out of harm's way.
It was now a question which should first reach the shore and seize his opponent with fatal advantage. Hiram's strokes were tremendous, surpassing those that had won him the match so often in the harbor of Tyre, before the dignities of the crown had forbidden his taking part in such sports. But they were now of no avail. His competitor kept abreast with him. They reached the shore almost at the same moment. Hiram, striking a better footing, was first out of the water. Seizing an enormous stone, he turned to crush the skull of his enemy before he could gain a foothold on the shelving beach.
"My king! My king!" cried the man.
Hiram dropped the stone in bewilderment.
"Hanno! As sure as Baal—as Jehovah lives, it's Hanno!"