“Nothing more than that if you stir you are ruined. The hare is safest near the kennel. The outlaw sleeps sounder in the magistrate’s stable than he ever slept in his den. I once escaped hanging by coolly walking into a jail. There stands Masada!” and he pointed to what looked to me a heap of black clouds gathered on the mountain’s brow.
“Not a soul that you have left alive there will dream of your being within a stone’s throw. The copse is thick enough to hide a man from everything but a creditor, an evil conscience, or a wife; stir out of it, and they are on your heels. I dislike them so heartily that I hope never to have the honor of their attendance. But you are not mad enough to think of trying them again?”
“Mad fellow!” I exclaimed, “you forget in whose presence you are.”
He continued making some new arrangement of the bandages on his patient’s wounds, and without taking the slightest notice of my displeasure, cheered his work with a song.
“Mad or wise,” said I in soliloquy, “I shall lie in the ditch of that fortress, or in its citadel, before next sunrise.”
“You may lie in both,” said the beggar, pursuing his occupation and his song. “Mad! Why not?—all the world is in the same way. The Emperor is mad enough to stay where men have hands and knives. His people are mad enough to let their throats be cut by him. Florus is mad enough to sleep another night in Palestine. You are mad enough to attack his garrison; and I—am mad enough to go along with you.”
“You are a singular being. But will you hazard your neck for nothing?”
“Custom makes everything easy,” observed he, spanning his muscular neck with his hand; “I have been so many years within sight of the cord, and all other expeditious modes of paying the only debt I ever intend to pay, and that only because it is the last, that I care as little about the venture as any broken gambler about his last coin. Well then, my plan is this: I must get into the town; you must gather your troop without noise and be ready for my signal, a light from one of the towers. A false attack must be made on the gates, a true attack must be made by the portcullis, which, if it be not stopped up, I will unlock; and your highness may eat your next supper off the governor’s plate. There’s a plan for you! I should have been a general. But merit—aye, there’s the rub—merit is like the camel’s lading: it stops him at the gate, while the empty slip in. It is like putting wings upon one’s shoulders, when the race is to be run upon the ground. Too much brain in a man is like too much bend in a bow; the bow either breaks, or sends the arrow a mile beyond the mark. Genius, my prince, is——”
I interrupted the general in his progress into the philosopher, and demanded whether the renewed vigilance of the fortress would not require some additional expedient for his entry. He struck his forehead; the thought came, as the flint gives its spark, and he produced a highly ornamented tablet.
“This,” said he, “I ought to employ in your service, for if you had not knocked down the tribune I could never have picked it up. In making my run over the mountain, I struck upon his correspondence. Oh! the curse of curiosity! if I had not stopped to delight myself with the whole scandal of Rome, I should have been here in time. But I lingered, lost an hour in laughing, and when I set out in the dusk lost my way, for the first time in my life. Before setting off, however, I wrote a letter, ridiculing Florus in all points, burlesquing the people about him, scoffing at everybody in the most heroic style; and having subscribed the name of the unlucky tribune, addressed it to one of the most notorious personages in all Italy, and placed it where it is sure to be seen, and as sure to be carried to the most noble of procurators. Now could I not begin a correspondence with the governor, and act the courier myself? Yet, to hit upon the subject——” He paused.
The letter that I had found occurred to me. I showed it to our adroit friend. He was in ecstasies. He kissed it over and over, and played some of those antics which had already made me almost half doubt his sanity. He flung away the tablet.
“Go,” said he; “fiction is a fine thing in its way. But give me fact when I want to entrap a great man. He is so little used to truth that the least atom of it is a spell; the fresh bait will carry the largest hook. Aye, this is the letter for us; it has the sincerity of the sex, when they are determined to jilt a man; its abuse will cover me from top to toe with the cloak of a true ambassador.”
“But the unpopularity of your credentials,” said I laughingly.
“Let the potentate by whom they are sent settle that affair with the potentate by whom they are received,” replied he.
“You will be hanged.”
“I shall first get in.”
The day passed anxiously, for every sound of the huge fortress was heard in the thicket. The creaking of machines, brought up to the walls against future assault; the rattling of hammers; the rolling of wagons loaded with materials for the repair of the night’s damage; the calls of trumpet and clarion, and the march of patrols, rang perpetually in our ears. The depth of the copse justified the beggar’s generalship, and the son of El Hakim proved himself a master of the art of castrametation. Nothing could exceed his alertness in threading the mazes of this dwarf forest, where a wolf could scarcely have made progress and where a lynx would have required all his eyes.
On my asking how he contrived to find his way through this labyrinth, he told me, that “for making one’s way in woods and elsewhere, there was nothing like a familiarity with smuggling and affairs of state.”
“The man,” continued he, “who has driven a trade in everything, from pearls to pistachios, without leave of the customs, can not be much puzzled by thickets; and the man who has contrived to climb into confidence at court must have had a talent for keeping his feet in the most slippery spots, or he never could have mounted the back stairs.”
He collected the scattered troop, of whom but few had fallen, tho nearly one half were made prisoners; they were eager to attempt the rampart again, all boldly attributing their failure to accident, and all thirsting alike for the rescue of their comrades and for revenge. The letter was given to our emissary, and I ascended the loftiest of the mountain pinnacles, to examine for myself the nature of the ground. From my height the view was complete; the whole interior of the fortress lay open, and in the same glance I saw the grandeur of design which Greek taste could stamp even upon the strength of military architecture, and the utter hopelessness of any direct assault upon Masada[32] by less than an army.
Who but he that has actually been in the same situation, can conceive the feelings with which I gazed! Below me was the spot in which a few hours must see me conqueror or nothing! On that battlement I might, before another morn, be stretched in blood! On that tower I might be fixed a horrid spectacle! Nature is irresistible, and her workings, for a while, overpowered even the belief in my mysterious sentence. The thought has always terribly returned, but the moment of energy has ever extinguished it; the hurrying and swelling current of my heart rolled over it, as the winter torrent rushes over the tomb on its brink. The melancholy memorial was there, sure to reappear with the first subsiding, but lost while the flood of feeling whirled along. Every group of soldiery that sang, or gamed, or gazed, along the ramparts, under the bright and quiet day which followed so fearful a night; every archer pacing on his tower; every change of the guard; every entering courier, was visible to me, and all were objects of keen interest.
At length my courier came. I saw his approach from a pass of the mountains at the remotest point from our cover, his well-contrived exhaustion, and the fearless impudence with which he beguiled the sulky guard at the gate, and stalked before the centurion by whom he was brought to the governor.
With what eyes of impatience I now watched the sun. As the hour of fate approached, the fever of the mind grew. To defer the attack beyond the night was to abandon it, for by morn the troops under Florus must reach Masada. Yet a strange sensation, a chilliness of heart sometimes came on me, in which my hands were as feeble as an infant’s. Nothing tries the soul more deeply than this concentration of its fortunes into a few moments. The man sees himself standing on the edge of a precipice, down which there is no second step. But the thought of returning errandless and humiliated, and this, too, from my first enterprise, was intolerable. I made my decision.
From that instant I breathed freely, my strength returned, hope glowed in my bosom, and clinging to the granite spire of the mountain, I looked down upon the haughty stronghold, like its evil genius descending from the clouds. The sun touched the western ridge. A horseman came at full speed across the plain at its foot and entered the fortress. He evidently brought news of importance, for the troops were hurried under arms, flags hoisted on the ramparts, and the walls lined with archers. All was military bustle.
My first conception was, that my emissary had betrayed us, and that we were about to be attacked. I plunged from the pinnacle, and was following the windings of the goat track to our lair, when I saw the rising of a cloud of dust in the distance. It moved with rapidity, and soon developed its contents. Intelligence of the assault had reached Florus. His sagacity saw what perils turned on the loss of the fortress; he shook off his indolence, and came without delay to its succor. Banners, helmets, and scarlet cloaks poured across the plain. A torrent of brass, burning and flashing in the sunbeam, continued to roll down the defile, and before the evening star glittered the whole cavalry of the fifteenth legion was trampling over the drawbridge of Masada. Here was the death-blow. My enterprise was henceforth tenfold more hopeless; but with me the time for prudence was past. If the reenforcement had arrived but an hour before, I should probably have given up the attempt in despair. But my mind was now fixed; I had made an internal vow, and if the whole host of Rome was crowded within the walls beneath me, I should have hazarded the assault.
I descended, found my troop collected, and, to my alarm and vexation, Constantius, enfeebled as he was, obstinately determined to assault the rampart again. With the daring of his enthusiastic heart he told me that unless I suffered him to attempt the retrieval of his defeat, he felt it impossible to survive.
“Shame and grief,” said he, “are as deadly as the sword, and never will I return to the face of her whom I love, or of the family whom I honor, unless I can return with the consciousness of having at least deserved to be successful.”
Against this I reasoned, but reasoned in vain. We finally divided our followers. I gave him the attack of the rampart, which was to be the place of his triumph or his grave; flung myself into his embrace, and listened to his parting steps with a heart throbbing at every tread. I then moved round the foot of the mountain toward the secret passage. The night fell as dark as we could wish. I waited impatiently for the signal, a light from the walls. Yet no signal twinkled from wall or tower, and I began to distrust again; but while I lingered, a shout told me that Constantius was already engaged.
“Let what will, come,” exclaimed I; “onward!”
We scrambled up the face of the rock, and at length found the entrance of the subterranean. It was so narrow that even in the daytime it must have been invisible from below. A low iron door a few yards within the fissure was the first obstacle. To beat it down might alarm the garrison. The passage only allowed us to advance one by one. I led the way, hatchet in hand. A few blows broke the stones round the lock; the door gave way, and we all crept in. In this manner we wound along for a distance which I began to think endless. The passage was singularly toilsome. We descended steep paths, in which it was with the utmost difficulty that we could keep our feet; we heard the rush of waters through the darkness; blasts of bitter wind swept against us; the thick and heavy air that closed round us after them almost impeded our breathing; and from time to time sulfurous vapors gave the fearful impression that we had lost our way and were actually in the bowels of a burning mine.
My hunters still held on, but the mere fatigue of struggling through this poisoned atmosphere was fast exhausting their courage. I cheered them with what hopes I could, but never was my imagination more barren. I heard, at every step I took, fewer feet following me. The pestilential air was beginning to act even upon myself; but the great stake was playing above, and onward I must go. I dared not speak louder than a whisper; soon no whisper responded to mine. I tottered on, until overpowered by the feeling that our sacrifice was in vain, a sensation like that of a sickly propensity to sleep bound up my faculties; whether I slept or fainted, I for a time lost all recollection.
A roar, like thunder overhead, roused me. A sight, the most superb, burst on my dazzled eyes; a roof of seeming gold, arched so high that even its splendor was partially dimmed; walls of apparent diamond, pillared with a thousand columns of every precious gem; whole shafts of emerald; pavilions of jasper; a floor, as far as the glance could pierce, studded with amethyst and ruby; apparent treasures, to which the accumulated spoils of the Greek or the Persian were nothing; the finest devices of the most exquisite art, mingled with the most colossal forms which wealth could wear; opulence in its massive and negligent grandeur; opulence in its delicate and almost spiritualized beauty, were before me. A slender flame burning at the foot of an idol lighted up this stupendous temple.
I was alone, but the orifice by which I had entered was visible; the light shot far down into it, and I soon brought forward the greater number of my troop. All were equally wrapt in wonder, and the superstitious feelings, which the presence of the Roman and Syrian idolaters had partially generated even in the Jewish mind, began to startle those brave men.
“We had, perhaps, come into forbidden ground; the gods of the earth, whether gods or demons, were powerful, and we stood in the violated center of the mountain.”
For the first time, I found the failure of my influence. A few adhered to me, but the majority calmly declared that, however fearless of man, they dared go no farther. I threw myself on the ground before the entrance of the cavern, and desired them to consummate their crime by trampling on their leader. But they were determined to retire. I taunted them, I adjured them, I poured out the most vehement reproaches. They stepped over me as I lay at the mouth of the fissure, and at length one and all left me to cry out in my dazzling solitude against the treachery of human faith and the emptiness of human wishes.
The roar again rolled above; I heard distant shouts and trumpets. In the sudden and desperate consciousness that all was now to be gained or lost, I rushed after the fugitives, to force them back. I plunged into the darkness, and grasped the first figure that I could overtake. My hand fell on the iron cuirass of a Roman! my blood ran chill. “Were we betrayed—decoyed into the bowels of the mountain to be massacred?”
The figure started from me. I gave a blind blow of the ax, and heard it crush through his helmet. The man fell at my feet. I wildly demanded, “How he came there, and how we might make our way into the light?”
“You are undone,” said he faintly. “Your spy was seized by the procurator. Your attack was known, and the door of the subterranean left unguarded to entrap you. This passage was the entrance to a former mine, and in the mine is your grave.”
The voice sank; he groaned, and was no more.
His words were soon confirmed by the hurried return of my men. They had found the passage obstructed by a portcullis, dropped since their entrance. Torches were seen through the fissures above, and the sound of arms rattled round us. The ambush was complete.
“Now,” said I, “we have but one thing for it—the sword, first for our enemy, last for ourselves. If we must die, let us not die by Roman halters.”
One and all, we rushed back into the mine. But we had now no leisure to look upon the beauty of those spars and crystals which under the light of the altar glittered and blushed with such gem-like radiance. From that altar now rose a pyramid of fire; piles of faggots, continually poured from a grating above, fed the blaze to intolerable fierceness. Smoke filled the mine. To escape was beyond hope. The single orifice had been already tried. Around us was a solid wall as old as the world. It was already heating with the blaze; our feet shrank from the floor. The flame, shooting in a thousand spires, coiled and sprang against the roof, the walls, and the ground. To remain where we were, was to be burned to cinders. The catastrophe was inevitable.
In the madness of pain, I made a furious bound into the column of fire. All followed, for death was certain, and the sooner it came the better. With unspeakable feelings I saw, at the back of the mound of stone on which the faggots burned, an opening, hitherto concealed by the huge figure of the idol. We crowded into it; here we were at least out of reach of the flame. But what was our chance save that of a more lingering death? We hurried in; another portcullis stood across the passage! What was to be our fate but famine? We must perish in a lingering misery—of all miseries the most appalling, and with the bitter aggravation of perishing unknown, worthless, useless, stigmatized for slaves or dastards! What man of Israel would ever hear of our deaths? What chronicler of Rome would deign to vindicate our absence from the combat?
We were within hearing of that combat. The assault thundered more wildly than ever over our heads; the alternate shout of Jew and Roman descended to us. But where were we?—caged, dungeoned, doomed! If the earth had laid her treasures at my feet that night, I would have given them for one hour of freedom. Oh, for one struggle in daylight, to redeem my name and avenge my country!
The roar of battle suddenly sank. Was all lost? Constantius slain? for with life he would not yield. Was the whole hope of Judea crushed at a blow? I cried aloud to my followers to force the portcullis. They dragged and tore at the bars. But it was of a solid strength that not ten times ours could master.
In the midst of our hopeless labors, the sound of heavy blows above caught my ear, and fragments of rock fell in; the blows were continued. Was this but a new expedient to crush or suffocate us? A crevice at length showed the light of a torch overhead. I grasped the ax to strike a last blow at the gate and die. I heard a voice pronounce my name! Another blow opened the roof. A face bent down, and a loud laugh proclaimed my crazy friend.
“Ha!” said he, “are you there at last? You have had a hard night’s work of it. But come up; I have an incomparable joke to tell you about the tribune and the procurator. Come up, my prince, and see the world.”
I had no time to rebuke his jocularity. I climbed up the rugged side of the passage, and found myself still in a dungeon. To my look of disappointment, he gave no other answer than a laugh, and unscrewing a bar from the loophole above his head—
“It is my custom,” said he, “to make myself at my ease, wherever I go; and as prisons fall to a man’s lot, like other things, I like to be able to leave my mansion whenever I am tired of it.”
“Forward, then,” said I impatiently.
“Backward,” said the beggar, with the most unruffled coolness. “That loophole is for me alone. I may be under the governor’s care again, and I have shown it to you now merely as a curiosity. Drink, my brave fellows,” said he, turning to the troop below, and giving them a skin of wine; “soldiers must have their comforts, my gallant prince, as well as beggars. If that villain procurator had not come by express (for no man alive is quicker to catch an idea where he is likely to gain), you should have been by this time sleeping in the governor’s bed, and the governor probably supping with me. But all is fortune, good and bad, in this world. The procurator, putting your escape and mine together, began to think that his presence might be useful here, and the laziest rogue in Palestine came with a speed that might have done honor to the quickest, who stands before you in my person. I had gone on swimmingly with the governor, on the strength of your love-letter, angry as it made him. But the first sight of Florus put an end to my chance of opening the gates for your triumphal entry. I was tied, neck and heels, and flung here, to be gibbeted to-morrow morning. But that morning has not come yet.”
He paced the cell uneasily. At length he sprang up, and looking from the loophole, whispered, “Now!” A low creaking sound of machinery followed.
“Down into the cavern,” said he; “that accursed cohort has moved at last. Away, my prince, and seek your fortune.”
I exhibited some reluctance to be engulfed again. But his countenance assumed a sudden sternness. His only word was, “Down!”
As we were parting he solemnly pronounced: “May whatever power befriends the righteous cause, and blasts the man of infamy and blood, send the lightnings before you!”
Tears stood in his uplifted eyes. His worn countenance flushed as he spoke the words. He seized a spear from a corner, and plunged after me into the cavern.
The portcullis had been drawn up by Sabat; the passage opened at the foot of the rampart. I could have rushed upon an army. But the hand of our guide was on my shoulder.
“Your attack,” said he, “can be nothing, unless it be a surprise. Move along unseen, if possible, till you come to the flank of the first tower. There wait for my signal!” He was gone.
The roar of the assault swelled again, tho it was certainly receding. I climbed the rampart alone. The torches on a distant battlement showed me the Romans in force, and evidently making way. I could restrain myself no longer. I gave the word—concealed by the shadow of the colossal wall—fell upon the guard at the gate and cast it open! Constantius was the first who saw me. He sprang forward, with a cry of exultation. The Romans on the battlement feeling themselves cut off, were struck with panic, and threw down their arms; but we had more important objects, and rushed back to the citadel. Our work was not yet done; we were entangled in the streets and lost time. The garrison was strong, and fought like men who had no resource but in the sword.
“I gave the word—fell upon the guard at the gate, and cast it open!”
Copyright, 1901, by Funk & Wagnalls Company, N. Y. and London.
We were pressed on all sides; an arrow lodged in my shoulder, and I could wield the ax no more. In a few discharges, every man round me was bruised or bleeding. I saw a Roman column hurrying along the rampart, whose charge must finish the battle at once. But a blaze sprang up in the rear of the enemy. Another and another followed. The governor’s palace was on fire! The sight broke the Roman courage. Cries of “treachery” rang through the ranks; they turned, flung away spear and shield—and I was master of the strongest fortress in Palestine!
Resistance was at an end, and we had now only to prevent the conflagration from snatching the prize out of our hands. The flames rose fiercely, and another hour might see the famous arsenal beyond the power of man. Leaving to Constantius the care of securing the prisoners, I entered the palace, followed by a detachment. In the tumult I had missed my deliverer, yet scarcely could think of him, or anything else, while the enemy were showering lances and shafts upon us. But now, some fears of his extravagance recurred to me, and I ordered strict search to be made for him. The fire had seized on but a wing of the palace and was soon extinguished. I was ascending the stairs when a figure bounded full against me from a side door. It was the beggar. His voice, however, was my only means of recognition, for his outward man had undergone a total change. He wore a rich cuirass and helmet, a Greek falchion glittered in his embroidered belt, a tissued mantle hung over his shoulder, and a spear ponderous, but inlaid and polished with the nicest art, was brandished in his hand.
“What,” said he, “is all over? May all the fogs of earth and skies cloud me, but I was born under the most malignant planet that ever did mischief; I left you only to do some business of my own; I failed there. My next business was to join and help you to give a lesson to those Roman hounds; or, if they were to give the lesson to us, take chance along with you and exhibit as a soldier. I ventured to borrow the governor’s arms, as you see, but I am always unlucky.”
“If it was you who set this roof on fire, your torch was worth an army.”
“Aye, I never saw fire fail; no man is ashamed of running away from a blaze; and I thought that the Romans were tired enough, to be glad of the excuse. But I had a point besides to carry. Florus is somewhere under these ceilings. I determined to burn him out, and pay home my long arrear, as he attempted to make his escape. But you have just extinguished the cleverest earthly contrivance for the discovery of rascal governors, and I must break an oath I made long ago, against his ever dying in his bed.”
“Florus here! then we must find him without delay. But who comes?”
At the word I seized a slave of the palace, attempting to escape. He begged hard for his life, and promised to conduct us where the procurator was concealed. We hurried on through a succession of winding passages; a strong door stopped us.
“There,” said the slave.
“By the beard of my fathers, the wolf shall not be long in his den!” cried the son of El Hakim. “Procurator, your last crime is committed.”
He threw himself against the door with prodigious force; the bars burst away, and before us lay the terror of Judea.
He was to be a terror no more. A cup, the inseparable amethystine cup, stood on the table beside his couch. He lay writhing in pain. His countenance wore the ghastliest hue of death. I bade him surrender. He smiled, took the cup in his trembling hand, and eagerly swallowed the remaining drops in its bottom.
“What! poison!” exclaimed my companion; “has the villain escaped me? Here is my planet again; never was man so unlucky. But he is not dead yet.”
He drew his falchion, and lifted it up with the look of one about to offer a solemn sacrifice. I seized his arm.
“He is dying,” said I; “he is beyond earthly vengeance.”
The wretched criminal before us was nearly insensible to his brief preservation. The poison, acting upon a frame already broken with public and private anxieties, was making quick work, and the glazed eye, the fallen countenance, and the collapsed limb showed that his last hour was come.
“And this is the thing,” soliloquized the son of El Hakim, “that men feared! In this senseless flesh was the power to make the free tremble for their freedom, and the slave curse the hour that he was born. This mass of mortality could stand between me and happiness—could make me a beggar, a wanderer, miserable, mad!”
He caught up the hand that hung nerveless from the couch.
“Accursed hand!” exclaimed he, “what torrents of blood have owed their flowing to thee! A word written by these fingers cost a thousand lives. And, O Heaven! in this cruel grasp was the key of thy dungeon, my Mary!—that dungeon of more than the body, the hideous prison-house that extinguished thy mind!”
He let fall the hand and wept bitterly.
To my utter surprise the procurator started upon his feet, and with the look that had so often made the heart quake, haughtily demanded who we were, and how we dared to interrupt his privacy? I felt as if a spirit had started up before me from the shroud. But this extraordinary revival was merely the last effort of a fierce mind. He tottered, and was falling, when my companion darted forward, grasped him by the bosom with one hand, and waving the falchion above him with the other—
“He hears! he sees!” exclaimed he exultingly. “Who are we? Who am I? Look upon me, Gessius Florus, before the sight leaves your eyes forever. See Sabat the Ishmaelite, the despised, the insulted, the trampled, the undone! But never did you prosper from the hour of my ruin. I was your spy, but it was only to bring you into a snare; I fed your pride, but it was only that it might turn the hearts of all men against you; I tempted your avarice, only that wealth might make your nights sleepless, and your days, days of fear; I roused your wrath into rage; I inflamed your ambition into frenzy! This night, I led your conquerors upon you. But I had made all sure. In another week, Gessius Florus, if you had escaped this sword, you would have been seized by order of the Emperor, stripped of your wealth, your accursed power, and your wretched life. The command for your blood is this night crossing the Mediterranean!”
The dying man struggled to get free, wrenched himself by a violent effort from the strong grasp that at once held and sustained him, and fell. He was dead!
The son of El Hakim stood gazing on the body in silence, when the glitter of a ring on the hand, as it lay spread upon the floor, struck his eye. He seized it with an outcry; the man was wholly changed; his frowning visage flashed with joy. I in vain demanded the cause. He pressed the signet to his lips.
“Farewell, farewell,” he exclaimed.
“Will you not wait for your share of the spoil, your ample and deserved reward?”
“Farewell!” he repeated, and burst from the chamber.
This memorable night made changes in more than the Ishmaelite. Constantius was at last in his element. I had hitherto seen him disguised by circumstances; the fugitive from his country, the lover under the embarrassments of forbidden passion, the ill-starred soldier. His native vigor of soul was under a perpetual cloud. But now the cloud broke away, and the consciousness of having nobly retrieved his check, and the still prouder consciousness of the career that this triumph laid open before him, brought the character of his mind into full light. He was now the lofty enthusiast that nature made him. He breathed generous ambition; his step was the step of command; and when he rushed to my embrace with almost the eagerness of a boy, and a voice stifled with emotion, I saw in him the romance, the soaring spirit, and the passionate love of glory that molded the Greek hero.
He had done his duty nobly. All were in admiration of the assault. The Romans had been fully prepared. He scaled the rampart, and scaled it in their teeth. His men followed gallantly. He pressed on; the second rampart was stormed. I had found him at the foot of the third, checked by its impregnable mass, but defying the whole garrison to drive him back. When I afterward saw the strength of those bulwarks, I felt that with such a leader at the head of troops animated by his spirit, there was nothing extravagant in the boldest hope of war.
This was an eventful night, and there was still much to be done before we slept. I threw over my tattered garments one of the many mantles that lay loose round the chamber, flung another on the body of the procurator, and sallied forth to give the final orders of the night. The prisoners had been already secured, and I found the great hall of the palace crowded with centurions. The interview was whimsical; for a while I escaped recognition; the gashed faces and torn raiment of my hunters, which bore the marks of our dreary march through the subterranean; the rough heads and hands stained with the fight, a startling contrast to the perfect equipment of the Roman under all circumstances, gave them the look of the robber tribes. My disguise was in the contrary way, yet complete. The cloak was accidentally one of the most showy in the procurator’s wardrobe. I found myself enveloped in furs and tissues; and their Arab acquaintance was forgotten in what seemed to them the legitimate monarch of the mountains.
I was received by the circle of captives with the decent dignity of the brave. There was but one exception, which I might have guessed—the tribune. He was all humiliation, stooped to make some abject request about his baubles, and was probably on the point of apologizing for his ever having taken up the trade of war, when I turned on my heel and shook hands with my old friend the captain. He looked in evident perplexity. At last, through even the grim evidences of the night’s work on my countenance, and the problem of my pompous mantle, his brightening eye began to recognize me, and he burst out with: “The Arab, by Jupiter!” But when I asked him what had become of his baggage, I touched a tender string, and, with a countenance as grave as if he had sustained an irreparable calamity, he told me that his whole traveling cellar was in the hands of my men, and it was his full belief that he was at that moment not worth a flask in the wide world!
The tribune turned away in conscious disgrace, and I sent him to a dungeon to meditate till morn on the awkwardness of insolence to strangers. With the others, I sat down to such entertainment as a sacked fortress could supply, but which hunger, thirst, and fatigue rendered worth all the banquets of the idle. The old captain cheered his soul and grew rhetorical.
“Wine,” said he, flask in hand, “does wonders. It is the true leveler, for it leaves no troublesome inequality of conditions. It is the true sponge that pays all debts at sight, for it makes us forget the existence of a creditor. It is the true friend that sticks by a man to the last drop; the faithful mistress that forsakes no man; and the most charming of wives, whose tongue no husband hears, whose company is equally delightful at all hours, and who is as bewitching to-day as she was fifty years ago.”
The panegyric was popular. The governor’s cellar flowed. The Italian connoisseurship in vintages was displayed in the most profound style, and long before we parted the great “sponge” which wipes away debt had wiped away every recollection of defeat. The idea of their being prisoners never clouded a sunbeam that came from the bottle. The letters scattered from the tribune’s saddle were an unfailing topic. The legion had picked them up on the march; they had the piquancy of the scandal of particular friends; and the addition made to their intelligence by my wild associate was unanimously declared the most dexterous piece of frolic, the most pleasant venom, and the most venomous pleasantry, that ever emanated from the wit of man.
My task was not yet done. I left those gay soldiers to their wine, and with Constantius and some torch-bearers hastened to the Armory of Herod—the forbidden ground; the treasure-house of war; and, if old rumor were to be believed, the place of many a mysterious celebration unlawful to be seen by human eyes.
The building was in the center of the citadel,[33] and was of the stateliest architecture. The massive doors were now thrown open. At the first step, I shrank from the blaze of steel and gold that shot back against the torches. The walls of this gigantic hall were covered with arms and armor of every nation—cuirasses, Persian, Roman, and Greek; the plate mail of the Gaul; the Indian chain-armor; innumerable headpieces, from the steel cap of the Scythian to the plumed and triple-crested helmet of the Greek, that richest combination of strength and beauty ever borne by soldiership; shields of every shape and sculpture; the Greek orb, the Persian rhomb, the Cimmerian crescent; all arms—the ponderous spear of the phalanx; the Thracian pike; the German war-hatchet; the Italian javelin; the bow, from the Nubian, twice the height of man, to the small half-circle of the Assyrian cavalry; swords, the broad-bladed and fearful falchion of the Roman, every thrust of which let out a life; the huge two-handed sword of the Baltic tribes; the Syrian simitar; the Persian acinaces; the deep-hilted knife of the Indian islander; the Arab poniard; the serrated blade of the African—all were there in their richest models, the collection of Herod’s life. War had raised him to a rank which allowed the indulgence of his most lavish tastes of good and ill; the sword was his true scepter, and never king bore the sign of his sovereignty more royally emblazoned.
After long admiration of this display of the wealth dearest to the soldier, I was retiring, when a slave approached, and prostrating himself, told me that a hall remained, still more singular, “the hall in which the great Herod received his death-warning.”
I gazed round the armory; there was no door but the one by which we had entered——
“Not here,” said the Ethiopian, “yet it is beside us. The foot of a Roman has never entered it. The secret remains with me alone. Does my lord command that it shall be revealed?”
The order was given. The slave took down one of the coats of mail, pushed back a valve, and we entered a winding stair which led us downward for some minutes. The narrow passage and heavy air reminded me of the subterranean. Our torches burned dimly, and the visages of my attendants showed how little their gallantry was to be relied on, if we were to be brought into contact with magic and ghosts.
“Here,” said the Ethiopian, “it was the custom of the great king in his declining years, when his heart was broken by the loss of the most beloved of wives, and maddened by the conspiracies of the princes, his sons, to come and consult others than the God of Jerusalem. Here the Chaldee men of wisdom came to summon the spirits of the departed and show the fates of kingdoms. We are now in the bowels of the mountain.”
He loosed a chain, which disappeared into the ground with a hollow noise. A huge mass of rock slowly rolled back, and showed a depth of darkness through which our twinkling torches scarcely made way.
“Stop,” said the slave; “I should have first lighted the shrine.”
He left us, and we shortly saw a blaze of many colors on a tripod in the center. As the blaze strengthened, a scene of wonder awoke before the eye. A host of armed statues grew upon the darkness. The immense vault was peopled with groups of warriors, all the great military leaders of the world in their native arms, and surrounded by a cluster of their captains; the disturbers of the earth, from Sesostris down to Cæsar and Antony, brandishing the lance or reining the charger, each in his known attitude of command. There rushed Cyrus in the scythed chariot, surrounded by his horsemen, barbed from head to foot. There was to be seen Alexander, with the banner of Macedon waving above his head, and armed as when he leaped into the Granicus; there Hannibal, upon the elephant that he rode at Cannæ; there Cæsar, with the head of Pompey at his feet. Those, and a long succession of the masters of victory, each in the moment of supreme fortune, made the vault a representative palace of human glory. But the view from the entrance told but half the tale. It was when I advanced and lifted the torch to the countenance of the first group that the moral was visible. All the visages were those of skeletons. The costly armor was hung upon bones. The spears and scepters were brandished by the thin fingers of the grave. The vault was the representative sepulcher of human vanity. This was one of the fantastic fits of a mind which felt too late the emptiness of earthly honors. Half pagan, the powerful intellect of the man gave way to the sullen superstitions of the murderer. Egypt was still the mystic tyrant of Palestine, and Herod, in his despair, sank into the slave of a credulity at once weak and terrible.
In the last hours of a long and deeply varied life, exhausted more by misery of soul than disease, when medicine was hopeless, and he had returned from trying the famous springs of Callirhoë in vain, the king ordered himself to be brought into this vault, and left alone. He remained in it during some hours. The attendants were at length roused by hideous wailings; they broke open the entrance, and found him in a paroxysm of terror. The vault was filled with the strong odors of some magical preparations, still burning on the tripod. The sound of departing feet was heard, but Herod sat alone. In accents of the wildest wo he declared that he had seen the statues filled with sudden life, and charging him with the death of his wife and children.
He left Masada instantly, pronouncing a curse upon the hour in which he first listened to the arts of Egypt. He was carried to Jericho, and there laid on a bed, from which he never rose. Alternate bursts of blasphemy and remorse made his parting moments frightful. But tyranny was in his last thought, and he died, holding in his hand an order for the massacre of every leading man in Judea.