Isaiah was robed in spotless white. His station at the head of the broad
stairway to the lower terrace of the temple-tower raised him full thirty
cubits above the multitude. With the myriads packing the area below, the
glittering array of the procession at his feet, the shining crest of the
_ziggurat_ towering above, no marvel he was the one figure on which a
thousand eyes were fastened. And as they gazed on him, the crowds grew
still. Who was this that stayed the hands of Bel-Marduk’s own priest,
in the god’s own dwelling? Men felt their hearts beating loudly, their
breath was bated; and each passed to each the whisper, “Either the Jew is
mad, or the spirit of some mighty god possesses him. Let us listen.”
The king was silent, Avil-Marduk was silent, and the chiefs of the sacred
colleges, the captains of the army. Only the spell of power passing
human—every heart was confessing—could make the high priest’s words die
on his lips, his eyes hang captive on the compelling power sped from the
eyes of the youthful Jew.
In the profound silence Isaiah spoke. Clear and strong his words sounded
across the packed enclosure.
“Woe, woe, woe unto Babylon! Unto the great city, the cry of whose sins
is gone up to heaven! Whose evil deeds are uncounted! Woe unto Babylon,
and woe to her base priests and baser king!”
Was it not a god that dared to revile the lord of the Chaldees before his
face? The silence was not broken. Isaiah spoke again.
“Woe unto Belshazzar and Avil-Marduk, who seek the blood of the innocent
for their own dark ends! Whose power is born of treachery and lies! Who
spare neither the hoary head, nor the guileless maid! Woe unto king and
priest and to all who walk after them!”
Men saw Avil-Marduk turn away his gaze as from a sight of ill-omen. Those
near by heard him mutter to Sirusur, commander of the host:—
“This is a madman! Pluck him down, and end his ravings!”
But Sirusur only stood and stared dumbly, and Avil was impotent.
“Hear ye, hear ye, men of Babylon!” thundered the prophet. “Hitherto the
spirit of Jehovah, the Lord God, has sent me to my own people. This day
His message is to you and to your sinful king.
“Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon! There is
no throne left to you, O daughter of the Chaldees. No more shall you be
called tender and delicate; therefore take the millstones and grind the
meal in hard labour. Your vileness and shame shall be revealed; for I,
Jehovah, will take vengeance. I will bring the strong races that serve
me, and the king that worships me, against you. I will abase your pride.
Therefore sit you in silence, and get you into darkness, O daughter of
the Chaldees, for never again shall they declare you ‘Lady of Kingdoms’!”
By this time the most hardened scoffer felt his knees beating together
in dread. The rumour of evil omens that had shaken the city of late,
the suppressed excitement of the morning, which all now expected to
end in a tumult, the sudden apparition of this Jew, whose arrest had
been diligently sought—what more was needed to spread a trembling among
the thousands? And when Isaiah paused, there came in answer many gasps
and cries: “No more! Woe, woe! Heaven is wroth with us, and with our
children!” But the Hebrew had not finished.
“You have trusted in your strong walls, men of Chaldea; in Imgur-Bel,
in Nimitti-Bel; in the breadth of your rivers. You have filled your
granaries, you have numbered your chariots, you have gathered your
captains. But I say unto you, except you put away the oppression from
your midst, except your king spares the innocent, and turns back his
lust from the helpless, and makes end to the captivity of the people of
Jehovah—I, even the God of gods, will mock your rage; will bring low
your pride; will make a way for your enemies through the deep waters;
will go before them; will prevail with them, and give the empire unto
another who shall be my servant, who shall execute righteousness toward
my people, and judgment toward their oppressor. Thus, thus is the word of
Jehovah, before whom Marduk is less than dust, and Istar than hoarfrost
beneath the sun at the noonday.”
Isaiah had ended. He swept his robe about him, and stood silent,
steadfast, neither advancing nor trying to flee away. Whence he had come,
Ea the Wise alone might tell. There was stillness one instant, till the
first magic of his spell had passed. Then, following the impulse already
strong in their hearts, and trebly strengthened by the Jew’s inspired
warning, most of the multitude broke into the howling cry:—
“The gods are angry on account of Daniel! Spare Daniel! Spare! Spare!”
The yell was the signal for the loosing of pandemonium. Instantly, with
a din redoubled by the strange interruption, the priests of Avil resumed
their opposing clamour.
“Death to both Jews! Death! Death! Marduk is enraged! Away with Daniel!”
The two shouts rose in one deafening babel. But in the midst of the din
the chief pontiff had made himself heard by the king, and a “ten” of
guardsmen sped up the stairs, seized Isaiah, who had waited them in
perfect passiveness, and hurried him down to their royal lord. Belshazzar
was standing beneath his purple parasol at the foot of the steps, close
by the car of Bel. Ramman, spreading the hurricane clouds, was never
blacker than the king’s face when they dragged the Hebrew before him.
“Kill! kill!” that was all they could hear him shout, striving to be
heard above the increasing din.
“In what manner?” demanded Sirusur, barely heard, salaaming respectfully.
“I wait my lord’s command.”
“Hew off his head; let the dogs fight over his body!” came from the king
in one breath.
“Ah, Jew!” sneered Avil, during a lull; “it would have been better to
have been led by me, to have forgotten Jehovah for Bel-Marduk. Will your
god save you _now_?”
“If it be His will He can indeed save me!” flashed back Isaiah,
unflinching. “When my father Shadrach would not bow to Nebuchadnezzar’s
great statue of Bel in the plain of Dura, did he come from the king’s
furnace living or dead?”
“Fairly smitten on the very thigh,” grunted Bilsandan, who took small
pains to conceal his enmity toward the pontiff. But Avil’s flushed face
only turned the darker, as he threatened the prisoner.
“By every god of Babylon you shall nevertheless die a jackal’s own
death!” he shouted, while Belshazzar still thundered, “Kill! Kill!” But
Sirusur stood hesitant; for if his lord had cast off the Jew’s spell,
the general was still under it.
In his fury Belshazzar tugged at the short sword at his side that he
might become himself executioner, when a new shout of the people finally
drowned his commands.
“Spare Daniel! Spare the good minister! Do not anger Heaven!”
Avil’s underlings were fairly howled down at last.
“Except the king promise to spare Daniel, I look for a riot instantly,”
remonstrated Bilsandan, the vizier, in the first instant of silence.
“Better let Babylon flow with blood, be he ten times innocent,” blazed
the wrathful king, “than I give way to these hissing geese. Khatin ends
him to-night.”
Avil-Marduk sped to the terrace where Isaiah had taken station, and
beckoned in vain for silence.
“Away with him!” roared the crowd, led on by Hasba, the bold priest of
Nabu. “Away with the king’s evil councillor!”
Belshazzar had mounted to his friend’s side.
“Well,” cried he, in Avil’s ear, “Allat has loosed all her fiends! Let
sword and spear quiet them!”
“So be it, my king,” answered Avil, putting on a bold face, though
quaking within.
Belshazzar turned to Sirusur, the “Master of the Host,” “Hark you,
general,” stormed the king, “this is more than half your own doing; it
was you and Bilsandan who favoured that accursed Daniel, gained his
reprieve, and left these geese chance to hiss so loudly. Chase them
outside the temple grounds, and that quickly, or I call you my enemy as
well as Avil’s.”
“I am your Majesty’s slave,” retorted the general, colouring angrily,
“not this man’s,” with a menacing scowl toward Avil. “I have been
Imbi-Ilu’s friend, but while he raises hand against the king I become his
enemy.”
“Prove it, then,” enjoined Belshazzar, fiercely; “form your men! Charge!”
“And Isaiah?” the general asked.
“Spare now. We must torture him to learn where that wench Ruth is hidden,
for she is no more at Borsippa. Now silence this hubbub.”
A hubbub, indeed. The people were flinging dust in the air and calling
ominously for “bricks.” Just as Sirusur had formed his men in a solid
body by the stairway, a priest of Nabu drew forth a short sword, and the
rest, with their brethren of Sin and Samas, imitated him instantly.
“Down with Avil! Away with Avil, the king’s evil councillor!” swelled the
shout.
“Charge! Drown out this yell in blood!” commanded Belshazzar. And with
this command winging them, the guardsmen hurled themselves on the mob.
But Mulis, the barber, had warned truly, that the king would repent that
the soldiers had marched with only their parade swords. Charging in a
solid body upon the disorderly array opposed to them, they had small
difficulty in beating down the first rioters they encountered; slew some,
arrested others, and drove the whole multitude—rebellious priests and
lawless city folk—backward toward the temple gates. Flushed with their
triumph, Sirusur’s men even surrounded the ship of Nabu, and dragged from
his high car Imbi-Ilu, author of the outbreak.
“Ha, good pontiff!” the general laughed, covering his real sympathy with
Imbi-Ilu’s cause under a mighty show of zeal, “you are not likely to find
this day’s sport cheaply bought!” And he called to two under officers to
hale the arch-malcontent before the king.
But even as Belshazzar was foaming and threatening over his captive, the
tide of conflict turned; for, led by Hasba, the priests of Nabu rallied
to a man for the rescue of their chief. The ranks of the soldiers had
been broken as they followed up their victory. And once their solid array
shattered, their advantage was gone. The priests and rioters were all
around them, almost crushing them with incessant volleys of bricks, and
guardsmen as well as the mob were now falling fast. The rioters tore
down the copings of the enclosure walls, securing an exhaustless supply
of missiles. The troops were brave. They charged this way and that, but
every time their companies were shivered into smaller fragments, around
which the multitude rolled like the billows of an angry sea. Sirusur was
in the act of re-forming his men to attempt a second charge, when a
brick smote his helmet, and with a great yell of triumph the priests of
Nabu leaped on him, plucked him out of the midst of his men, and dragged
him away safe prisoner. The soldiers made one last effort to rally, but
with their leader taken, and outnumbered ten to one, they were swept back
to the stairs of the _ziggurat_; and in a moment the exulting priests
of Nabu were charging after them, forcing them upward step by step, and
making straight for the lower terrace of the tower, where the royal party
was stationed. Only when they saw Sirusur taken had their own peril
dawned fully on Belshazzar and his suite. The riot was taking alarming
proportions. A new king might be proclaimed ere sunset—who could say?
“Glory, glory to Nabu! to Samas! to Nergal!” a thousand throats were
yelling. “Rescue for Imbi-Ilu! Death to Avil!”
The troops, desperate now, turned at bay halfway up the wide staircase,
and for an instant their close array of swinging swords made the rioters
recoil; but what with the bricks’ constant pelting, no men without armour
could hold such a position long.
Avil had turned to the king. The haughty pontiff fell on his knees, his
face ashen with terror.
[Illustration: “They did not know the lion spirit within the king, that
made him as steeled against fear as against mercy.”]
“Protection, lord! Save me! Save! They will pluck me in pieces!” And
he caught at the hem of his master’s robe. But if any had reckoned on
Belshazzar’s quailing at that dread moment, they did not know the lion
spirit within the king, that made him as steeled against fear as against
mercy. Atossa had never seen him more kingly, more truly the incarnation
of his arrogant, indomitable race, than now, when he leaped upon the
parapet of the terrace, and faced that screeching, raging mob.
Three bricks brushed past him in a twinkling, a fourth smote the purple
and white tiara from his head, but he would have heeded snowflakes more.
And at sight of him, the king, “lord of Sumer and Akkad, who had taken
the hands of Bel,” even this foaming multitude gave back, and grew quiet.
The king spoke to them as to crouching hounds.
“Back, imps! Do you so love Allat that you seek quick voyaging to her?
Get you gone, or by the Anunnaki, the dread spirits, I swear the kites
shall eat you all by morning!”
A moment of hesitation and silence. “And you, spawn of Nabu,” thundered
the king, “advance one step farther, and the head of Imbi-Ilu, your chief
demon, is flung down to you!”
Untimely boast, for Hasba instantly howled back: “Be it so, and we of
Nabu swear that Sirusur, the general, dies when Imbi-Ilu dies. Life for
life, and death for death!” And to this all the priests answered; “It is
so! We hold Sirusur hostage for Imbi-Ilu!”
The king gave a fearful curse. “So be it!” cried he, in his passion,
“but if the general loses an hair, he shall be terribly avenged. Execute
Imbi-Ilu this instant!” He had leaped down from the parapet. The bricks
were flying again. He repeated his command to Igas-Ramman, the captain
now heading the troops, but Igas had salaamed before his lord, saying:—
“Live forever, my king! Your slaves, the guards, will die for you; but
they will throw their swords away rather than see Sirusur, their leader,
sacrificed. We dare not touch the high priest of Borsippa.”
“Have you, too, the hearts of conies?” warned Belshazzar. And they saw
his hand go to his sword, as if to smite Imbi with his own arm. But the
instant he had sprung from the parapet the attack had been renewed. The
troops, cowed and ill-led, broke under the pressure, and the volleys gave
way; and in a twinkling the rioters were on the first terrace. It was a
moment of uttermost danger for king and courtiers. The mob swept up upon
the platform in a single human wave. “Back, my lord! back!” exhorted
Igas-Ramman, thrusting himself with a handful of men betwixt the rioters
and Belshazzar; but the king brushed him aside.
“Where is Isaiah?” shouted the monarch, casting about one glance. “Though
I perish, let not _him_ escape!”
But while the words quitted his lips, a young man in the foremost of the
assailants, had bounded past the demoralized soldiers, and in an instant
loosed the Hebrew’s bands.
“Shaphat! Shaphat the accuser of Daniel!” howled many voices together;
but rescuer and rescued were already swallowed in the sea of writhing,
fighting forms. A moment later, the victorious priests of Nabu had
plucked their leader out of the hands of the panic-struck guardsmen, and
Imbi-Ilu once more headed his cheering followers.
“Away with Avil-Marduk!” rang the shout, never louder. “Fling him over
the _ziggurat_!”
The pontiff barely saved himself by most headlong flight up the next
stairway to the second stage of the tower. After him fled Mermaza, and
many a dignitary followed them. But there was one who did not fly, and
that was the king. Marduk, guardian of his house, cast his shield indeed
before him, and saved him, for he was foremost in the press of death; and
more than one stout priest of Nabu and riotous burgher howled no more
after the royal sword smote them.
Atossa had watched the first moments of the battle with keen delight.
The hated Avil and the scarce less hated king were the assailed; their
enemies were her friends. But now that the strife was all about her, she
was whirled from her place by a sudden rush of the rioters; an instant
more and she was in rough hands, the veil rudely torn from her face, with
ten brutal voices crying in her ear:—
“Praise Istar! A prize! A prize! Off with her!”
They should have guessed from her dress who she might be; and she
declared herself haughtily, but her voice was drowned in the babel.
Atossa was feeling herself hurried down the stairway to the temple
enclosure, the whole rude scene enacted so swiftly that she scarce knew
what had befallen, when suddenly a strong arm was thrusting aside her
excited captors.
“Fools!” a loud voice was crying, “are you bat-blind? Release! she is no
spoil for you. Wrong her, and you bring Cyrus down on Babylon!”
The hands upon Atossa relaxed, as her captors stared into the face of the
young man who had awed them so shortly before—Isaiah the Jew.
“She is ours,” commented the leader of the band, little liking to let
so fair a bit of spoil slip through his fingers. “Who are you, Master
Hebrew, to give the law unto us?”
He flourished a cudgel in air, when a second cudgel, wielded by the same
young man who had released Isaiah, smote the weapon out of his hand, and
left him disarmed and cowed. The brutish weavers who had taken Atossa
blinked at one another in confusion.
“This way, lady,” commanded the Hebrew, taking Atossa by the hand, “and
those who lay finger on you shall pay right dear.”
The weavers stared at him, but Shaphat’s cudgel was waving very close to
their heads. One fellow, bolder than the rest, stretched forth a hand to
seize the Persian again, but he only earned from Isaiah a buffet behind
the ear that laid him prone on the pavement.
“Be warned,” exhorted the Hebrew. “I am your friend, and the king’s
enemy; but as Jehovah my God liveth, you shall not do violence to this
woman!”
“We meant no harm,” protested the leader of the band, cowed and sullen.
“Good, then; she is safe in my hands. Go again to the struggle, for by
the Lord of Hosts, Belshazzar is far from mastered.”
They were gone, rushed back to the conflict now raging at the foot of the
stairs to the second temple stage, whither the king had retreated with
the soldiers. Isaiah caught a dusty robe from the bricks, where it had
lain since being rent from its owner’s back, and threw it over Atossa.
“Cover your gay dress and your face, my lady,” commanded he, “so none
will recognize, and I will conduct you back to the palace. This is truly
proving a day of deeds fierce and terrible.”
Many rioters stared at them, but as soon as they recognized the prophet,
they made way rapidly, and Isaiah led on unhindered, Shaphat following
silently after, and guarding their rear.
Thanks to this half-reverence, half-dread, the two were soon clear of
the tumult within the temple enclosure and were threading the city
streets. Here everything was nigh quiet as the grave. Sober burghers
and shopkeepers had long since barricaded their houses and closed their
booths, lest the malcontents turn speedily from sedition to pillage.
Once Isaiah led into an alley while a chariot corps from the Northern
Citadel thundered past at headlong speed, bearing belated succour to the
hard-pressed king.
Isaiah guided the princess westward, past the temple of Nana, and down
the great street until they reached the river, the bridge of boats;
and that once crossed, Atossa saw before them the stately gates of the
palace, within which was her safety.
“Declare yourself fearlessly to the sentries, my lady,” said the young
prophet, “and your danger is at an end.”
“And you?” said she, while he turned to leave her; “where is your safety?
What may I do in reward for this peril run for me?”
The Hebrew smiled gently. “I shall be scantily welcome in the king’s
house, I fear. And in serving you I have but repaid in part the debt I
owe Prince Darius.”
“Yet you must not go without one token. What may I give?”
“Some talisman, then, that shall be known to all Persians to vouch for my
truth, if I say I bring word from Babylon of you and of Darius.”
Atossa tore a gold locket from her neck. “Take this, then,” and she held
it out; “it was given me by my father on my last birthday. It is marked
with the winged likeness of Ahura the Great. Cyrus and all his lords
will recognize.”
Isaiah and Shaphat were salaaming again to make farewell, but Atossa had
one more appeal.
“Ah! brave Jew,” spoke she, “if the one God leads you—and He must—to let
you do the deed you have done this day, do not forget my wretchedness,
or the peril of Darius. Do you verily purpose to stand before Cyrus my
father?”
“As speedily as the Lord God shows me the way,” assented Isaiah.
“Oh!” she cried impulsively, “am I not for the instant free? Can I not
trust you in all things? Why may I not flee with you to the city of my
father, and see this wicked Babylon no more?”
The young Jew smiled. “Spoken like a king’s own child, in very truth! But
such things cannot be. You cannot go where I may go, or endure what is as
naught to me; that were not trusting, but rather tempting, God.”
“But you will tell all to Cyrus,—of myself, of Darius, of Belshazzar and
his guile. You swear that you will conceal nothing, that my father may
dash from power this evil king of the Chaldees.”
There was a strange light on Isaiah’s face when he answered: “Fear not,
lady, Cyrus shall hear. And think not that the one God will forget the
wickedness of these servants of stone and brass; for I say to you, He
shall turn all their guile against themselves, and shall humble them
utterly.”
“Alas! brave Jew,” Atossa cried, at parting, “would to Ahura your faith
were mine. My own faith in Him grows weak, but my faith in you, who can
dare so much, is very strong.”
“Put no trust in me,” Isaiah replied, kissing her mantle; “but trust much
in the Spirit that moves in me, and in every soul whose love is light and
truth.”
* * * * *
How Belshazzar made good the tower of Bel-Marduk that day against half
of Babylon, how soldiers came at last from the garrison cantonments to
the aid of the hard-pressed royal guard, how the king slew his tens and
surpassed all his captains in valour—of this there is no place to tell.
Save for Belshazzar himself, the priests of Nabu and the rioters would
have stormed the _ziggurat_ to its topmost stage, and flung monarch and
chief pontiff upon the pavement below. But Nergal, or some other divinity
of the bold, watched over the king, and saved him from mortal wound. The
malcontents gained the second stage of the tower after a bitter struggle,
so that the steps of the _ziggurat_ flowed with blood. But here their
progress was stopped. Companies of soldiers, arriving outside the temple
enclosure, threatened to cut off the retreat of those rioters who had
entered, and the troops within turned at bay, and held their own at last.
Then, finally, the tide seemed to have turned. The valour commenced
to ooze out of the undisciplined priests and burghers. Only one thing
prevented Belshazzar from making good all his threats, and causing the
brethren of Nabu to curse the day they had lifted their heads against his
power and the supremacy of Bel-Marduk. Sirusur, the general, was still
captive in the malcontents’ hands. Let them be pressed too hard, and his
life was not worth a shekel. The king raged at his captains, but they
were obdurate.
“Rather than sacrifice Sirusur,” declared Bilsandan, the vizier, bluntly,
when his lord gave orders for a final charge, “the soldiers will declare
for Imbi-Ilu. The rebels are desperate. We can ill afford a victory that
will plunge half Babylon in mourning. It will sow ill feeling to blossom
into twenty new revolts. We dare not do it, your Majesty.”
And so the king had been persuaded. The criers had made proclamation,
and the decree had been promptly published, that his Majesty, out of the
goodness and benevolence of his heart toward his subjects, would proclaim
amnesty to all who had taken part in the day’s riot, from Imbi-Ilu
downward. As for Daniel, the king gave his royal word that he should be
kept in honourable custody, and no attempt made against his life. This
concession ended the tumult. The rioters dispersed. The priests of Nabu
returned—as many as were yet alive—to Borsippa. They were not completely
satisfied, for Avil-Marduk was still living and in power; but a great
blow had been struck at his prestige. The lower temple of Bel had been
thoroughly sacked. Avil would have to mortgage all the lands of his
god to make good the damage, unless the king was generous out of the
treasury. Daniel had been saved from death. Belshazzar had been taught
a lesson, likely to be remembered, that Bel was not the only god worth
conciliating. So on the next day peace reigned in Babylon.
There had been one exception to the amnesty, however. Whatever the secret
thoughts of many, none dared openly to express sympathy for the mad
Jewish prophet. Belshazzar had desired to make a notable example.
The next night, as the boatmen warped their barges into the current
to drop down the river to Erech, they heard the criers upon the quays
shouting across the water:—
“Two manehs of silver! Two manehs from the king for the body of Isaiah
the Jew, alive or dead! Two manehs for Isaiah the Jew!”
Yet, though the silver was coveted by a host, the gods strangely suffered
their blasphemer to remain at large, and the money to lie safe in the
royal coffers.
[Illustration: AVIL-MARDUK GIVES COUNSEL]