The last glimmer of light from above had vanished. The darkness, deeper
than that of deepest night, crowded about the three. The little lamp in
Isaiah’s hand shed only a tiny gleam that made the shadows behind and
before tenfold the blacker. As they descended the air grew foul, so that
the lamp sank to a poor spark, and all were gasping. It was like passing
alive into Sheol, and threading the avenues of the dead. No word, save
when Isaiah halted an instant and pointed to a ponderous bronze lever set
in the brickwork.
“This controls the sluice,” quoth he, in a whisper; “we pass beneath the
river soon.”
Darius had caught the lever in a giant clutch, and twisted it in its
socket; it would play less easily now, and delay the flooding. Then the
air around them grew yet more foul, so that they were fain to bow their
heads and haste onward, catching the purer breaths that hung along the
slimy bricks at their feet. And above him, and all around, the Persian
heard what sounded as a rushing wind—yet not a wind, for it sang and
sang, without gust or crooning, one ceaseless, monotonous murmur, and he
knew that it was the great Euphrates speeding above his head. No longer
any stairs—their path led right onward.
So narrow the way that they could have reached to each wall at once with
outstretched hands. But they seldom did so, for all the bricks were
slimy with an ooze that made the flesh creep to the touch. And Darius
trod through a plashing mire, cold, fetid, unsunned for many a long
year. What monsters lurked in the all-encircling dark? Did not the dread
“Scorpion-Men” of the Chaldees’ tales here find dwelling? Were they not
near the gates of Ninkigal, “Lady of Torment,” of the Anunnaki, the
“Earth-Fiends”?
Once Zerubbabel, just ahead of Darius, had stumbled; they heard a splash
and clatter of some object escaping into the dark—some vile, light-hating
creature that loved this pathway of the dead. Yet there was no time for
halting or even for trembling. Above them the rush of the river became
a maddening torture. Every heart-beat seemed long, every breath of the
death-laden air bought with a pang. And behind them at the mouth of
the tunnel was the old man Daniel with Shaphat,—renegade once and hero
now,—sacrificing themselves for the fugitives. But how long might such as
they hold back Igas-Ramman and his scores? How long before hostile hands
would be wresting on that sluice lever and this thoroughfare of the dead
become a tomb indeed?
Darius knew that Isaiah was counting the brick piers bedded in the
casement; but, though he stared into the blackness ahead until his eyes
nigh throbbed with the pain, he met only darkness and ever more darkness.
Once he cried aloud to Isaiah, “How many piers are yet to pass?”
His words seemed to have awakened all the ghosts and ghouls of this foul
country. Echo pealed upon echo, his words were multiplied a score of
times. Hidden voices flung back his question out of murky deeps. And he
thought (for what were not his thoughts at such a moment?) that these
same tongues were answering for Isaiah: “Forever! Forever! You must run
this course forever!”
Onward and ever onward, till senses reeled and ears were filled with a
buzzing that dimmed the fearful music of the river. Almost was Darius
ready to pray for death, if life were longer to be this. But still
Isaiah’s lamp went on before him, and still the Persian followed, his
feet obeying his instinct, not his numbing will. The Jews wasted no
breath on speech. The journey was seeming interminable, when Isaiah
uttered a great cry of relief: “Praised be Jehovah. The last pier is
passed; we soon mount upward!” But the words had just crossed his tongue
when the three groaned together, “Hark!” And blended with the steady
rushing of the Euphrates swelled another rushing, as of water, splashing
and swirling rapidly in the tunnel, but far behind.
“They have opened the sluice at last,” came from Isaiah, with awful
calmness; “we must haste, and may the Lord still speed us!”
And haste they did, human feet pacing against the tread of the waters.
They stood erect despite the deadly air, and ran—ran, while the swirling
behind them grew to a roaring; and of a sudden the slimy pools at their
feet, through which they stumbled, began to swell from their soles to
their ankles; and all the water, once chill, grew warm, rushing fresh
from the sun-loved current. Then all around the air began to whistle
past them in stifling blasts, heralds of the conquering river, blowing
as swift as the waters chased them, and hurrying the fugitives onward.
The roaring behind rose to reëchoing thunder, cavern answering to cavern,
till it seemed that all the demons of the deep were howling after as for
their prey.
The stream had risen from ankle to knee—now higher. Isaiah stumbled;
his lamp was quenched, and all was noise and utter darkness. Darius’s
voice sounded above the swirl, his firm spirit bent at last: “Let us
make our peace with Ahura! That only is left!” But the Jews caught him
by the hand; he saw nothing, but under foot he felt a stairway. They
were rising, rising; the waters raved after them, loath to quit their
spoil. But the air—praised be the Merciful!—was growing sweet. The crash
of the element was dimming below. The Jews were halting on a platform,
and groping about for a keyhole. A rattle of bolts, a creaking of
the pivot—Isaiah was withdrawing the huge wooden key and relocking.
The three trod the embankment on the eastern side of the river. The
moon was creeping up above the tracery of the tower of Bel-Marduk, and
spreading her mellow light over the sleeping city. For a moment it seemed
still—still as the peace of the Most High. They saw no one, they feared
no one; but each fell on his knees, and after his own manner prayed.
Yet they had scarce risen before Isaiah was plucking the Persian’s
mantle, while Zerubbabel stretched a finger toward the river. Gliding
from the royal quay, now hid in shadow, now clear in the glistening
moonlight, was something black, crawling,—a huge beetle as it were upon
the glancing river—a boat and their pursuers. But Isaiah was calm as the
heavens above him.
“Fear nothing. We have by far the start. The gates are open. My friends
are ready with the horses. Jehovah, who has saved us out of the clutch of
the great Euphrates, shall He not much more save from the feebler wrath
of man?”
“I fear nothing,” answered Darius; for after that journey what were
swords and spears for him to dread?
“Come, then; we go the Gate of Kisch.”
The boat had crept out into the current when the three sent a last
glance across the river. A red beacon fire was flaming on a tower of
the western palace. Soon the guard in the “Old Palace” on the eastern
bank would be stirring. But they did not tarry for the alarm. The three
followed the length of Nana Street, silent and desolate, and for a time
heard only the soughing of the kind night wind from the balmy west. The
vision of the tower of Bel faded into the star-mist. They crossed the
bridge of the East Canal, where no drowsy watchman challenged them. As
they passed the gates of the temple of Beltis, a dozing soldier cried,
“Your business!” from his guard-room; but he was too fond of his warm mat
to sally into the dark and pursue possible robbers.
The Arachtu Canal was behind them, behind them the shops of the great
merchants, the still bazaars. Once two men sprang out of the dark before
them,—street thieves, perchance, lurking for the unwary; but one sight
in the moonlight of the stalwart shoulders of the three, and the others
vanished without a cry. A faint light gleamed from the steps of a low
beer-house; they heard brutish laughter and more brutish jesting as they
sped onward. The tall houses were beginning to lessen, the moonlit alleys
to widen. Another canal and another bridge, and the houses were breaking
away into vague masses of shadowy villas and gardens. Still forward;
and now behind, and far off, came a roar and a clattering,—the sound
of horsemen at their speed,—and the sound lent wings to their going.
But Isaiah, who paced even the prince as they ran, cried across his
shoulder:—
“No peril! Jehovah is with us! See, the walls!”
And lo! as Darius gazed upward, above him was rising the naked height of
Imgur-Bel, the black battlements clearly outlined against the roof of
heaven.
Far above their heads, as the voice of a sky-dweller, came once more the
call of a sentry, “The morning star rises! Sleep holds the city! Marduk
shed favour on Belshazzar the king!”
The loud noise of hoofs behind was ominous, but Isaiah led unfaltering
toward the gate. There stood the portal, at either side a soldier in
his armour, but here also prone on the ground in sleep; and the great
bronze-plated doors were unbarred, and opened wide enough to give passage
to a man. They glided through them without a word. Twelve paces more
and the drawbridge was cleared. Suddenly forms rose up out of the gloom
before them—five horses, and at their heads as many men.
“Who comes?” cried a voice, and Isaiah halted.
“This, my Lord Prince,” he announced to Darius, “is that Abiathar in
whose behalf I had attacked Igas-Ramman when you saved me. He is not
ungrateful.” Then to the others: “We are here, Abiathar, though late.
You and your friends have not failed us; Jehovah reward you and give His
mercy!”
“And my Lord Daniel and Shaphat?” answered the other, grieving to find
three, not five.
“In the Lord God’s keeping,” was the solemn answer; no time for more.
“Save yourselves, for all Babylon will ring with this, and rigorous
search be made.”
“Farewell!” The strange forms vanished in the darkness. A cry was rising
from the gate: “Treason! Escaped! The guards are drugged! Pursue!” Darius
had leaped, and felt betwixt his knees a blooded Assyrian horse. The Jews
had mounted. The three together felt the good steeds spring under them.
Down the brick-paved way they flew, whirlwind-swift, the reins lying
slack on the manes. The portal of Nimitti-Bel, closed and guarded only in
actual siege, stood wide before them. They saw it come and saw it vanish.
Shouts behind, and a raging gallop also; but Darius knew a horse by a
touch, and he knew the best in Belshazzar’s stables might run long before
breasting the Assyrian that was speeding beneath him. Before the three
spread the Chaldean plain-country, lulled by the moon into that last hush
before the bursting dawn. They heard the pursuers follow a little way,
then deeper silence. The Babylonians had found their chase was vain. The
three rode for a long time without speech. Once Darius glanced across his
shoulder—walls, palaces, temple-towers, had sunk to a shapeless haze.
He had left “The Lady of Kingdoms,” “The Beauty of the Chaldees.” Stars
and moon above, a soft west wind, and the sleeping country—that was all.
But a strange exhilaration possessed the prince. He was saved; he was
free; he had still the might of his good right arm, the keenness of his
unerring eye.
“Hebrews!” he cried, tossing his head proudly, “behold the man you have
plucked back from death unto life. Hereafter you shall learn how the son
of Hystaspes can reward his preservers and their people. But now—” he
flung his voice to the arching heavens—“to Cyrus! to Cyrus, the avenger
of all the wronged! And then war—for the abasing of ‘The Lie,’ and the
love and the joy of Atossa!”
* * * * *
There had come a Tartar cavalryman into Babylon, a small wiry man
on a bay horse fleet as Bel’s lightning bolt. When he cantered up
Ai-Bur-Schabu Street and turned the head of his Scythian toward the
king’s house, a great crowd had gaped at him. “This,” ran the whisper,
“was the bearer of the last message from Cyrus before the bursting
of war!” He had ridden straight up to the palace gate, and flung his
lance against the bronze-faced doors, turned the head of his steed, and
galloped headlong from the city, no man molesting. Thrust on the head
of the lance was a leaf of papyrus, and they had brought the letter to
Belshazzar, after which he and his ministers wagged their heads in long
debate.
“Thus says Cyrus, King of Nations, to Belshazzar his perjured
and unfaithful slave. Your guile and your plot is known unto
me. Would you live and not die? Disband then your armies; throw
down your walls; send me your treasure, and your choicest
harem women; likewise restore unharmed my daughter and the
Prince Darius, my servant. But if you do otherwise, behold! I
will make Babylon as Nineveh, a dwelling for starving wolves;
and as for you, I will cut off your ears and nose, and chain
you forty days at my palace door, that other perjurers may see
and tremble, and after that you shall be crucified. Farewell.”
When this was read Avil cried out to burn the last bridge and cast
Darius’s head into the Persian camp. So would Babylon be goaded on to
resistance to the end. But the king had shaken his head. “The prince was
a hostage,”—he repeated the word often,—“Cyrus would never dare to pass
beyond threats.” Therefore the ministers departed and Belshazzar sought
to drown his fears in wine. He had called for Atossa to come and drink
with him. He told her brutally, as if she had not heard it before, how
the game stood betwixt him and her father. When the colour mounted her
white cheek he brayed with laughter; when it fled he had new jeers. To
save the life of Darius, he asked her, would she not write in her own
hand to Cyrus, and warn him to postpone the war? But Belshazzar, who had
known only the simpering women of his seraglio, was cowed at the burst of
womanly passion he had raised. Under his blows the sparks flew from the
anvil, and that anvil was Atossa.
“I am Persian, O ‘Fiend-lover,’” and Atossa stood before him raised to
queenly height; “kings were my ancestors, men beloved and prospered of
Ahura. When the Assyrian oppressed my people, he sank back smitten.
Where now is Crœsus the Lydian, or Astyages the Mede, who defied Cyrus my
father? Sooner let your lions growl above my bones, than a daughter of
Cyrus make herself wax to such as you!”
“But you have loved Darius,” the king protested, sorely abashed; “I saw
you in his arms in the Gardens.”
“Yes,”—Atossa’s anger was becoming terrible,—“I _have_ loved him. But I
do not love his poor body more than his Aryan honour. To us death and
life may be a very little thing; but outrage, insult, oath-breaking—Ahura
may forgive such things, not we!”
“Out of my sight, woman!” thundered Belshazzar; and he had spurned her.
The eunuchs took her away. The king drank alone, draining goblet after
goblet of the most heady “Elamite”; but though he wished it, he could
not grow drunken. His body eunuchs put him to bed. He tossed long on the
India-web pillows and the Sidonian purple. They had bathed his feet in
perfumed water at last, and very late he fell asleep. The little group
of servants had gathered outside the door of the chamber, squatting in
silence on the tiles, each inwardly blessing some god that he had been
spared the royal wrath that day....
Midnight. The king turned once on his pillows, and the eunuchs’
hearts commenced quaking. Anew he slept soundly, and they were again
rejoiced.... But what was this hasting of feet on the stairway, this
thundering summons to the guard below not to hinder? “The king! The
king!” Sirusur the _Tartan_ was before the eunuchs, sword drawn, fully
armed.
“Rouse his Majesty,” commanded the general, halting his run. “Rouse
instantly! Darius the Persian is fled!”
A eunuch stood by the bedside, awoke the king, and told him. The fellow
had vowed a sheep to Samas, but the god did not favour. The king caught
the short sword, ever ready, and smote the messenger of ill tidings to
the floor. Then he raged from the chamber, and even Sirusur fell on his
knees, cowering, for the king’s wrath passed that of bayed lions.
“Not I—O awarder of life! I was not guards-captain; no blame is mine!”
The general’s teeth chattered as he spoke.
“Who commanded the watch?” came from Belshazzar, in a voice betokening
the bolt impending.
“Zikha, ‘captain of a thousand.’”
“Go you,” Belshazzar addressed Mermaza; “have a stake made ready. Let
Zikha be impaled at dawn. And now, Sirusur, where is the fugitive? By
Istar, you deserve death likewise! Whither fled? Is pursuit made? Speak,
as you love life!”
“He fled by the tunnel, lord. The guards were drugged. Traitors aided.
Daniel fled with them also, but he has been retaken.”
“Daniel? Namtar, the plague-fiend, destroy him! Is the tunnel flooded?”
“Not so wrathful, lord.” Sirusur was still trembling. “Your slaves
did all in their power. The old man Daniel remained in the entrance
to the tunnel with Shaphat, his one-time accuser; they made desperate
resistance.”
“Shaphat defend Daniel? You are mad, Sirusur.”
“Alas! no. Shaphat slew with his own hand two men, and as Bel reigns his
master fought valiantly as Gilgamesh the hero. You will not believe there
was such might in so old an arm. We killed Shaphat at last, and disarmed
Daniel, after nearly every man in the squad had his wound. Then finally
we were able to flood the tunnel, but I fear too late. The Persian had a
long start. The exit is poorly guarded. The bridge is raised, so we sent
soldiers across the river by boat. Nergal grant they nip Darius ere he
pass the city gate!”
“Bring Daniel the Jew before me!” and Belshazzar’s teeth shone white,
hateful. The men obeyed silently. The king stood in the palace gallery,
the light of one red torch touching the blood of the slaughtered eunuch
on his sword-blade. The anger on his face was fearful. The old Jew’s
dress had been torn to shreds, his white hair fouled by blood and mire,
his left arm hung limp at his side. Two petty officers upbore him. They
thought to hear Belshazzar cry “Slay” at first sight; but the king
reined his passion enough to taunt bitterly:—
“Ha! is it custom to quit the king’s house with so scant leave-taking?”
The old man shook back his bloody locks and looked straight into
Belshazzar’s rage-shot eyes. “As you have kept faith to me and mine, so
have I to you, O king!”
“Revile me now!” Belshazzar’s sword whistled as he brandished. Before a
mere reed Daniel might have winced not less.
“I do not revile. True servant have I been to you and your fathers. My
reward is this!” He held up his right arm, with the red ring marked by
the fetter.
“And this”—Belshazzar swung the sword higher—“one last mercy—death.”
But Daniel had shaken off the soldiers. He stood erect. Some power from
his eyes stayed that upraised hand as by a spell. “No, lord of the
Chaldees! You cannot kill me, nor all your sword-hands, for I am mightier
than they.”
They heard the king laugh, but—wonder of wonders—the weapon sank at his
side.
“Sorcerer! By what magic can you make your old neck proof?”
Belshazzar had moved two steps backward, turning his head to escape
the Hebrew’s compelling gaze, but could not; and he watched with a
fascinated, uneasy smile.
“O king, as in former days the word of Jehovah, One and All-powerful
God, spoke through my lips to Nebuchadnezzar the Great, so now again
His spirit comes upon me, and puts these words into my mouth. And this
is the word,”—Belshazzar was uttering a formula against the evil eye,
but he could not look away,—“There shall come a time when I, whom all
your wrath cannot destroy, shall stand again before you, shall declare
to you the mandate of Jehovah, and when you and with you all the world
shall know that whom He wills He saves, whom He wills He lays low, and
whoso blasphemes Him He rewards utterly; that all may fear the Lord God
of Israel, before whom Bel-Marduk is less than the small grains of the
threshing-floor!”
Then they saw a strange thing. They saw Belshazzar, that man of wrath,
shrink back step by step before the blood-grimed, aged Jew, until from
a long way off the king laughed again a shrill and direful laugh: “Away
with him! Back with him to his dungeon! Keep him fast, till he longs for
death, till he knows that his puny god is helpless before Bel-Marduk!”
But all the strength seemed passed out of Daniel. The soldiers caught him
as he fell. The king was staring wildly from one servant to another; he
was as a man awakened from a frightful dream.
“Wine!” he demanded. “I cannot sleep. Do you, Sirusur, pursue the
Persian. Hound him down. But wine, more wine! My head throbs!” His gaze
wandered; he in turn was tottering.
“The king is ill,” declared Mermaza, just returned; “bear him back to his
bed.”
“Allat consume you, eunuch!” Belshazzar buffeted him in the face. Then
the royal gaze lit again on Daniel.
“Off! Off! What hinders that I kill you? All your babbling is folly. You
shall cry to your Jehovah many times, and cry in vain!”
The aged prisoner shook off the soldiers; once more he stood fast.
“Remember the prophecy, King of Babylon! Remember! You shall with your
own lips summon me; with your own tongue pray to me; with your own hands
stretch forth imploring me to speak the mandate of the God you now
blaspheme!”
“Silence, dotard!” Belshazzar smote the captive on the mouth. Then
again the king reeled, and did not resist when Mermaza caught him. The
eunuchs carried him to bed. A frightened page roused the Egyptian court
physician. “Raging fever,” quoth that wise man gravely, and ordered
“poultices of lotus leaves, well soaked in lizards’ blood and in the fat
of sucking pigs’ ears.” Before long the king was in violent delirium;
his servants had to hold him on his bed, while he made the chamber ring
as he cursed them. But one word was uppermost in the royal mind as he
raved—“Jehovah, Jehovah!” When he repeated the word he would foam in
hate. “Let me master Cyrus; let me conquer in the war, and I swear by
every god and every fiend it shall be safer in Babylon to do murder by
open day than to whisper the name of that foul spirit before me!”
Avil-Marduk smiled grimly when the next morning they told him of the
king’s oath, taken in madness.
“Ah, well,” declared the pontiff, “happy for pure religion if his Majesty
keeps this pious frame of mind when heaven gives back health. Yet he
did ill when he spared Daniel. The Jew will be harmless in only one
prison—the grave!”
But long since Daniel had been thrust back into a dungeon, scarcely less
noisome than that which he had quitted. Ten armed men stood by when
they replaced the fetters, all fearful of some withering spell; and the
sentries pacing the galleries mumbled incantations to Nineb and to Ilu,
shuddering every time they caught a glitter from the terrible Hebrew’s
eye.
[Illustration: THE KING AND THE FATHER]