THE DELIVERANCE
There followed time for diverse and earnest meditation for Marsyas: He
criticized himself sarcastically, for permitting himself to be so
easily entrapped, and cast about him for means of escape. He found by
successive trials that the siege was perfect. Half of Alexandria's
garrison had been posted about the district. The more he considered
his predicament, the more an atmosphere of impending danger weighted
the air of the Nazarene community.
He did not seek the hospitality of the Nazarenes, because he had not
come to the point of admitting that he was to remain among them. At
nightfall, while the roar of the reveling city without swept over the
community, he hoped to find some unguarded spot in the Roman lines, but
his hope was vain. With his attention thus forced upon the people
penned in with him, he began to wonder if there might not yet be some
profit in counsel with his fellows, hemmed in for some purpose by
Flaccus.
He found the inhabitants gathered in a broad space in one of the
streets, where at one time a statue or a fountain might have stood, but
after a few minutes' listening, he heard only prayers and words of
submission to the unknown peril threatening them. Angry and
disappointed he flung himself away from the gathering, to spend the
night in the streets.
But after the first gust of his anger, it was brought home to him very
strongly, that these people were gifted with a new courage, the courage
of submission--to him the most mysterious and impossible of powers.
Led from this idle conclusion into yet deeper contemplation of the
Nazarene character, he found himself admitting astonishing evidences in
their favor. He had known not a few of them. Stephen had been
beatified, the most exalted, yet the sweetest character that he had
ever known. Lydia, wavering and hesitating between Judaism and the
faith of Jesus of Nazareth, struggled with fine points of conscience,
and persisted, in the face of terror,--the most potent controlling
agent, Marsyas had believed, over the spirit of womanhood. The
Nazarene body at Ptolemais had displayed before him a humanness in
subjection, that, in spite of his own resolute disposition, seemed
triumphant, after all. They had preached peace, and had maintained it
in the face of the most trying circumstances. On ship-board, he had
been shown that they were long-suffering. About him now, while
Alexandria rioted and reveled in excess, their order and decorum were
highly attractive. These were excellences that he did not willingly
see; circumstances and environment had forced their recognition upon
him.
At a late hour, he was sought and found by their pastor, the tall old
teacher, whom he had come to consider as a man whom, for his own
spiritual welfare, he should shun.
"Young brother," the pastor said, "thou art without shelter here, and
imprisoned among us. I respect thy wish to be left to thyself, yet we
can not see thee unhoused. I have a cell in yonder ruined wall; it is
solitary and secluded. Do thou take it, and I shall find shelter among
my people."
Marsyas felt his cheeks grow hot, under the cover of the night.
"I thank thee," he responded, "but I am here only for a little time. I
am young and hardy; I will not turn thee out of thy shelter."
"If thy time with us is stated, thou art fortunate. Alexandria hath
not set her limit upon our imprisonment. Yet, I shall find a niche in
the house of one of my people; be not ashamed to take my place."
Without waiting for the young man to protest, the Nazarene signed him
to follow, and led on through the dark to the place indicated--the
remnant of an ancient house--a single standing wall of earth,
sufficiently thick to be excavated to form a shallow cave. There was
room enough for a pallet of straw within, and a reed matting hung
before the opening. The pastor bade the young man enter, blessed him
and disappeared.
Marsyas sat down in the cramped burrow, and, resting his head on his
hands and his elbows on his knees, said to himself, in discomfiture:
"Beshrew the enemy that permits you to find no fault in him!"
It was not the last time in the memorable three days of imprisonment
that he frowned and deprecated the excellence of his hosts.
He accepted their simple hospitality in moody helplessness, and spent
his time either hovering on the outskirts of their nightly meetings, or
vainly searching for a plan to escape. He noted finally that they
stinted themselves food, but gave him his usual share; water appeared
less often and less plentiful. The pastor was not less confident, but
more withdrawn within himself: the elders became more grave, the
people, oppressed and prayerful. At times, when the gradual growth of
distress became more apparent, Marsyas walked apart and chid himself
for his resourcelessness.
"I am another mouth to feed, among these people," he declared. "And by
the testimony of mine own instinct, I am not the least cause of that
which hath thrown this siege about them! I will get out!"
He began at sunset the second day to discover the extent of the
besieged quarter and sound every point for the strength of its
particular blockade. He found that the Nazarene portion of Rhacotis
stretched from the landings of the bay inland to a series of granaries
where Rhacotis, in its smaller days, had built receptacles for the
wheat which the rustics brought for shipping. To the west it ended
against a stockade for cattle, upon which mounted sentries could
overlook a great deal of the quarter. To the east, the limit was a
compact row of well-built houses, remnants of the Egyptian aristocratic
portion in Alexander's time. The streets intersecting the row and
leading into pagan Rhacotis were each closed by a sentry. After his
investigations, Marsyas felt that here was the weakest spot in the
siege.
Central in the row was a tall structure, with ruined clay pylons, blank
of wall and, except for supporting beams, roofless. It had been a
temple, but was now a dwelling, a veritable warren since the Nazarenes
were all driven to occupy a portion which could shelter only a fifth of
the number comfortably.
Upon this structure, Marsyas' eye rested. Either it would be closely
watched from without or not at all. It depended upon the features of
the wall fronting on the street at the rear, in which the sentries were
posted.
For once he blessed a Nazarene night-gathering, when he saw family
after family emerge from the tunnel-like doors of the temple-house and
proceed silently toward the meeting of their brethren in the street
below.
A long time after the last emerged and disappeared into the dark,
Marsyas crossed to the doors and knocked. For a moment after his first
trial, he listened lest there be an answer. He knocked more loudly a
second time, and, after the third, he opened the unlocked doors, and,
putting in his head, called. The heated interior was totally dark and
silent.
He stepped in and closed the doors behind him. When at last his eyes
became accustomed to the darkness, he saw that he was in a single
immense chamber; the entire interior of the old temple was unbroken by
partition of any kind. Above him, he saw the crossing of great
palm-trunks, bracing the walls, and over them the blue arch of the
night. At the rear, the starlight showed him the wall abutting the
street of the sentries. It was absolutely blank and fully thirty feet
in height.
Marsyas sighed and shook his head. Though he made the leap in safety,
he could not alight without noise enough to attract the whole garrison
to the spot. But, determined to make his investigation thorough before
he surrendered the scheme as hopeless, he felt about the great chamber
and stumbled on a rude ladder leaning against a side-wall. He climbed
it, to find that it reached to a ledge, where the deeper lower half of
the wall was surmounted by a clerestory just half its thickness. He
found here rows of straw pallets where the overflow of Nazarenes took
refuge by night. He pulled up his ladder, set it on the ledge and
climbed again, finding himself at the uppermost rung within reach of
one of the palm-trunks. He seized it, tried it for solidity and drew
himself up on the top of the wall.
Fearing detection by the sentries more than the return of the
householders, he crept with caution to the angle at the rear, and
looked down into the street.
He located two sentries, but no nearer the back of the temple than the
two streets opening into the other several yards away to the north and
south. He lay still to note the direction of their post and found
that, in truth, they turned just under him. At a point half-way
between either end of their walk, they were more than two hundred paces
apart. But Marsyas looked down the sheer wall. He could not possibly
accomplish it without injury or discovery or both.
With a heavy heart he retraced his steps, descended into the old temple
and made his way toward the doors. Before he reached them, he
frightened himself by stumbling upon a huge light object that rolled
away toward the entrance. He followed cautiously, and touched it again
while fumbling for the latch. He felt of it, and finally, swinging the
door open, saw by the starlight that it was a huge hamper of twisted
palm-fiber, tall enough to contain a man and wide enough for two. He
set the thing aside and went out into the night.
To-morrow was the last day of his confinement, but he did not expect
liberty. He did not doubt that the city meditated the destruction of
the Nazarenes, nor that Flaccus would permit him to be overlooked in
the general slaughter. Not the least of his fears was that Lydia might
be thrust among them at any moment, to share the fate he had striven so
hard to avert from her.
He returned to his cave in the ruined wall, and lay down on his
matting, not to sleep, nor even to plan intelligently, but to submit to
his distress.
At high noon the third day, on the summit of the Serapeum in Egyptian
Rhacotis, there appeared a slender figure in the burnoose of an Arab.
Five hundred feet distant, in the beleaguered Nazarene settlement, a
woman stood in her doorway to pray, that the earthen roof might not be
between her supplication and the Master in Heaven. She saw the
microscopic figure on the pylon of the Temple, but daily a priest came
there to worship the sun. She saw the figure lift and extend its arms,
presently, but that was part of the idolatrous ritual, she thought.
She dropped her eyes to the crucifix in her hands and her lips moved
slowly.
At that instant, at her feet, as a thunderbolt strikes from the clouds,
an arrow plunged half its length into the hard sand, and leaned,
quivering strongly toward the tiny shape on the summit of the pylon.
The Nazarene woman dropped her crucifix and shrieked.
The slow fisher-husband appeared beside her, and, seeing the fallen
cross, picked it up with fumbling fingers, muttering an exclamation of
remonstrance.
"Look!" the Nazarene woman cried, pointing to the half-buried bolt,
still quivering.
The fisherman gazed at it.
"Whence came it?" he asked.
The trembling woman shook her head and clasped and unclasped her hands.
"An affront from the heathen," the man said. "It was despatched to
murder thee. The Lord's hand stayed it; blessed be His name!"
He plucked the arrow with an effort from the sand, and looked at it.
"It is a witness of the Master's care; let us take it to the pastor,"
he suggested.
The trembling woman followed her husband as he stepped into the street
and raised her eyes to give thanks. She saw that the figure on the
summit of the pylon was gone.
The two found the leader of their flock, sitting outside an overcrowded
house, bending over a half-finished basket of reeds. Beside him was
one complete; at the other hand were his working materials.
"Greeting, children, in Christ's name," he said.
"Greeting, lord; praise to God in the highest!"
The Nazarene woman dropped to her knees, and her husband, extending the
arrow in agitation, stumbled through their story.
"May His name be glorified for ever," the woman murmured at the end.
But the pastor took the arrow and examined it. It was uncommon; the
story was uncommon, and he believed that there was more than a wanton
attempt at murder in its coming. The bolt was tipped with a pointed
flint, and feathered with three long, delicate papyrus cases, one dark,
two white. The pastor felt of one of the white feathers, and presently
ripped it off the shaft. It opened in his hand. Within was lettering.
After a little puzzled study of it, he shook his head and put it down.
He loosened the other from the transparent gum and opened it. Written
in another hand were the following words in Greek:
"To the Nazarene to whom this cometh:
"Deliver the arrow unto the young Jew, Marsyas,
who dwells among you, but is not of your number."
The pastor took up the arrow and the papyrus and arose at once.
"Verily, a sending, but it is not for us. Abide here until I deliver
it to him that expects it."
He turned toward the ruined wall where Marsyas secluded himself.
The pastor knocked on the dried earth wall without the cave, and the
matting was thrust aside. The young Jew stood there.
"I bring thee a message from without," the pastor said at once. "Peace
and the love of Christ enter thy heart and uphold thee."
He put the arrow into the young man's hand and saluting him with the
sign of the cross, went his way.
"What blind incaution," Marsyas said, after he had stared in
astonishment at the things delivered him. "A message! How does he
know that he does not bear to me treachery against his people, and his
undoing!"
But he sat down and undid the white case.
"That is Agrippa's writing!" he declared after he had read it.
He took up the other. The writing was in Sanskrit.
"O white Brother:" it ran; "this by an arrow from the strong bow of thy
lord Prince. Him I compelled. Come forth from among the Nazarenes!
Deliver thyself, by nightfall, in the pure name of her whom thou
lovest! Come ere that time, if thou canst, but fail not, otherwise, to
be in the forefront of Flora's followers! Be prepared to possess her!
"Fail not, by all the gods!
"Vasti, by the hand of Khosru, priest to Siva."
Marsyas seized the writing with both hands and sprang up; reread it
with straining eyes; walked the two steps permitted him in his cave
over and over again; or leaned against the earthen wall to think.
In the pure name of her whom he loved! Lydia? He felt his Essenic
self dissolve in a flood of glad confusion, for the moment; instead of
self-reproach, he felt more joy than he ever hoped to know in a life
devoted to vengeance; instead of guilt, an uplift that separated him
for an instant from even his terror for the rapture of contemplating
Lydia.
Then the grave alarm that the bayadere's letter aroused possessed him.
A rereading filled him with consternation. The unrevealed peril that
he was to avert, the intimation that Lydia was endangered, the
practically insurmountable obstacles in the way of his escape, shook
him strongly in his self-control. He made no plans, for desperate
conditions did not admit of formulated action. To pass outposts of
half a cohort of brawny guards offered success only by a miracle, and
the miraculous is not methodical.
Presently, he burst out of his burrow and tramped through the bright
hours of the afternoon, cursing the sun for its deadly haste to get
under the rim of the world, and dizzy with the pressure of terror and
anxiety.
Near the softening hours of the latter part of the day, while the
awakening revel roared louder in the distance, he stopped before the
ancient temple. The great hamper stood without the heavy entrance with
three little Nazarene children tying ropes to the interstices between
the fibers to pull it after them like a wagon. Marsyas looked at the
hamper, glanced with intent eyes at the front wall,--a duplicate,
except for the entrance, of the rear one,--and then rushed away in
search of Ananias, the pastor.
He found the pastor sitting outside the house that had given him
refuge, cutting soles for sandals from a hide that lay by his side.
The Nazarene raised a face so kindly and interested that the young man
dropped down beside him and blundered through his story, in his haste
to lay the plan for escape before the old man.
"At sunset," he hurried on, "or when the night is sufficiently heavy to
hide us, I can be let down in the hamper by the rear wall of the old
temple--if thou wilt bid some of thy congregation to help me! I pray
thee--let not thy belief deny me this help, for the life of my beloved,
or mayhap her sweet womanhood, dependeth upon my escape!"
He clasped his hands, and gazed with beseeching eyes into the pastor's
face. He did not permit himself to think what he would do if the old
man denied him.
"It is manifest," Ananias said, after a pause for thought, "that only
Nazarenes are to be confined herein. And thou, being a Jew, art here
under false imprisonment. We shall not be glad to have thee suffer
with us."
"Yes, yes!" Marsyas cried. "I am falsely accused, and thou wilt avert
an injustice--nay, by the holy death of the prophets!" he broke off,
"if I could bear you all to refuge after me, I would do it!"
"It is the spirit of Christ in thee, my son; nourish it! Yet be not
distressed for our sake; He who holdeth the world in the hollow of His
hand is with us."
Marsyas awaited anxiously the old man's further speech, when he lapsed
into silence after his confident claim of divine protection.
"Give us the plan, my son, and we will help thee," he said at last.
Marsyas took the old man's hand and lifted it impulsively to his lips.
While yet the Serapeum was crowned with pale light, but the more
squalid streets were blackening, Marsyas, led by Ananias, came to the
old temple-house, and briefly unfolded his plan to three stalwart young
Gentiles, who had turned their backs upon Jove and assumed the grace of
Jesus in their hearts. The hamper with which the children had played
all day was brought. Three troll-lines, each forty feet in length and
borrowed from the fisher Nazarenes who lived along the bay, were
securely knotted in three slits about the rim of the basket. Then,
waiting only for the rapidly rising dusk, Marsyas, the three young
Gentiles and the pastor climbed cautiously to the top of the side-wall
of the old structure, and pulled up the hamper after them.
At the angle in the rear, Marsyas, who led the way, stopped. Below it
was already night, and he could hear the steps of the sentries in the
echoing passage. He had not planned how he should pass them after his
descent, but the houses opposite were dark and he did not look for
interference, if he took refuge among them.
He stepped into the hamper, and the three young men laid hold on the
ropes. The pastor spread his hands in blessing over Marsyas' head, and
when the sound of the sentries' footsteps was faintest, the hamper,
with little sound and at cautious speed, was let down the steep wall.
It touched the sand with a grinding sound. Marsyas leaped out, jerked
one of the ropes in signal and the hamper sprang aloft.
With a muttered blessing on the heads of the apostates, Marsyas leaped
across the narrow street, to the shadows of the other houses. Creeping
from porch to porch with the sheltering shade of overhanging roofs upon
him, he passed guard after guard, until the row finally ended and the
open space between him and safety on the bay showed up a line of
soldiers guarding the water-front.
The distance was not great, and success thus far had made Marsyas
strong. With a prayer to the God of those who help themselves, he
burst from the passage into the great open of the docking and sped
straight for the bay.
Instantly a howl went up, a pilum launched after him, shot over his
shoulder, the rush of twenty mailed feet came in pursuit, swords,
spears and axes flew and fell behind him, but panting and unfaltering
he rushed straight to the edge of the wharf and dropped out of sight
into the bay.
The guards came after him, and hanging over the wharf looked down for
him to come up. They saw the circles of water widen and widen, grow
stiller and stiller, and finally cease to move, but the head for which
they looked did not rise.
Meanwhile Marsyas, native of Galilee and lover of her blue sea, arose
between sleeping boats far out into the bay. He caught a chain and
clung while he drew breath and rested. Not a vessel was manned; every
seaman, officer and passenger had gone ashore to follow Flora.
Presently, he looked about and took his bearings. There through a
darkening lane of water, a hundred feet long, he made out the ornate
aplustre of Agrippa's ship.
He let himself down into the water again, and, swimming around to port,
away from land, climbed by her anchor-chains and got upon deck.
The ship was wholly silent and deserted. None was there to ask why he
came so unconventionally aboard.
He went to the cabin prepared for the prince's reception, and with
steward keys still fast to his belt let himself in and prepared to
return to Alexandria.