BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY
As Clearchus lay upon the broad slab, the voices of his friends seemed
to him faint and far away. He tried to rise, but a strange languor
weighed him down. Chares seized him and dragged him to his feet.
"Wake up!" cried the Theban. "We still have a chance. You tremble
like a girl."
Clearchus gathered his senses with an effort of will, and the two
Greeks followed Nathan across the roof toward the great wall, against
which the prison was built.
Nathan led them straight to the foot of a narrow flight of steps,
roughly hewn in the masonry and scarcely discernible a few yards away.
Up these he climbed with the agility of a cat. Clearchus, still faint
and dizzy, hesitated for a moment, gazing at the sheer height that
towered above his head.
"Forward!" Chares cried behind him. "It is our only hope."
Clearchus set his feet in the narrow steps and followed Nathan,
carrying the jailer's spear in his left hand and clinging to each
projection with his right. More than once his feet slipped and Chares
saved him from falling. The steps wound upward almost perpendicularly,
and it was evident that they were rarely used, for in places the soft
brick had crumbled, leaving wide gaps.
"Look up!" Chares cried desperately, as Clearchus halted at one of
these dangerous points. "Look up--and remember Artemisia, whom thou
alone canst save!"
He had touched the right chord at last. The Athenian's brain cleared
at the mention of Artemisia's peril, and he forgot his own. The wall
no longer seemed to waver before his eyes. All doubt of his ability to
pass where Nathan had passed before him vanished from his mind, and he
gained the top with an even pulse.
They paused for a moment to get their bearings. Far beneath them they
saw the starlight trembling on the broad sweep of the Euphrates, beyond
which for miles lay a level country, dotted with trees and fields.
Behind them spread the sleeping city, an endless succession of roofs
and towers. Here and there a torch glimmered like a firefly. The
crest of the wall, upon which they stood and where four chariots might
have been driven abreast without crowding, was apparently deserted.
The sound of shouting rose from the direction of the prison. They saw
a cluster of torches issue from the main entrance and scatter in every
direction.
"They are giving the alarm," Nathan said, "but I think we shall have
time to disappoint them. There is a rope waiting for us where the
river touches the wall, and at its lower end we shall find a boat."
The river was several hundred yards distant from the spot where they
stood. Before they could reach the place where the rope was concealed,
they must traverse nearly a quarter of a mile. Between them and safety
stood one of the guard-houses built for the sentries whose duty it was
to patrol the wall night and day. Still worse, they must pass the
entrance of a broad flight of steps that led downward into the city and
formed the usual means of ascent to the top of the wall.
It had been Nathan's plan to come up by these steps and gain the rope
without passing the guard-house. The obstinacy of the jailer had
disarranged everything. It was of the first importance that they
should reach the rope before the sentinels on the wall could learn what
had happened, or the guards from below could mount.
Like shadows they sped along the top of the wall, holding as near as
possible to the outer edge so as not to be seen from the city. Outside
the guard-house a sentry stood, craning his neck to see what was going
on beneath him to cause all the shouting. They stole by behind his
back without arousing his attention.
They had fled past the head of the stairway and were congratulating
themselves on their good fortune when they came suddenly face to face
with a returning sentry, slowly pacing his beat. The man was as much
surprised as they and seemed in doubt as to whether they were friends
or foes. Before he could make up his mind, Chares gripped him by the
throat and the broad blade of the jailer's spear buried itself in his
heart. He had uttered no cry. Chares dragged the body under the
parapet that had been built where the wall overhung the river to
protect the defenders from the archers who might be sent to attack the
city from ships.
Crouching in the shadow of this elevation, they went on at a slackened
pace, expecting every moment to come upon the rope. It was nowhere to
be found. The shouting from the city now came clearly up from the
staircase as the guards ascended. Finally Nathan paused and looked
doubtfully about him.
"It should be very near here," he said, "but I do not see it."
"Then there is nothing for it but to take as many of them with us as we
can," Chares said, rising to his full height. "Zeus, how my back
aches! I hate this skulking."
Apparently the sentinel at the guard-house whom they had passed
understood at last what was the matter. He roused the rest of the
guard. Clearchus and Nathan pulled Chares down into the shadow. They
were so near that they could hear what was said.
"Captives have escaped! They are coming up by the prison stairway!"
the man told his companions in an excited voice. "They are asking us
to stop them. Boupares himself is on his way up."
The men came tumbling out of the guard-house and ran to the inner edge
of the wall, shouting down with much gesticulation that they would meet
the fugitives. Then they hastened back toward the prison.
"Much good that will do them," Chares laughed.
"We have still a few moments," Clearchus said. "Where was the rope to
be?"
"Here--opposite the Tower of Baal," Nathan replied.
"Look on the outside of the wall; it may be there," the Athenian
suggested.
Nathan climbed upon the parapet and looked over.
"Here it is," he cried joyfully. "Follow me!"
As he spoke, he slipped over the edge of the wall and vanished.
"Follow him, Chares," Clearchus said. "Go quickly!"
"You first," the Theban answered doggedly.
"No," Clearchus answered with firmness. "It is my turn to guard the
rear. I shall not stir until you are over the wall."
"Very well, have your way," Chares replied.
He vaulted upon the parapet and looked down. The rope had been
attached to a bar of iron driven firmly into the bricks near the
coping, and it dangled from between his feet into the gulf beneath him.
The cord seemed slender to sustain his weight, but there was no time in
which to test it. Swinging himself over the edge, he grasped the bar
and then the rope, letting himself down hand over hand, with his feet
against the rough surface of the wall. From the twitching of the cord
in his hands, he knew that Nathan had not yet reached the bottom. He
wondered how long it would be before the rope would break and send him
headlong into the dark abyss.
Clearchus, left alone behind the parapet, flattened his body in the
shadow and waited. He had seen Chares begin his descent, and he knew
that the rope would not sustain the weight of all three at the same
time. He resolved to allow Chares an opportunity to reach the foot of
the wall before he himself started down. He counted upon the mistake
that the sentries had made, in going back to the prison staircase in
their search, to give him time.
Hardly had Chares disappeared before a company of soldiers, with
torches in their hands, emerged from the head of the great stairway.
The glare searched every corner on top of the wall, and the Athenian
saw that concealment was no longer possible.
He knew that he must act promptly. The faces of the new arrivals were
turned toward the sentinels, who were still engaged in searching about
the prison stairway. It could be only a few moments before the
futility of further effort in that direction must become evident to
them, and the hunt would turn toward where he lay.
Should he attempt to gain the great staircase and slip into the city,
where the Israelites might hide him, at least for a time? It would be
impossible to evade the soldiers who were still coming up. He
dismissed the idea from his mind.
Possibly he could escape along the southern stretch of wall. Beyond
him at a distance there seemed to be a bridge, or causeway, connecting
the wall with the enormous mass of earth and bricks that upheld the
Hanging Gardens. The groves of palms and the tangle of shrubbery that
crowned the Gardens might conceal him, even though the place was within
the precincts of the palace itself.
He was about to try this plan and had already partly risen to put it
into execution, when he saw the guard turning out at a station between
him and the causeway. His chance of flight in that direction was cut
off.
He could hear the chafing of the rope against the bricks on the other
side of the parapet. Chares was still lowering himself toward the
river. To try the rope now would be not only to endanger the lives of
his two friends by overstraining the cord, but to reveal their mode of
escape and expose them to certain death, since the guard would lose no
time in cutting it.
Clearchus felt that he had been caught in a trap from which there was
no outlet. He thought of the words the jailer had used in describing
the death allotted to them. He thought of Artemisia, defenceless in
Tyre. A vision of the life he had hoped to lead in the pleasant city
of his birth, with her at his side, flitted through his mind. The Gods
had bestowed upon him the hope of happiness that was not to be
fulfilled. Chares would tell Artemisia how he died. At least she
would know that he had given his life for his friend.
So ran the young man's thoughts as he lay awaiting the moment of
discovery. His mind was made up. They would never take him back to
the prison. Perhaps his friends might recover his body and give it
burial amid the groves beyond the river.
Although the time seemed long, in reality only a few minutes passed
before the portly form of Boupares, supported on either side by a
stalwart soldier, appeared upon the platform at the head of the broad
stair. The governor was out of breath and also out of patience. The
knowledge that he would find it difficult to account for the loss of
the prisoners weighed upon his mind.
The guards crowded about him with explanations and excuses. No trace
could be found of the fugitives, they told him. It was certain they
had not reached the top of the wall. If they had, they must have
wings, since they had disappeared, leaving no trace.
"Search, you dogs!" Boupares gasped. "A thousand darics to the man who
finds them!"
The moment was at hand. Clearchus unclasped the fibula that fastened
the chiton upon his shoulder and drew his feet out of his sandals.
There was a cry from one of the guards. He had found the body of the
sentinel. A group gathered about it to see. It was proof that the
fugitives had passed along the wall, and all eyes were directed toward
the Athenian's hiding-place.
Clearchus let fall his garments and with a bound gained the top of the
parapet. The red light of the torches shone full upon his naked
figure, gleaming against the dark sky, as perfect in every line as the
form of Ph[oe]bus Apollo. For an instant the soldiers were dumb with
astonishment and superstitious dread. The shape had appeared where
there had been nothing a moment before. It seemed to them that it must
be that of a God. Then one of them caught sight of the abandoned
chiton and the spell was broken.
"Seize him! Strike him down!" they cried.
"Take him alive!" bellowed Boupares.
Clearchus turned his back upon them and gave a single glance at the
wide sweep of water that eddied and gurgled at the foot of the great
wall, how far below him he dared not guess. A javelin hissed past him
and was swallowed by the darkness. With muscles as firm as steel, he
took two steps forward and shot out from the dizzy height.
He heard the cry of astonishment and involuntary alarm from the
soldiers behind him. The light of the torches flashed in his eyes, and
then fled suddenly upward.
He looked down upon the wrinkled surface of the river. The impetus of
his leap had carried him out beyond the slope of the wall, and he saw
that he would strike the water as he had planned, instead of being
dashed to pieces.
The rushing air blinded him like a mighty wind. He heard its roar in
his ears. Mechanically he pressed the palms of his hands together
below his head, and stiffened and straightened his body so that it
might offer no surface of resistance in the plunge. Then he knew no
more.
Faintly the cry of the guards floated downward. Their torches twinkled
over the parapet. Chares, who, with aching arms, was clinging to the
last few fathoms of the rope, looked upward. So did Nathan, pausing in
his task of fitting a pair of oars to the rowlocks of a small boat that
he had pushed out from the wall.
They saw the form of Clearchus as it shot downward from the sky. They
saw it strike the water not twenty feet from them, leaving a circle of
foam, with hardly a splash to mark where it had fallen, so straight and
true was its descent.
Chares let the end of the rope slip through his hands and leaped into
the boat. With a few rapid strokes Nathan brought the little craft to
the centre of the widening ripple, where the bubbles were still rising.
Both leaned over the gunwale, straining their eyes for sight of the
body in the dark water.
A minute passed, and another, while they held their breath. Then
Nathan uttered a cry.
"There he is!" he shouted, pointing downward.
It was only a glimmer of white under the ripple, which showed for an
instant and was gone; but Chares plunged from the boat and disappeared
beneath the surface. When he rose, he held the body of his friend
across his arm, hanging limp and apparently lifeless. Nathan drew it
into the boat and then helped Chares to his place in the stern.
"Is he dead, think you?" the Theban asked, taking the form across his
knees as though it were that of a child.
"There is no mark on him; he may be only stunned," Nathan replied,
resuming his oars.
Chares gazed at the pale face, with the dripping hair streaming back
from its temples, and, bending forward, placed his ear over the heart.
"It beats," he cried. "He lives! Pull away, Nathan, and let the
jackals howl!"
Arrows and javelins struck the water around the boat, but there was
little danger from the marksmen above, unless some missile should find
them by chance. The craft was almost indistinguishable from the top of
the wall.
Nathan worked hard at the oars, while Chares rolled the body of
Clearchus on his knees. Then he rubbed the pale limbs briskly and by
no means gently until the blood began to circulate again. At last
Clearchus opened his eyes and drew a deep breath.
"Is this the Styx?" he asked faintly. "Is the story true then, after
all?"
"Not yet," Chares replied, with a laugh. "Your time has not yet come.
You are dreaming."
Clearchus turned his head and saw the precipice of the mighty wall,
rising black toward the stars and crowned with the red glow of the
torches.
"Did I dive from there?" he asked wonderingly; "or is that, too, a
dream?"
"It is no dream," Chares replied, "but a deed that will be told
throughout the army for the Companions to envy. Give me the oars,
Nathan; I need exercise."
Nathan yielded the oars, and the tough blades bent as the Theban threw
his weight upon them. The boat sped through the water toward a grove
of trees that stood like a patch of darker shadow on the other shore.
From behind they could hear the clank of levers, and they knew the
river-gate was being opened. Boupares had ordered pursuit; but they
were a mile away before the first of the biremes shot out from the
portal. A few minutes more and they had reached the friendly grove and
entered the mouth of one of the numerous canals which formed a network
through the plain as complicated as the Cretan labyrinth.
"Now let them search," said Nathan. "I would not stand in Boupares'
shoes to-morrow!"