Out of the Triangle Part 6

Again within the tent he conjectured there might be a faint stir.

"My enemy cometh!" he thought.

But there was silence. Timokles waited, yet there came no sound.

Remembrances of what he had heard concerning former martyrs crowded upon him. He thought of Pothinus, the ninety-years-old bishop of Lyons, who, in answer to the legate's question, "Who is the G.o.d of the Christians?" boldly answered, "If thou art worthy, thou shalt know," and was tortured so severely that he died in prison. Timokles remembered hearing of Ponticus, the boy who, in the same persecution, bore all the tortures unflinchingly, though he was but fifteen years old. And Blandina, the maiden, who, tortured, bleeding, mangled, still persisted in her declaration, "I am a Christian! Among us no wickedness is committed," came to Timokles'

mind. His thoughts turned to the martyr Christians of four years ago at Carthage, and he remembered the words of one of those Christians: "We will die joyfully for Christ our Lord."

Timokles prayed long and fervently. His heart went back to his beloved Alexandrian home. Heaven would be sweet, but would his dear ones ever know the only way there? Would they ever accept Jesus Christ as their Savior?

"O Lord, help Heraklas to know thee!" prayed Timokles with dropping tears.

Nothing did Timokles know of the roll of the Book of the Christians, the papyrus that had swung from the palm tree in the court at home!

Something made him turn his head. He started, for he saw, stretched out toward him from beneath the black tent, an arm. No more was visible. The black tent descended to the very ground. Looking more closely, he discerned in the hand a knife. For an instant, Timokles thought his enemy was upon him. But it was a small hand, and it was the handle of the knife, not its blade, that was offered to him!

Timokles stretched out his one free hand, and took the knife. The arm disappeared beneath the black tent so swiftly and so noiselessly that Timokles would almost have thought that the sight of the arm had been an illusion had he not held the knife in his left hand. He remembered the girl's words, "O Christian, I am afraid of thy G.o.d and thee!"

"Would that I might have told her more of Him!" wished the young Egyptian, as he awkwardly cut at his bonds with the knife.

He was free again! He crept softly away after pushing the knife's handle back under the edge of the black tent. He felt that in the secrecy of the tent one listened who knew he was free.

"Thou didst put it into her heart to save me!" whispered Timokles with a reverent look at the sky.

He knew that as soon as his escape should be discovered there would be instant pursuit, therefore he sought to travel as swiftly as possible.

CHAPTER VI.

Athribis the slave bent lower--lower yet. What was this that he saw?

He was on the roof of the house in Alexandria. Through an open s.p.a.ce beside the wind-sail next to him, he could look into a small room below.

In that room, his master Heraklas knelt and carefully drew a brick from its place in the wall. Putting his hand into some hole that seemed to be behind the bricks, Heraklas produced a roll of papyrus.

He glanced stealthily around, and, kneeling still, unrolled the writing, and read in eager haste, one hand on the brick, ready at the sound of any coming footsteps to thrust the papyrus quickly into the wall again. It was a thing well pleasing to the treacherous soul of Athribis that he should have discovered some secret of his master.

"What is the writing, that he hideth it there?" the slave questioned himself.

Heraklas continued to read. Stretched on his perch, and straining his neck to look, Athribis deemed the time long. His prying eyes noted carefully the distance of the loose brick from the floor.

Athribis did not recognize the papyrus as one that he had seen before. The sight of any papyrus, however, had been distasteful to him since the night of his adventure on the roof, but he thought the papyri of that escapade safely burned long ago. He knew that Heraklas' mother had ordered those destroyed that were found on the roof. Athribis supposed the one also burnt that had fallen into the court. What else should have become of it? No suspicion concerning it had crossed his mind till now.

"Oh, that I could see what he readeth!" wished Athribis vainly.

"What meaneth that large sign? Is it the 'tau'?"

Heraklas farther unrolled the papyrus, and the mark of the cross that had caught Athribis' eye and had interested him, vanished. The mark seemed to the slave like the Egyptian "tau" or sign of life; used afterwards, curiously enough, by the Christians of Europe as a prefix to inscriptions. Numbers of inscriptions headed by the tau have remained even to the present time, in early Christian sepulchres in the Great Oasis.

"If that were the tau, there may be no harm in the writing," thought Athribis sullenly. "Yet why hideth he here?"

The supposed sign of the tau rolled in sight again, as Heraklas shifted the papyrus.

Heraklas had discovered the papyrus when it hung from the palm in the court. Seeing the character of the writing, he had kept the roll for secret perusal. He conjectured that the thief, supposed to have been on the roof, might have dropped the roll. During the three months that had elapsed since Heraklas found the papyrus hanging from the palm, he had come often to this secret hiding-place. He knew his mother would destroy the Christians' Book, if she saw it.

He knew the servants were not to be trusted in the matter.

Frequently, during the first month, he had thought that he would destroy the papyrus, and, as often, he had deferred doing so, so much was he always drawn back to reading it. At the end of the second month, Heraklas read with even more eagerness than at first.

Here was something that even the maxims of Ptah-hotep had not attained. Never had Heraklas seen such a book as this Gospel of John. Its words followed him when he was not reading. Why should the words of Jesus of Nazareth cling to one's memory with so persistent a force? Was it true that "never man spake as this man"?

Even when Heraklas pa.s.sed outside the city streets, and walked the northern cliffs beside the sea, he was constrained to remember that it was along these craggy places that, men said, a century and a half ago, Mark, the first Christian apostle to Alexandria, had been dragged by cords, at the time of the feast of the G.o.d Serapis. Then, tradition said, there had arisen a dreadful tempest of hail and lightning, that destroyed the murderous heathen.

Was the Christian G.o.d greater than Serapis, the great deity of Egypt?

Such thinking sent Heraklas back again to study the papyrus of John's Gospel. And now Athribis wearied, waiting for Heraklas'

reading to end.

Suddenly Heraklas, attracted perhaps by the silent force that lies in a human gaze; lifted his head from his reading, and glanced upward. Athribis had not time to start aside. The eyes of the two met in a long, piercing gaze! Heraklas sprang to his feet. The papyrus fell, on the loose brick beside him.

Athribis' head vanished instantly, and Heraklas, s.n.a.t.c.hing the papyrus, wound it closely, and thrust it into his garments.

He hastily replaced the loose brick. No safe place for the papyrus would the hole be, hereafter.

When he met Athribis afterwards in a corridor, Heraklas felt his heart beat more quickly against the hidden roll. But the lad was stern in outward semblance.

"Athribis!" he said.

The slave bent before the lad.

"How wast thou where I saw thee?" demanded Heraklas.

"I was attending to the salted quail. Thou knowest they are drying on the roof," explained Athribis, meekly.

Heraklas felt compelled to accept the excuse. There were quail drying, according to the custom of lower Egypt.

"But what was it that I read in his face, as he looked down at me?"

Heraklas asked himself.

Thenceforward, unspoken, yet felt as surely as though expressed, there existed in Heraklas' mind a constant suspicion of Athribis.

Heraklas carried the papyrus roll with him, day and night. Well did he know the danger, but he said to himself that he would not be dictated to by a servant. That was the ostensible reason he gave himself for not immediately burning the roll. In reality, he knew that the words of the Christians' Book had pierced his soul. He dared not burn the book. He stood before its searching words a convicted sinner.

The suspicion of veiled surveillance that haunted Heraklas made him cautious of reading his, papyrus at home. He sought places, to read it abroad. Hidden among the crags beside the sea, or in the vines on the banks of Lake Mareotis, Heraklas read, and waged the soul-struggle that had risen within him.

One day Heraklas had hidden himself among the northern crags beside the great sea. His eyes were bent upon his roll. He had been reading John's record of the conversation between Christ and the man who was born blind.

"Jesus said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of G.o.d?"

The man whose eyes Christ had opened, answered and said, "Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?"

"Dost thou believe on the Son of G.o.d?"