Saul Of Tarsus Part 39

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 circ.u.mstances. 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; circ.u.mstances 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 part.i.tion 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 ab.u.t.ting 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 G.o.d 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."