CHAPTER XIX
THE GATHERING OF THE EAGLES
Shouting their well-known war-cry, and placing himself at the head of thathandful of heroes who constituted the remnant of the Lost Legion, Hippiasrallied them for one last desperate effort against the defenders of theTemple. These had formed a hasty barricade on the exigency of the momentfrom certain beams and timbers they had pulled down in the Sacred Place.It afforded a slight protection against the javelins, arrows, and othermissiles of the Romans, while it checked and repulsed the impetuous rushof the latter, who now wavered, hesitated, and began to look about them,making inquiry for the battering-rams and other engines of war that wereto have supported their onset from the rear. In vain Hippias led them,once and again, to carry this unforeseen obstacle. It was high and firm,it bristled with spears and was lined with archers; above all, it wasdefended by the indomitable valour of Eleazar, and the gladiators wereeach time repulsed with loss. Their leader, too, had been severelywounded. He had never lifted his shield from the ground where it lay byValeria's side; and, in climbing the barricade, he had received a thrustin the body from an unknown hand. While he stanched the blood with thefolds of his tunic, and felt within his breastplate for the tress ofValeria's hair, he looked anxiously back for his promised reinforcements,now sorely needed, convinced that his shattered band would be unable toobtain possession of the Temple without the assistance of the legions.Faint from loss of blood, strength and courage failing him at the samemoment, an overpowering sense of hopeless sorrow succeeding the triumphantexcitement of the last hour, his thoughts were yet for his swordsmen; andcollecting them with voice and gesture, he bade them form with theirshields the figure that was called "the tortoise," as a screen against theshower of missiles that overpowered them from the barricade. Cool,confident, and well-drilled, the gladiators soon settled into thisimpervious order of defence; and the word of command had hardly died onhis lips ere the leader himself was the only soldier left out of thatmovable fortress of steel.(24)
Turning from the enemy to inspect its security, his side was left a momentexposed to their darts. The next, a Jewish arrow quivered in his heart.True to his instincts, he waved his sword over his head, as he went down,with a triumphant cheer; for his failing ear recognised the blast of theRoman trumpets--his darkening eye caught the glitter of their spears andthe gleam of their brazen helmets, as the legions advanced in steady andimposing order to complete the work he and his handful of heroes hadbegun.
Even in the act of falling, Esca, looking up from his charge, saw thefencing-master wheel half-round that his dead face might be turned towardsthe foe; perhaps, too, the Briton's eye was the only one to observe a thindark stream of blood steal slowly along the pavement, till it mingled withthe red pool in which Valeria lay.
Effectual assistance had come at last. From the Tower of Antonia to theoutworks of the Temple a broad and easy causeway had been thrown up in thelast hour by the Roman soldiers. Where every man was engineer as well ascombatant, there was no lack of labour for such a task. A large portion ofthe adjoining wall, as of the tower itself, had been hastily thrown downto furnish materials; and while the gladiators were storming the Court ofthe Gentiles, their comrades had constructed a wide, easy, and gradualascent, by which, in regular succession, whole columns could be poured into the support of the first assailants. These were led by Julius Placiduswith his wonted skill and coolness. In his recent collision with Esca hehad sustained such severe injuries as incapacitated him from mounting ahorse; but with the Asiatic auxiliaries were several elephants of war, andon one of these huge beasts he now rode exalted, directing from hismovable tower the operations of his own troops, and galling the enemy whenoccasion offered with the shafts of a few archers who accompanied him onthe patient and sagacious animal.
The elephant, in obedience to its driver, a dark supple Syrian, perchedbehind its ears, ascended the slope with ludicrous and solemn caution.Though alarmed by the smell of blood, it nevertheless came steadily on, aformidable and imposing object, striking terror into the hearts of theJews, who were not accustomed to confront such enemies in warfare. Thetribune's arms were more dazzling, his dress even more costly than usual.It seemed that with his Eastern charger he affected also something ofEastern luxury and splendour; but he encouraged his men, as he was in thehabit of doing, with jeer and scoff, and such coarse jests as soldiersbest understand and appreciate in the moment of danger.
No sooner had he entered the court, through its battered and half-demolished gateway, than his quick eye caught sight of the still glowingembers scattered by the Prophet of Warning on the pavement. Thesesuggested a means for the destruction of the barricade, and he mocked therepulsed gladiators, with many a bitter taunt, for not having yet appliedthem to that purpose. Calling on Hirpinus, who now commanded the remnantof the Lost Legion, to collect his followers, he bade them advance underthe _testudo_ to pile these embers against the foundations of the woodenbarrier.
"The defenders cannot find a drop of water," said he, laughing; "they haveno means of stifling a fire kindled from without. In five minutes all thatdry wood will be in a blaze, and in less than ten there will be a smokinggap in the gateway large enough for me to ride through, elephant and all!"
Assisted by fresh reinforcements, the gladiators promptly obeyed hisorders. Heaps of live embers were collected and applied to the woodenobstacle so hastily erected. Dried to tinder in the scorching sun, andloosely put together for a temporary purpose, it could not fail to besufficiently inflammable; and the hearts of the besieged sank within themas the flame began to leap and the woodwork to crackle, while their lastdefences seemed about to consume gradually away.
The tribune had time to lean over from his elephant and question Hirpinusof his commander. With a grave sad brow and a heavy heart, the stout oldswordsman answered by pointing to the ground where Hippias lay, his facecalm and fixed, his right hand closed firmly round his sword.
"_Habet!_" exclaimed the tribune with a brutal laugh; adding to himself,as Hirpinus turned away sorrowful and disgusted, "My last rival down; mylast obstacle removed. One more throw for the Sixes, and the great game isfairly won!"
Placidus was indeed now within a stride of all he most coveted, all hemost wished to grasp on earth. A dozen feet below him, pale and rigid onthe ground, lay the rival he had feared might win the first place in thetriumph of to-day; the rival whom he knew to possess the favour of Titus;the rival who had supplanted him in the good graces of the woman he loved.He had neither forgotten nor forgiven Valeria; but he bore none the lessill-will against him with whom she had voluntarily fled. When he joinedthe Roman army before Jerusalem, and found her beautiful, miserable,degraded, in the tent of the gladiator, he had but dissembled and deferredhis revenge till the occasion should arrive when he might still moredeeply humiliate the one and inflict a fatal blow on the other. Now theman was under his elephant's feet; and the woman left alone yonder,friendless and deserted in the camp, could not, he thought, faileventually to become his prey. He little knew that those who had made eachother's misery in life were at last united in the cold embrace of death.He had arrived, too, in the nick of time, to seize and place on his ownbrows the wreath that had been twined for him by the Lost Legion and theirleader. A little earlier and Hippias, supplied by himself with freshtroops, would have won the credit of first entering the Temple; a littlelater, and his triumph must have been shared by Licinius, already with theTenth Legion close upon his rear. But now, at the glorious opportunity,there was nothing between him and victory save a score of Jewish spearmenand a few feet of blazing wood.
Leaning over to the unwilling driver, he urged him to goad the elephantthrough the flames, that its weight might at once bear down what remainedof the barricade and make a way for his followers into the Temple.Ambition prompted him not to lose a moment. The Syrian unwound the shawlfrom his waist, and spread it over the animal's eyes, while he persuadedit, thus blindfolded, to advance. Thoug
h much alarmed, the elephant pushedon, and there was small hope that the shattered smouldering barrier wouldresist the pressure of its enormous weight. The last chance of thebesieged seemed to fail them, when Eleazar leaped out through the smoke,and, running swiftly to meet it, dashed under the beast's uplifted trunk,and stabbed it fiercely with quick repeated thrusts in the belly. At eachfresh stroke the elephant uttered a loud and hideous groan, a shriek ofpain and fear, mingled with a trumpet-note of fury, and then sinking onits knees, fell slowly and heavily to the ground, crushing the devotedZealot beneath its huge carcass, and scattering the band of archers, as aman scatters a handful of grain, over the court.
Eleazar never spoke again. The Lion of Judah died as he had lived--fierce,stubborn, unconquered, and devoted to the cause of Jerusalem. Mariamnerecognised him as he sallied forth, but no mutual glance had passedbetween the father and the child. Pale, erect, motionless, she watched himdisappear under the elephant, but the scream of horror that rang from herwhite lips when she realised his fate was lost in the wild cry of pain,and anger, and dismay, that filled the air, while the huge quivering masstottered and went down. Placidus was hurled to the pavement like a stonefrom a sling. Lying there, helpless, though conscious, he recognised atonce the living Esca and the dead Valeria; but baffled wrath and cherishedhatred left no room in his heart for sorrow or remorse. His eye glaredangrily on the Briton, and he ground his teeth with rage to feel that hecould not even lift his powerless hand from the ground; but the Jewishwarriors were closing in with fierce arms up to strike, and it was but amomentary glimpse that Esca obtained of the tribune's dark, despairing,handsome face. It was years, though, ere he forgot the vision. The costlyrobes, the goodly armour, the shapely writhing form, and the wild hopelesseyes that gleamed with hatred and defiance both of the world he left andthat to which he went.
And now the court was filling fast with a dun lurid smoke that wreathedits vapours round the pinnacles of the Temple, and caused the stillincreasing troops of combatants to loom like phantom shapes struggling andfighting in a dream. Ere long, bright tongues of flame were leapingthrough the cloud, licking the walls and pillars of the building, glidingand glancing over the golden surface of its roof, and shooting upwardshere and there into shifting pyramids of fire. Soon was heard the hollowrushing roar with which the consuming element declares its victory, andshowers of sparks, sweeping like storms across the Court of the Gentiles,proclaimed that the Temple was burning in every quarter.
One of the gladiators, in the wild wantonness of strife, had caught ablazing fragment of the barricade, as its remains were carried by a rushof his comrades, after the fall of Eleazar, and flung it into an openwindow of the Temple over his head. Lighting on the carved woodwork, withwhich the casement was decorated, it soon kindled into a strong and steadyflame, that was fed by the quantity of timber, all thoroughly dry andhighly ornamented, which the building contained; thus it had communicatedfrom gallery to gallery, and from storey to storey, till the whole waswrapped in one glowing sheet of fire. From every quarter of the city, fromAgrippa's wall to the Mount of Olives, from the camp of the Assyrians tothe Valley of Hinnom, awestruck faces of friend and foe, white with fear,or anger, or astonishment, marked that rolling column, expanding, swaying,shifting, and ever rising higher into the summer sky, ever flinging outits red forked banner of destruction broader, and brighter, and fiercer,with each changing breeze.
Then the Jews knew that their great tribulation was fulfilled--that thecurse which had been to them hitherto but a dead letter and a sealed book,was poured forth literally in streams of fire upon their heads--that theirsanctuary was desolate, their prosperity gone for ever, their veryexistence as a nation destroyed, and "the place that had known them shouldknow them no more"! The very Romans themselves, the cohorts advancing inserried columns to support their comrades, the legions massed in solidsquares for the completion of its capture, in all the open places of thetown, gazed on the burning Temple with concern and awe. Titus, even, inthe flush of conquest, and the exulting joy of gratified ambition, turnedhis head away with a pitying sigh, for he would have spared the enemy hadthey but trusted him, would fain have saved that monument of theirnationality and their religion, as well for their glory as his own.
And now with the flames leaping, and the smoke curling around, the hugetimbers crashing down on every side to throw up showers of sparklingembers as they fell--the very marble glowing and riven with heat--theprecious metal pouring from the roof in streams of molten fire--Esca andMariamne, half suffocated in the Court of the Gentiles, could not yetbring themselves to seek their own safety, and leave the helpless form ofCalchas to certain destruction. Loud shouts, cries of agony and despair,warned them that even the burning Temple, at furnace heat, was still thetheatre of a murderous and useless conflict. The defenders had set theexample of merciless bloodshed, and the Romans, exasperated to cruelty,now took no prisoners and gave no quarter. John of Gischala and hisfollowers, driven to bay by the legions, still kept up a resistance themore furious that it was the offspring of despair. Hunted from wall towall, from roof to roof, from storey to storey, they yet fought on whilelife and strength remained. Even those whose weapons failed them, or whowere hemmed in by overwhelming numbers, leaped down like madmen, andperished horribly in the flames.
But although steel was clashing, and blood flowing, and men fighting bymyriads around it, the Court of the Gentiles lay silent and deserted underits canopy of smoke, with its pavement covered by the dead. The onlyliving creatures left were the three who had stood there in the morning,bound and doomed to die. Of these, one had his foot already on the border-land between time and eternity.
"I will never desert him," said Esca to his pale companion; "but thou,Mariamne, hast now a chance of escape. It may be the Romans will respectthee if thou canst reach some high commander, or yield thee to some cohortof the reserve, whose blood is not a-fire with slaughter. What saidHippias of the Tenth Legion and Licinius? If thou couldst but lay hold onhis garment, thou wert safe for my sake!"
"And leave thee here to die!" answered Mariamne. "Oh, Esca! what wouldlife be then? Besides, have we not trusted through this terrible night,and shall we not trust still? I know who is on my side. I have notforgotten all he taught me who lies bruised and senseless here. See, Esca!He opens his eyes. He knows us! It may be we shall save him now!"
Calchas did indeed seem to have recovered consciousness; and the life sosoon to fade glowed once more on his wasted cheek, like an expiring lampthat glimmers into momentary brightness ere its flame is extinguished forever.