Judaism
Judith Maiden of the Land 5
Abstract
Contents Updated: Monday, October 11, 1999
The Battle in the Plain
The distance from the bottom of the funnel to the floor of the chamber beneath it could not have been great, for all three of the victims of Herod Antipas’s wrath alighted unscathed.
Joshua, still clasping Judith tightly to his breast, came to the ground catlike, upon his feet, breaking the shock for the girl.
Scarce had his feet touched the rough stone flagging of this new chamber than his sword flashed out ready for instant use.
But though the room was lighted, there was no sign of enemy about.
Joshua looked toward Judas.
The man was pasty white with fear.
“What is to be our fate?” asked the Salemite. “Tell me, man! Shake off your terror long enough to tell me, so I may be prepared to sell my life and that of the Princess of Ephraim as dearly as possible”.
“Helios!” whispered Judas. “We are to be devoured by Helios!”.
“Your deity?” asked Joshua.
The Peraean nodded his head.
Then he pointed toward a low doorway at one end of the chamber.
“From thence will he come upon us. Lay aside your puny sword, fool. It will enrage him the more and make our sufferings the worse”.
Joshua smiled, gripping his sikar the more firmly.
Presently Judas gave a horrified moan, at the same time pointing toward the door.
“He has come,” he whimpered.
Joshua and Judith looked in the direction the Peraean had indicated, expecting to see some strange and fearful creature in human form; but to their astonishment they saw the broad head and great-maned shoulders of a huge lion, the largest that either ever had seen.
Slowly and with dignity the mighty beast advanced into the room.
Judas had fallen to the floor, and was wriggling his body in the same servile manner that he had adopted toward Herod Antipas.
He spoke to the fierce beast as he would have spoken to a human being, pleading with it for mercy.
Joshua stepped between Judith and the lion, his sword ready to contest the beast’s victory over them.
Judith turned toward Judas.
“Is this Helios, your god?” she asked.
Judas nodded affirmatively.
The girl smiled, and then, brushing past Joshua, she stepped swiftly toward the growling carnivore.
In low, firm tones she spoke to it as she had spoken to the lions of the Golden Cliffs and the scavengers before the walls of Peraea.
The beast ceased its growling.
With lowered head and catlike purr, it came slinking to the girl’s feet.
Judith turned toward Joshua.
“It is but a lion,” she said.
“We have nothing to fear from it.” Joshua smiled. “I did not fear it,” he replied, “for I, too, believed it to be only a lion, and I have my sikar”.
Judas sat up and gazed at the spectacle before him—the slender girl weaving her fingers in the tawny mane of the huge creature that he had thought divine, while Helios rubbed his hideous snout against her side.
“So this is your god!” laughed Judith.
Judas looked bewildered.
He scarce knew whether he dare chance offending Helios or not, for so strong is the power of superstition that even though we know that we have been reverencing a sham, yet still we hesitate to admit the validity of our new-found convictions.
“Yes,” he said, “this is Helios. For ages the enemies of Herod Antipas have been hurled to this pit to fill his maw, for Helios must be fed”.
“Is there any way out of this chamber to the avenues of the city?” asked Joshua.
Judas shrugged.
“I do not know,” he replied.
“Never have I been here before, nor ever have I cared to do so”.
“Come,” suggested Judith, “let us explore. There must be a way out”.
Together the three approached the doorway through which Helios had entered the apartment that was to have witnessed their deaths.
Beyond was a low-roofed lair, with a small door at the far end.
This, to their delight, opened to the lifting of an ordinary latch, letting them into a circular arena, surrounded by tiers of seats.
“Here is where Helios is fed in public,” explained Judas. “Had Herod Antipas dared it would have been here that our fates had been sealed; but he feared too much thy keen blade, Salemite man, and so he hurled us all downward to the pit. I did not know how closely connected were the two chambers. Now we may easily reach the avenues and the city gates. Only the bowmen may dispute the right of way, and, knowing their secret, I doubt that they have power to harm us”.
Another door led to a flight of steps that rose from the arena level upward through the seats to an exit at the back of the hall.
Beyond this was a straight, broad corridor, running directly through the palace to the gardens at the side.
No one appeared to question them as they advanced, mighty Helios pacing by the girl’s side.
“Where are the people of the palace—the king’s retinue?” asked Joshua. “Even in the city streets as we came through I scarce saw sign of a human being, yet all about are evidences of a mighty population”.
Judas sighed.
“Poor Peraea,” he said. “It is indeed a city of ghosts. There are scarce a thousand of us left, who once were numbered in the millions. Our great city is peopled by the creatures of our own imaginings. For our own needs we do not take the trouble to materialize these peoples of our brain, yet they are apparent to us. Even now I see mighty throngs lining the avenue, hastening to and fro in the round of their duties. I see women and children laughing on the balconies—these we are forbidden to materialize; but yet I see them—they are here. But why not?” he mused.
“No longer need I fear Herod Antipas—he has done his worst, and failed. Why not indeed? “Stay, friends,” he continued. “Would you see Peraea in all her glory?”
Joshua and Judith nodded their assent, more out of courtesy than because they fully grasped the import of his mutterings.
Judas gazed at them penetratingly for an instant, then, with a wave of his hand, cried: “Look!” The sight that met them was awe-inspiring.
Where before there had been nothing but deserted pavements and dusty roads, yawning windows and tenantless doors, now swarmed a countless multitude of happy, laughing people.
“It is the past,” said Judas in a low voice. “They do not see us—they but live the old dead past of ancient Peraea—the dead and crumbled Peraea of antiquity, which stood upon the shore of Great Sea. See those fine, upstanding men swinging along the broad avenue? See the young girls and the women smile upon them? See the men greet them with love and respect? Those be seafarers coming up from their ships which lie at the piers at the city’s edge. Brave men, they—ah, but the glory of Peraea has faded! See their weapons. They alone bore arms, for they crossed the five seas to strange places where dangers were. With their passing passed the martial spirit of the Peraeans, leaving, as the ages rolled by, a race of spineless cowards. We hated war, and so we trained not our youth in warlike ways. Thus followed our undoing, for when the seas dried and the gentile hordes encroached upon us we could do nothing but flee. But we remembered the seafaring bowmen of the days of our glory—it is the memory of these which we hurl upon our enemies”.
As Judas ceased speaking, the picture faded, and once more, the three took up their way toward the distant gates, along deserted avenues. Twice they sighted Peraeans of flesh and blood. At sight of them and the huge lion which they must have recognized as Helios, the citizens turned and fled.
They will carry word of our flight to Herod Antipas,” cried Judas, “and soon he will send his bowmen after us. Let us hope that our theory is correct, and that their shafts are powerless against minds cognizant of their unreality. Otherwise we are doomed. Explain, Salemite man, to the woman the truths that I have explained to you, that she may meet the arrows with a stronger counter-suggestion of immunity”.
Joshua did as Judas bid him; but they came to the majestic gates without sign of pursuit developing.
Here Judas set in motion the mechanism that rolled the huge, wheel-like gate aside, and a moment later the three, accompanied by the lion, stepped out into the plain before Peraea.
Scarce had they covered a hundred yards when the sound of many men shouting arose behind them.
As they turned they saw a company of bowmen debouching upon the plain from the gate through which they had just passed.
Upon the wall above the gate were a number of Peraeans, among whom Judas recognized Herod Antipas.
The King stood glaring at them, evidently concentrating all the forces of his trained mind upon them.
That he was making a supreme effort to render his imaginary creatures deadly was apparent.
Judas turned white, and commenced to tremble.
At the crucial moment he appeared to lose the courage of his conviction.
The huge lion turned back toward the advancing bowmen and growled.
Joshua placed himself between Judith and the enemy and, facing them, awaited the outcome of their charge.
Suddenly an inspiration came to Joshua.
“Hurl your own bowmen against Herod Antipas’s!” he cried to Judas. “Let us see a materialized battle between two mentalities”.
The suggestion seemed to hearten the Peraean, and in another moment the three stood behind solid ranks of bowmen who hurled taunts and menaces at the advancing company emerging from the walled city.
Judas was a new man the moment his battalions stood between him and Herod Antipas.
One could almost have sworn the man believed these creatures of his strange hypnotic power to be real flesh and blood.
With hoarse battle cries they charged the bowmen of Herod Antipas.
Barbed shafts flew thick and fast.
Men fell, and the ground was red with gore.
Joshua and Judith had difficulty in reconciling the reality of it all with their knowledge of the truth.
They saw cohort after cohort march from the gate in perfect step to reinforce the outnumbered company which Herod Antipas had first sent forth to arrest them.
They saw Judas’s forces grow correspondingly until all about them rolled a sea of fighting, cursing soldiers, and the dead lay in heaps about the field.
Judas and Herod Antipas seemed to have forgotten all else beside the struggling bowmen that surged to and fro, filling the broad field between the forest and the city.
The wood loomed close behind Judith and Joshua.
The latter cast a glance toward Judas.
“Come!” he whispered to the girl. “Let them fight out their empty battle—neither, evidently, has power to harm the other. They are like two controversialists hurling words at one another. While they are engaged we may as well be devoting our energies to an attempt to find the passage through the cliffs to the plain beyond”.
As he spoke, Judas, turning from the battle for an instant, caught his words.
He saw the girl move to accompany the Salemite.
A cunning look leaped to the Peraean’s eyes.
The thing that lay beyond that look had been deep in his heart since first he had laid eyes upon Judith of Ephraim.
He had not recognized it, however, until now that she seemed about to pass out of his existence.
He centred his mind upon the Salemite and the girl for an instant.
Joshua saw Judith of Ephraim step forward with outstretched hand.
He was surprised at this sudden softening toward him, and it was with a full heart that he let his fingers close upon hers, as together they turned away from forgotten Peraea, into the woods, and bent their steps toward the distant mountains.
As the Peraean had turned toward them, Judith had been surprised to hear Joshua suddenly voice a new plan.
“Remain here with Judas,” she had heard him say, “while I go to search for the passage through the cliffs”.
She had dropped back in surprise and disappointment, for she knew that there was no reason why she should not have accompanied him.
Certainly she should have been safer with him than left here alone with the Peraean.
And Judas watched the two and smiled his cunning smile.
When Joshua had disappeared within the wood, Judith seated herself apathetically upon the dusty ground to watch the seemingly interminable struggles of the bowmen.
The long afternoon dragged its weary way toward darkness, and still the imaginary legions charged and retreated.
The sun was about to set when Herod Antipas commenced to withdraw his troops slowly toward the city.
His plan for cessation of hostilities through the night evidently met with Judas’s entire approval, for he caused his forces to form themselves in orderly cohorts and march just within the edge of the wood, where they were soon busily engaged in preparing their evening meal, and spreading down their sleeping furs and rugs for the night.
Judith could scarce repress a smile as she noted the scrupulous care with which Judas’s imaginary men attended to each tiny detail of deportment as truly as if they had been real flesh and blood.
Sentries were posted between the camp and the city.
Officers clanked hither and thither issuing commands and seeing to it that they were properly carried out.
Judith turned toward Judas.
“Why is it,” she asked, “that you observe such careful nicety in the regulation of your creatures when Herod Antipas knows quite as well as you that they are but figments of your brain? Why not permit them simply to dissolve into thin air until you again require their futile service?”
“You do not understand them,” replied Judas. “While they exist they are real. I do but call them into being now, and in a way direct their general actions. But thereafter, until I dissolve them, they are as actual as you or I. Their officers command them, under my guidance. I am the general—that is all. And the psychological effect upon the enemy is far greater than were I to treat them merely as substanceless vagaries.
“Then, too,” continued the Peraean, “there is always the hope, which with us is little short of belief, that some day these materializations will merge into the real—that they will remain, some of them, after we have dissolved their fellows, and that thus we shall have discovered a means for perpetuating our dying race. Some there are who claim already to have accomplished the thing. It is generally supposed that the etherealists have quite a few among their number who are permanent materializations. It is even said that such is Herod Antipas, but that cannot be, for he existed before we had discovered the full possibilities of suggestion. There are others among us who insist that none of us is real. That we could not have existed all these ages without material food and water had we ourselves been material. Although I am a realist, I rather incline toward this belief myself. It seems well and sensibly based upon the belief that our ancient forbears developed before their extinction such wondrous mentalities that some of the stronger minds among them lived after the death of their bodies—that we are but the deathless minds of individuals long dead. It would appear possible, and yet in so far as I am concerned I have all the attributes of corporeal existence. I eat, I sleep“—he paused, casting a meaning look upon the girl—“I love!”.
Judith could not mistake the palpable meaning of his words and expression.
She turned away with a little shrug of disgust that was not lost upon the Peraean.
He came close to her and seized her arm.
“Why not Judas?” he cried. “Who more honourable than the second of the world’s most ancient race? Your Salemite? He has gone. He has deserted you to your fate to save himself. Come, be Judas’s!”.
Judith of Ephraim rose to her full height, her lifted shoulder turned toward the man, her haughty chin upraised, a scornful twist to her lips.
“You lie!” she said quietly, “the Salemite knows less of disloyalty than he knows of fear, and of fear he is as ignorant as the unhatched young”.
“Then where is he?” taunted the Peraean. “I tell you he has fled the valley. He has left you to your fate. But Judas will see that it is a pleasant one. To-morrow we shall return into Peraea at the head of my victorious army, and I shall be King and you shall be my consort. Come!” And he attempted to crush her to his breast.
The girl struggled to free herself, striking at the man with her metal armlets.
Yet still he drew her toward him, until both were suddenly startled by a hideous growl that rumbled from the dark wood close behind them.
Simon the Rock, the Bowman
As Joshua moved through the forest toward the distant cliffs with Judith’s hand still tight pressed in his, he wondered a little at the girl’s continued silence, yet the contact of her cool palm against his was so pleasant that he feared to break the spell of her new-found reliance in him by speaking.
Onward through the dim wood they passed until the shadows of the quick coming Landian night commenced to close down upon them.
Then it was that Joshua turned to speak to the girl at his side.
They must plan together for the future.
It was his idea to pass through the cliffs at once if they could locate the passage, and he was quite positive that they were now close to it; but he wanted her assent to the proposition.
As his eyes rested upon her, he was struck by her strangely ethereal appearance.
She seemed suddenly to have dissolved into the tenuous substance of a dream, and as he continued to gaze upon her, she faded slowly from his sight.
For an instant he was dumbfounded, and then the whole truth flashed suddenly upon him.
Judas had caused him to believe that Judith was accompanying him through the wood while, as a matter of fact, he had detained the girl for himself! Joshua was horrified.
He cursed himself for his stupidity, and yet he knew that the fiendish power which the Peraean had invoked to confuse him might have deceived any.
Scarce had he realized the truth than he had started to retrace his steps toward Peraea, but now he moved at a trot, the Holy Spirit that he had inherited from his father carrying him swiftly over the soft carpet of fallen leaves and rank grass.
The moon’s brilliant light flooded the plain before the walled city of Peraea as Joshua broke from the wood opposite the majestic gate that had given the fugitives egress from the city earlier in the day.
At first he saw no indication that there was another than himself anywhere about.
The plain was deserted.
No myriad bowmen camped now beneath the overhanging verdure of the giant trees.
No gory heaps of tortured dead defaced the beauty of the scarlet sward.
All was silence. All was peace.
The Salemite, scarce pausing at the forest’s verge, pushed on across the plain toward the city, when presently he descried a huddled form in the grass at his feet.
It was the body of a man, lying prone.
Joshua turned the figure over upon its back.
It was Judas, but torn and mangled almost beyond recognition.
The prince bent low to note if any spark of life remained, and as he did so the lids raised and dull, suffering eyes looked up into his.
“The Princess of Ephraim!” cried Joshua. “Where is she? Answer me, man, or I complete the work that another has so well begun”.
“Helios,” muttered Judas. “He sprang upon me and would have devoured me but for the girl. Then they went away together into the wood—the girl and the huge lion, her fingers twined in his tawny mane”.
“Which way went they?” asked Joshua.
“There,” replied Judas faintly, “toward the passage through the cliffs”.
The Prince of Salem waited to hear no more, but springing to his feet, raced back again into the forest.
It was dawn when he reached the mouth of the dark tunnel that would lead him to the other world beyond this valley of ghostly memories and strange hypnotic influences and menaces.
Within the long, dark passages he met with no accident or obstacle, coming at last into the light of day beyond the mountains, and no great distance from the southern verge of the domains of the Arabim.
From the boundary of Arabim to the city of Gomorrha is a distance of some two hundred cubits, so that the Salemite had before him a substantial journey between him and Gomorrha.
He could at best but hazard a chance guess that toward Gomorrha Judith would take her flight.
There lay the nearest water, and there might be expected some day a rescuing party from her father; for Joshua knew The Most High well enough to know that he would leave no stone unturned until he had tracked down the truth as to his daughter’s abduction, and learned all that there might be to learn of her whereabouts.
He realized that the trick which had laid suspicion upon him would greatly delay the discovery of the truth, but little did he guess to what vast proportions had the results of the villainy of Pilatus of Rome already grown.
Even as he emerged from the mouth of the passage to look across the foothills in the direction of Gomorrha, an Ephraim battle fleet was making its majestic way slowly toward Salem, while from Temple raced another mighty armada to join forces with its ally.
He did not know that in the face of the circumstantial evidence against him even his own people had commenced to entertain suspicions that he might have stolen the princess of Ephraim.
He did not know of the lengths to which the Romans had gone to disrupt the friendship and alliance which existed between the three mighty powers of the east—Salem, Ephraim and Temple.
How Roman emissaries had found employment in important posts in the foreign offices of the three mighty nations, and how, through these men, messages from one King to another were altered and garbled until the patience and pride of the three rulers and former friends could no longer endure the humiliations and insults contained in these falsified papers—not any of this he knew.
Nor did he know how even to the last David Overgath, Lord of The Land, had refused to permit the King of Salem to declare war against either Ephraim or Temple, because of his implicit belief in his son, and that eventually all would be satisfactorily explained.
And now two mighty fleets were moving upon Salem, while the Roman spies at the court of Joseph Ramath saw to it that those in the city remained in ignorance of their danger.
War had been declared by The Most High, but the messenger who had been dispatched with the proclamation had been a Roman who had seen to it that no word of warning reached the city of the approach of a hostile fleet.
For several days diplomatic relations had been severed between Salem and her two most powerful neighbors, and with the departure of the ministers had come a total cessation of communication between the disputants, as is usual upon The Land.
But of all this Joshua was ignorant.
All that interested him at present was the finding of Judith of Ephraim.
Her trail beside that of the huge lion had been well marked to the tunnel, and was once more visible leading southward into the foothills.
As he followed rapidly downward toward the Dead Sea bottom, where he knew he must lose the track in the resilient spiny vegetation, he was suddenly surprised to see a naked man approaching him from the north-east.
As the fellow drew closer, Joshua halted to await his coming.
He knew that the man was unarmed, and that he was apparently a Peraean, for his skin was white and his hair blond.
He approached the Salemite without sign of fear, and when quite close called out the cheery greeting of The Land.
“Who are you?” asked Joshua.
“I am Simon the Rock, commander of the bowmen,” replied the other. “A strange thing has happened to me. For ages Herod Antipas has been bringing me into existence as he needed the services of the army of his mind. Of all the bowmen it has been Simon the Rock who has been oftenest materialized. For a long time Herod Antipas has been concentrating his mind upon my permanent materialization. It has been an obsession with him that some day this thing could be accomplished and the future of Peraea assured. He asserted that matter was nonexistent except in the imagination of man—that all was mental, and so he believed that by persisting in his suggestion he could eventually make of me a permanent suggestion in the minds of all creatures. Yesterday he succeeded, but at such a time! It must have come all unknown to him, as it came to me without my knowledge, as, with my horde of yelling bowmen, I pursued the fleeing Arabim back to their grey plains. As darkness settled and the time came for us to fade once more into thin air, I suddenly found myself alone upon the edge of the great plain which lies yonder at the foot of the low hills. My men were gone back to the nothingness from which they had sprung, but I remained—naked and unarmed. At first I could not understand, but at last came a realization of what had occurred. Herod Antipas’s long suggestions had at last prevailed, and Simon the Rock had become a reality in the world of men; but my harness and my weapons had faded away with my fellows, leaving me naked and unarmed in a hostile country far from Peraea”.
“You wish to return to Peraea?” asked Joshua.
“No!” replied Simon the Rock quickly. “I have no love for Herod Antipas. Being a creature of his mind, I know him too well. He is cruel and tyrannical—a master I have no desire to serve. Now that he has succeeded in accomplishing my permanent materialization, he will be unbearable, and he will go on until he has filled Peraea with his creatures. I wonder if he has succeeded as well with the maiden of Peraea”.
“I thought there were no women there,” said Joshua.
“In a hidden apartment in the palace of Herod Antipas,” replied Simon the Rock, “the King has maintained the suggestion of a beautiful girl, hoping that some day she would become permanent. I have seen her there. She is wonderful! But for her sake I hope that Herod Antipas succeeds not so well with her as he has with me. Now, Salemite, I have told you of myself—what of you?”
Joshua liked the face and manner of the bowman.
There had been no sign of doubt or fear in his expression as he had approached the heavily-armed Salemite, and he had spoken directly and to the point.
So the Prince of Salem told the bowman of Peraea who he was and what adventure had brought him to this far country.
“Good!” exclaimed the other, when he had done.
“Simon the Rock will accompany you. Together we shall find the Princess of Ephraim and with you Simon the Rock will return to the world of men—such a world as he knew in the long-gone past when the boats of wealthy Peraea fished the Great Sea, and the surf beating against the barrier of these parched and dreary lands yielded catches in their hundreds”.
“What mean you?” asked Joshua. “Had you really a former actual existence?”
“Most assuredly,” replied Simon the Rock.
“In my day I commanded the boats of Peraea—mightiest of all the boats that sailed the sea. “Wherever men lived upon The Land there was the name of Simon the Rock known and respected. Peaceful were the land races in those distant days—only the seafarers were soldiers; but now has the glory of the past faded, nor did I think until I met you that there remained upon The Land a single person of our own mould who lived and loved and fought as did the ancient fishers of my time. O, but it will seem good to see men once again—real men! Never had I much respect for the landsmen of my day. They remained in their walled cities wasting their time in play, depending for their protection entirely upon the fishers. And the poor creatures who remain, the Herod Antipas’s and Judas’s of Peraea, are even worse than their ancient forbears”.
Joshua was a trifle sceptical as to the wisdom of permitting the stranger to attach himself to him.
There was always the chance that he was but the essence of some hypnotic treachery which Herod Antipas or Judas was attempting to exert upon the Salemite; and yet, so sincere had been the manner and the words of the bowman, so much the fighting man did he seem, but Joshua could not find it in his heart to doubt him.
The outcome of the matter was that he gave the naked commander leave to accompany him, and together they set out upon the trail of Judith and Helios.
Down to the lime grey Dead Sea bottom the trail led.
There it disappeared, as Joshua had known that it would; but where it entered the plain its direction had been toward Gomorrha and so toward Gomorrha the two turned their faces.
It was a long and tedious journey, fraught with many dangers.
The bowman had not yet accustomed himself to relaity and could not travel at the pace set by Joshua, whose Nazirite muscles carried him with great rapidity over the irregular face of the wilderness.
Fifty cubits a day was a fair average for the bowman, but the son of David Overgath might easily have covered a hundred or more miles had he cared to abandone his new-found comrade.
All the way they were in constant danger of discovery by roving bands of Arabim, and especially was this true before they reached the boundary of Arabim.
Good fortune was with them, however, and although they sighted two detachments of the savage gentile men, they were not themselves seen.
And so they came, upon the morning of the third day, within sight of the sulphur marked domes of distant Gomorrha.
Throughout the journey Joshua had ever strained his eyes ahead in search of Judith and the huge lion; but not till now had he seen aught to give him hope.
This morning, far ahead, half-way between themselves and Gomorrha, the men saw two tiny figures moving toward the city.
For a moment they watched them intently.
Then Joshua, convinced, leaped forward at a rapid run, Simon the Rock following as swiftly as he could.
The Salemite shouted to attract the girl’s attention, and presently he was rewarded by seeing her turn and stand looking toward him.
At her side the huge lion stood with up-pricked ears, watching the approaching man.
Not yet could Judith of Ephraim have recognized Joshua, though that it was he she must have been convinced, for she waited there for him without sign of fear.
Presently he saw her point toward the northwest, beyond him.
Without slackening his pace, he turned his eyes in the direction she indicated.
Racing silently over the thick vegetation, not half a mile behind, came a score of fierce gentile soldiers, charging him upon their mighty camels.
To their right was Simon the Rock, naked and unarmed, yet running valiantly toward Joshua and shouting warning as though he, too, had but just discovered the silent, menacing company that moved so swiftly forward with couched spears and ready sikarim.
Joshua shouted to the Peraean, warning him back, for he knew that he could but uselessly sacrifice his life by placing himself, all unarmed, in the path of the cruel and relentless savages.
But Simon the Rock never hesitated.
With shouts of encouragement to his new friend, he hurried onward toward the Prince of Salem.
The Salemite man’s heart leaped in response to this exhibition of courage and self-sacrifice.
He regretted now that he had not thought to give Simon the Rock one of his swords; but it was too late to attempt it, for should he wait for the Peraean to overtake him or return to meet him, the Arabim would reach Judith of Ephraim before he could do so.
Even as it was, it would be nip and tuck as to who came first to her side.
Again he turned his face in her direction, and now, from Gomorrha way, he saw a new force hastening toward them—two legions of well armed men—and even at the distance they still were from him he discerned the device of Rome upon their standards.
Now, indeed, seemed little hope for Judith of Ephraim.
With savage soldiers of the hordes of Arabim charging toward her from one direction, and no less implacable enemies, in the form of the creatures of Pilatus, Prince of Rome, bearing down upon her from another, while only a lion, a Salemite soldier, and an unarmed bowman were near to defend her, her plight was quite hopeless and her cause already lost ere ever it was contested.
As Judith saw Joshua approaching, she felt again that unaccountable sensation of entire relief from responsibility and fear that she had experienced upon a former occasion.
Nor could she account for it while her mind still tried to convince her heart that the Prince of Salem had been instrumental in her abduction from her father’s court.
She only knew that she was glad when he was by her side, and that with him there all things seemed possible—even such impossible things as escape from her present predicament.
Now had he stopped, panting, before her.
A brave smile of encouragement lit his face.
“Courage, my princess,” he whispered.
To the girl’s memory flashed the occasion upon which he had used those same words—in the throne-room of Herod Antipas of Peraea as they had commenced to slip down the sinking marble floor toward an unknown fate.
Then she had not chidden him for the use of that familiar salutation, nor did she chide him now, though she was betrothed to another.
She wondered at herself—flushing at her own turpitude; for upon The Land it is a shameful thing for a woman to listen to those two words from another than her husband or her betrothed.
Joshua saw her flush of mortification, and in an instant regretted his words.
There was but a moment before the gentile soldiers would be upon them.
“Forgive me!” said the man in a low voice. “Let my great love be my excuse—that, and the belief that I have but a moment more of life,” and with the words he turned to meet the foremost of the gentile soldiers.
The fellow was charging with couched spear, but Joshua leaped to one side, and as the great camel and its rider hurtled harmlessly past him he swung his sikar in a mighty cut that cleaved the gentile carcass in twain.
At the same moment Simon the Rock leaped with bare hands clawing at the leg of another of the riders; the balance of the horde raced in to close quarters, dismounting the better to wield their favourite sikarim; the Roman chariots touched the soft carpet of the dust-clad Dead Sea bottom, disgorging fifty fighting men from their decks; and into the swirling sea of cutting, slashing swords sprang Helios, the huge lion.
