CHAPTER II.
It was night on the Libyan desert. The stars glittered on the rocky highlands that compose so much of that desert, and lit faintly, too, the areas between, where stretches of sand waited to be shifted by the next simoon that should blow.
In one spot, at the edge of a rock, there was a movement of the sand. Out of it a form slowly rose.
The sand shook near by, and another person appeared. Another arose, and another, till five had arisen.
The man who had first appeared spoke, slowly, in a voice that told of exhaustion.
"The Emperor Septimius Severus reigneth over our land," he said. "He hath forbidden that any one should become a Christian. But how shall we cease to tell men of Christ? How shall he cease to draw men to himself?"
"Severus hath not been always thus," answered another voice, faint with weakness. "Proculus, the Christian, once saved the life of either Severus or his child, and the emperor took Proculus into the palace and treated him kindly, and chose a Christian nurse for Severus' boy, Caracalla. When the Romans rose against the Christians, Severus shielded our brethren. Oh, that the priests of the false gods of Egypt had not enticed our emperor!"
"Alas for him!" responded the first voice. "The Emperor Severus worshipeth the false gods of Egypt, but we serve the Lord Christ. Farewell to Egypt's gods! They shall pass, but Thou shalt endure!"
"Amen," murmured the lad Timokles. "Even so! Thou art Lord of lords, and King of kings, O Christ!"
Suddenly there was a cry of other voices. Up from the rocks of the plateau behind the five there sprang a second group of persons.
The five Christians, knowing the voices of their former heathen captors, fled. The lad Timokles was closely pursued. He felt, rather than heard, close behind him, the footsteps of his enemy, and, turning sharply, Timokles sped away in another direction.
Here and there, back and forth, the two ran in the star-lit darkness. The five Christians were widely scattered now. Shouts and cries came faintly from a distance. Timokles rushed toward the rocky plateau.
"Stop, Christian, stop!" cried his enemy, leaping forward with outstretched hand.
But Timokles fled, stumbling over stones. On came his enemy's swift leap behind. A piercing cry, as of some one in agony, rang from the desert's distance. Timokles sped faster.
"Stop!" commanded the voice of the runner behind. "Stop!"
A swift prayer burst from Timokles' lips. He fled on, his pursuer so near sometimes that Timokles' heart failed him.
"Stop!" screamed his foe. "Stop!"
The fierce command pulsed through Timokles' brain. The man behind suddenly slipped, stumbling over the stones. He fell heavily, and in that instant's time, Timokles darted forward behind one of the rocks, and, creeping underneath it, lay breathless in the darkness.
The man struggled to his feet. Up past the other side of the rock rushed the pursuer. Timokles, quaking, expected every instant to be discovered.
"Where art thou?" savagely called the man. "Where?"
He ran hither and thither with fiercely muttered imprecations. Now his footsteps sounded farther off, and now again he ran back and came softly stealing around among the rocks. Timokles laid his branded cheek against the gravel, and waited.
The footsteps went, and came, and went again in the dark. Timokles trembled from head to foot. He did not fear death, but he dreaded capture and unknown terrors.
The dark form passed by again. A chill went over Timokles, as he thought he saw a weapon in the man's hand.
The footsteps became inaudible once more. Timokles, waiting a long time, imagined his foe might have gone. As the lad was about to lift his head, a hand brushed along the side of his rock, and reached out into the dark, underneath. Timokles was perfectly quiet. The hand above him felt down the sides of the rock, waved in the darkness above the boy, descended and rested an instant on the gravel next him—but did not touch him. The silent menace of the groping hand was terrible. Timokles held his breath.
The hand passed on, feeling of other rocks.
"O God of thy people, thou hast hidden me!" cried Timokles in his heart, as he heard the soft rubbing of his enemy's hand against the farther rocks.
The sound died away. Timokles lay listening for a long time. Once he thought he heard a creeping sound, but it was only the wind.
Sleep came upon him at last, and when he woke it was day. He dared not come out, but lay there through the torrid hours, moistening his lips now and then with a little water from the small, skin water-pouch he carried.
The sun plunged beneath the horizon at last, with the usual seeming suddenness observed in the desert. Night was welcome to Timokles, and he came forth. The lad's heart was very lonely. He looked toward the northeast, and remembered his Alexandrian home—his mother, the brother with whom Timokles' whole life had been bound up, the little sister Cocce, whom Timokles had last seen playing gleefully with a toy crocodile, and laughing at its opening mouth.
"O Severus!" whispered Timokles, "what didst thou see, when thou visitedst Egypt five years ago, that thou shouldest decree such evil against the Egyptian Christians now?"
Softly Timokles went his way in the dark. He was hungry, yet he dared eat little of the dried dates he had with him. When would he find other food?
For a time he looked warily around, but soon his sense of loneliness overcame his fear, and he watched more for some sign of his four friends than for an indication of an enemy.
"Perhaps some Christian hath escaped, even as I have," thought Timokles.
He started.
Outstretched before him lay a figure of a man! Timokles stood motionless, till he perceived the man be to be asleep. Then the lad bent over the sleeper to scan his face. But, as Timokles stooped, he dimly saw, in the relaxed, open palm of the man's hand, a small stone of the triangular form under which the Egyptians were wont to worship Osiris, Isis, and Horus. Such are the stones found in the tombs of the Egyptians.
This was no Christian sleeper that lay at Timokles' feet! The lad turned and fled into the distance.
Through the desert there wailed a thin, plaintive cry. It was the voice of a night-wandering jackal.
Timokles was dizzy to faintness, and staggered as he was driven on. He had been discovered and taken. His life had been spared that he might henceforth be a slave.
"I bear this for thy sake, O Lord, dear Lord!" murmured the exhausted lad, as the blows drove him through the pathless desert.
Again came the plaintive cry of the wandering jackal.
"For thy sake!" faintly repeated Timokles.
A few minutes passed, and once more the jackal's inarticulate voice wailed through the desert, but Timokles had fallen, helpless. A man sprang forward, and the lash fell again and again on Timokles' prostrate body, but the boy did not stir.
"Now see how the Christian would die in the desert, and cheat us of all the work he might do!" grumbled the vexed voice of a dismounted camel-rider. "He is young. There are many years of work in him!"
"Leave him!" scornfully advised another, who held a torch. "Some beast will find him."
"Nay, but he shall go with me to Carthage," asserted a third, from the height of his camel's back. "Carthage knoweth what to do with Christians!"
"Who art thou that thou shouldest own the Christian?" demanded the first, angrily gazing up at the presumptuous rider. "Did I not find him?"
The mounted camel-rider laughed, and tossed something toward the irate speaker. The man caught the object, a ring of gold, containing a scarabaeus.
"Take it," said the giver to the appeased rival. "The Christian is mine."
The unconscious Timokles was taken up at a sign from the camel-rider to one of his servants, and the cavalcade proceeded on its way. As his camel paced forward, Pentaur, the purchaser, glanced back twice or thrice.
"Truly," he assured himself with much complacency, as he perceived Timokles being carried, "I follow the maxim of Ptah-hotep: 'Treat well thy people, as it behooveth thee; this is the duty of those whom the gods favor.'"
As Pentaur, for that moment, thought of the dread hour when, after death, according to Egyptian belief, he should stand before the judgment-seat of Osiris, the camel-rider felt convinced that he would have merl which might stand him in good stead in that ordeal.
Little by little, Timokles regained consciousness. He marveled to find himself carried. He had expected to be killed where he fell. The many painful welts of the lash's stripes stung him with keen pain.
"O mother! mother!" Timokles' heart cried silently.
Had she indeed lost all love for him, since she had told him she wished he had died rather than become a Christian?
"Lord Christ," cried Timokles' breaking heart now, "I have left all for thee!"
The company pushed on rapidly. At length, after morning with its heat had come, the party halted, and the slave who had carried Timokles flung him on the sand, the slave comforting himself that possibly the evil of the Christian's touch might be warded off by a symbolic eye of Horus that the pagan wore tied to his arm by a slender string. Such eyes were often used by Egyptians as amulets and ornaments.
When the hot hours of the day were past, the caravan again made, ready to go on. The merchant, Pentaur, summoned Timokles, and with condescending good-nature, demanded his history. Timokles told it.
"Why shouldest thou be a Christian?" commented Pentaur. "See, we come to-night to Ammonium the oasis. Every camel-step doth lead thee farther toward Carthage! Thou wilt perish there! Carthage doth hate Christians!"
Timokles looked into Pentaur's eyes.
"Yea, I know that Carthage hateth them," the lad answered. "I heard that four years ago, when the proconsul Saturninus persecuted the Christians; and when a number were brought from the little town of Scillita to Carthage to appear before the tribunal of Saturnin, one man called Speratus spoke frankly and nobly for his brethren. When the proconsul Saturninus invited Speratus to swear by the genius of the emperor, the proconsul promising the Christians mercy if they would do this and return to the worship of the gods, Speratus answered, 'I know of no genius of the ruler of this earth, but I serve my God who is in heaven, whom no man hath seen nor can see. I render what is due from me, for I acknowledge the emperor as my sovereign; but I can worship none but my Lord, the King of all kings and Ruler of all nations.' So were the Christians taken to the place of execution, where they knelt and prayed, and were then beheaded."
Timokles' eyes fell. His voice trembled.
"O Lord Christ," he added, reverently, "I also would be faithful unto thee!"
The merchant's piercing look regarded Timokles for a few minutes.
"There were women among those twelve Christians who were brought from Scillita to Carthage to die," continued Timokles, "three women, called Donata, Secunda, and Vestina. When they were brought before the proconsul, he said to them, 'Honor our prince, and offer sacrifice to the gods.' Donata answered, 'We give to Caesar the honor that is due Caesar: but we adore and offer sacrifice to God alone.' Vestina, said, 'I also am a Christian.' Secunda said, 'I also believe in my God, and will continue faithful to him. As for thy gods, we will neither serve nor adore them.'
"O my master," continued Timokles, with trembling voice, "thinkest thou not that the God who so strengthened three women that they did not shrink from death for his sake, could strengthen me to meet death, also?"