The alabarch understood. They were cracking the stone with fire and water and beating in the fractures with a ram.
Then the forty thousand within realized their extremity. The murmur increased to an even groan of terror, and here and there, as some more acutely realized the desperate straits, frantic screams would rive through the drone of misery.
Above it all the ram beat its sentence of doom upon the gate.
Splintering rock began to fall on the inner side of the assaulted portal. The keeper put his hands over his ears and turned away from the sight. Let but a breach be made wide enough to admit a hand to undo the bolts and hideous death would pour in upon the shuddering captives within.
Without, above the noise of the ram, the roar of the multitude continued:
"Give up the woman ere it is too late!"
Under the light of fires falling from above, hundreds of white faces in the mad mass turned toward Lydia.
A lozenge of stone large enough to admit a man's body shaped itself in the gate under the ram, and the next instant shot out and fell near the keeper. With it came a hoarse roar of triumph, drowning a scream of despair.
A dozen arms came through the opening and fumbled for the bolts.
The keeper seized the fragment of stone and hurled it at the intruding arms. It struck fair and with vicious force. Howls of pain went up.