After this poured a gaunt horde numbering tens of thousands. They bore paving-stones, stakes, posts, railings, garden implements, weapons from kitchens, from hardware booths and from armories; anything that one man or a body of men could wield; torches and kettles of tar; chains and ropes; knotted whips, and bundles of fagots; iron spikes, instruments of torture, anything and everything which could be turned as a weapon or to inflict pain upon the Roman, who believed at this moment that Jerusalem was his!
The Christian overlooked this ferocious inundation and shook his head. On a mound near him stood the spirit of the mob concentrated and personified. It was crazed Posthumus.
He was screaming: "It is finished; the law is run out! All prophecy is fulfilled!"
And over his head he was swinging a parchment fiercely burning.
It was the Scroll of the Law!
After uncounted minutes, vibrating with roar, the terrible flood rushed by. Feeble arms clasped the Christian about the knees and he looked down on the tangled white locks of the palsied man, who had searched for him until he had found him. The Christian laid his hand on the man's head but did not speak.
At the breach in the Old Wall, the watchers on that almost deserted street saw the brazen wave of four legions gather and sweep forward to gain ground in the city before the mob swept down on them.
Between the two warring bodies, one orderly, prepared but apprehensive, the other mad and perishing, was a considerable space. Fighting still went on at the breach in the walls, but the supreme conflict of a comparatively small body of soldiers and an uncounted horde was not yet precipitated.
Ordinarily, the Roman army could have reduced any popular insurrection with half that number of men. But at present the legionaries confronted desperate citizens who were simply choosing their own way to die. Reason and human fear long since had ceased to inspire them. They were believing now and following a prophet because it was the final respite before despair. There was no alternative. It was death whatever they did, unless, in truth, this splendid sorceress was indeed the Voice of the Risen Prince. Force would be of no avail against them. Madness had flung them against Rome; only some other madness would turn them back.
The Christian, from his commanding position, expected anything.