So they brought the hideous stake, and impaled him in sight of all men, that the people of Babylon might pass by to rebuke him with scoffs and curses, for a traitor who had lifted his hand against the Great Queen.
Two days, two nights, he writhed and languished in his agony. On the third morning men had become wearied of him, and he was left alone, save that the vulture floating overhead kept watch on untiring wing, and waited for him still.
At sunrise there came a veiled woman, with a jar of water in her hand. His dim eye lightened, and the spasm, that should have been a smile, crossed his face, for he recognised in her gait and bearing the presence of his queen.
She raised her veil to look fixedly on those dying features, so changed, so distorted—to mark the quiver of those dry cracked lips, the flutter of life that played over the blackened, withered frame.
"Speak," said she, in a low hoarse whisper, while the water rippled pleasantly in its jar. "Speak, and I will have mercy; for you shall drink and die."
He nodded assent, eyeing with piteous eagerness the deadly draught for which he longed.
"Doth he live?" she asked, and laid the jar almost against his lips.
Another nod, a convulsive choking gasp, and a roll of the half closed eyes.
"And where?" she continued, in fierce impatience, pitiless of his sufferings, careless of all but the secret she was fain to extort, even from the dead.
It was obvious that till his lips were moistened he could not answer, if he would. She held the jar to his mouth, and he took such a long and greedy draught as dulled his mortal agony with a sense of relief from suffering that was almost joy.