A fitful sound came mingling with the roar of the cataract; it swelled, and vanished like the rushings of the gale. A trumpet sounded, but so feebly that nothing but the keenness of an ear straining to catch the slightest sound could have distinguished it. I heard remote shouts; they deepened; the echo of trumpets followed.
“The assault has begun!” I thought. “The work of glory and of death was doing. Every instant cost a life. The hailstones that bruised me were not thicker than the arrows that were then smiting down my people. Yet there was I, like a wolf in the pitfall!”
In the Torrent
Even where the combat was being fought, baffled my conception. It might be in the clouds or underground, on the opposite side of the black ridge before me, or many a league beyond the reach of my exhausted limbs and drooping steed; all was darkness to the eye and to the mind.
A light flashed down a ravine leading into the heart of the mountains; another and another blazed. Masada stood upon the mountain’s brow.
I instantly plunged into the torrent—was beaten down by the billows—was swept along through narrow channels of rock, until, half-suffocated, I was hurled up against the opposite cliff. Wet and weary, I less climbed than tore my way upward. But the torrent had borne me far below the ravine. Before me was a gigantic rampart of rock. But the time was flying. I dragged myself up to the face of the precipice by the chance brushwood. I swung from point to point by a few projecting branches that broke away almost in my grasp, until, with my hands excoriated, my limbs stiff and bleeding, and my head reeling, I reached the pinnacle.
Was I under the dominion of a spell? Was the power of some fiend raised to mock me? All was darkness as far as the eye could pierce; the heaviest veil of midnight hung upon the earth. There was utter silence. Not the slightest sound reached the ear.
For a while, the thought of some strange illusion was paramount; then came the frightful idea that the illusion was in myself; that in the effort to gain the ascent, I had strained eye and ear until I could neither hear nor see; that I was still within sight and sound of battle, but insensible to the impressions of the external world forever. Immortality under this exclusion! A deathlessness of the deaf and blind! The thought struck me with a force inconceivable by all minds but one sentenced like mine.
Constantius Tells of the Attack