“My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?”
The voice startled all who heard it. One it touched uncontrollably.
The soldiers in coming had brought with them a vessel of wine and water, and set it down a little way from Ben-Hur. With a sponge dipped into the liquor, and put on the end of a stick, they could moisten the tongue of a sufferer at their pleasure. Ben-Hur thought of the draught he had had at the well near Nazareth; an impulse seized him; catching up the sponge, he dipped it into the vessel, and started for the cross.
“Let him be!” the people in the way shouted, angrily. “Let him be!”
Without minding them, he ran on, and put the sponge to the Nazarene’s lips.
Too late, too late!
The face then plainly seen by Ben-Hur, bruised and black with blood and dust as it was, lighted nevertheless with a sudden glow; the eyes opened wide, and fixed upon some one visible to them alone in the far heavens; and there were content and relief, even triumph, in the shout the victim gave.
“It is finished! It is finished!”
So a hero, dying in the doing a great deed, celebrates his success with a last cheer.
The light in the eyes went out; slowly the crowned head sank upon the laboring breast. Ben-Hur thought the struggle over; but the fainting soul recollected itself, so that he and those around him caught the other and last words, spoken in a low voice, as if to one listening close by: