As Clearchus lay upon the broad slab, the voices of his friends seemed to him faint and far away. He tried to rise, but a strange languor weighed him down. Chares seized him and dragged him to his feet.
"Wake up!" cried the Theban. "We still have a chance. You tremble like a girl."
Clearchus gathered his senses with an effort of will, and the two Greeks followed Nathan across the roof toward the great wall, against which the prison was built.
Nathan led them straight to the foot of a narrow flight of steps, roughly hewn in the masonry and scarcely discernible a few yards away. Up these he climbed with the agility of a cat. Clearchus, still faint and dizzy, hesitated for a moment, gazing at the sheer height that towered above his head.
"Forward!" Chares cried behind him. "It is our only hope."
Clearchus set his feet in the narrow steps and followed Nathan, carrying the jailer's spear in his left hand and clinging to each projection with his right. More than once his feet slipped and Chares saved him from falling. The steps wound upward almost perpendicularly, and it was evident that they were rarely used, for in places the soft brick had crumbled, leaving wide gaps.
"Look up!" Chares cried desperately, as Clearchus halted at one of these dangerous points. "Look up—and remember Artemisia, whom thou alone canst save!"
He had touched the right chord at last. The Athenian's brain cleared at the mention of Artemisia's peril, and he forgot his own. The wall no longer seemed to waver before his eyes. All doubt of his ability to pass where Nathan had passed before him vanished from his mind, and he gained the top with an even pulse.
They paused for a moment to get their bearings. Far beneath them they saw the starlight trembling on the broad sweep of the Euphrates, beyond which for miles lay a level country, dotted with trees and fields. Behind them spread the sleeping city, an endless succession of roofs and towers. Here and there a torch glimmered like a firefly. The crest of the wall, upon which they stood and where four chariots might have been driven abreast without crowding, was apparently deserted.
The sound of shouting rose from the direction of the prison. They saw a cluster of torches issue from the main entrance and scatter in every direction.