The Golden Hope: A Story of the Time of King Alexander the Great

by Robert H. Fuller

"No," Clearchus answered with firmness. "It is my turn to guard the rear. I shall not stir until you are over the wall."

"Very well, have your way," Chares replied.

He vaulted upon the parapet and looked down. The rope had been attached to a bar of iron driven firmly into the bricks near the coping, and it dangled from between his feet into the gulf beneath him. The cord seemed slender to sustain his weight, but there was no time in which to test it. Swinging himself over the edge, he grasped the bar and then the rope, letting himself down hand over hand, with his feet against the rough surface of the wall. From the twitching of the cord in his hands, he knew that Nathan had not yet reached the bottom. He wondered how long it would be before the rope would break and send him headlong into the dark abyss.

Clearchus, left alone behind the parapet, flattened his body in the shadow and waited. He had seen Chares begin his descent, and he knew that the rope would not sustain the weight of all three at the same time. He resolved to allow Chares an opportunity to reach the foot of the wall before he himself started down. He counted upon the mistake that the sentries had made, in going back to the prison staircase in their search, to give him time.

Hardly had Chares disappeared before a company of soldiers, with torches in their hands, emerged from the head of the great stairway. The glare searched every corner on top of the wall, and the Athenian saw that concealment was no longer possible.

He knew that he must act promptly. The faces of the new arrivals were turned toward the sentinels, who were still engaged in searching about the prison stairway. It could be only a few moments before the futility of further effort in that direction must become evident to them, and the hunt would turn toward where he lay.

Should he attempt to gain the great staircase and slip into the city, where the Israelites might hide him, at least for a time? It would be impossible to evade the soldiers who were still coming up. He dismissed the idea from his mind.

Possibly he could escape along the southern stretch of wall. Beyond him at a distance there seemed to be a bridge, or causeway, connecting the wall with the enormous mass of earth and bricks that upheld the Hanging Gardens. The groves of palms and the tangle of shrubbery that crowned the Gardens might conceal him, even though the place was within the precincts of the palace itself.

He was about to try this plan and had already partly risen to put it into execution, when he saw the guard turning out at a station between him and the causeway. His chance of flight in that direction was cut off.

He could hear the chafing of the rope against the bricks on the other side of the parapet. Chares was still lowering himself toward the river. To try the rope now would be not only to endanger the lives of his two friends by overstraining the cord, but to reveal their mode of escape and expose them to certain death, since the guard would lose no time in cutting it.