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

by Robert H. Fuller

"If I lose, I will pay!" she whispered, in a tone that only he could hear.

A dark flush mounted to his cheek.

"It will not be long," he returned confidently.

"I would not be too sure of that," she replied, with a blush, giving him a sidelong glance under her lashes.

Phradates could not understand why he had not long ago given free rein to his passion. More than once he had called himself a fool for his forbearance and resolved in his own mind to end it; but when the time came for putting his plans into execution, he found them halted by an indefinable barrier that he could not break. It surprised him that this could have happened. All his life it had never occurred to him to restrain himself. He was master of one of the greatest fortunes in Tyre, and with him to wish was to have. Moreover, he had learned Thais' history, so far as it was generally known, and it seemed to him ridiculous that an Athenian dancing girl should succeed so long in holding him at arm's length. But now he must keep his oath.

Next day, and for many days thereafter, Tyre sat and watched the slow development of the scheme that had been laid for her destruction. She saw the Macedonian army tear down the walls of the Old City and convey them, block by block, to the water front, where they were cast into the sea. Soon the beginning of a broad causeway began to jut out from the shore, pointing like a huge finger at the angle of the city wall, midway between the two harbors, which was nearest to the mainland. Detachments of soldiers brought in squads of men from the surrounding country, who were set at work with the army upon the mole. Piles of cedar were driven into the sand. Earth was brought in baskets and poured over the stones. When the waves washed it away, trees were dragged from the mountain side and thrown in with their leaves and branches to hold it in place. Acres of rushes were cut and laid upon the soil to bind it. Foot by foot the causeway lengthened. On the shore could be seen men building towers and battering rams, catapults, and ballistæ.

Alexander's figure became so familiar to the Tyrians that even the children could point him out. He was seen everywhere, overlooking and superintending the work in all its details. One day he was missed, and the next, smoke was observed drifting up from the rocky fastnesses of Lebanon, which the Tyrians knew had been held for centuries by untamed robber bands, who had exacted toll from their caravans and even from the convoys of the Great King. Their spies on shore brought them word that the robbers had attacked Alexander's scouting parties and he had gone to punish them. Tyre laughed at the idea that he could take the impregnable strongholds among the crags, but the columns of smoke continued to rise farther and farther back among the mountains; and when Alexander reappeared on the mole, at the end of a week, the news came that the robbers had been harried and hunted out of their caves until not a vestige of them remained. Tyre wondered, and a vague uneasiness crept into the city.

The mole had advanced almost within bow-shot of the wall when the city woke from its lethargy of contempt and began to bestir itself. Towers were erected on the wall opposite the causeway, and the wall itself was raised. The engineers and their workmen, whose skill was famed throughout the world, fashioned new machines for repelling the expected attack.

When the Macedonians had covered more than half the distance between the shore and the wall, the Phœnicians began to resist their advance. The catapults were brought into play. These were great bows of tough wood, set in a solid framework. The strings of twisted gut were drawn back by a windlass, and huge arrows, made of iron and weighing two or three hundred pounds, were fitted to the groove prepared for them. The string was released by drawing a trigger as in a cross-bow, and the missile sped to the mark.

The catapults were reënforced by the ballistæ. In a frame of heavy beams an arm was set, with a great spoon at one end, while the other was held firmly in twisted cords. By means of a rope wound about a roller the arm was drawn back, and a stone or a ball of metal was placed in the spoon. Suddenly freed, the arm flew up until it was halted by a cross-beam of the framework, when the missile left it and hurtled through the air toward the mole.