"He might betray us if we let him go," Leonidas said, paying no attention to his supplications.
"I swear to you on the head of Baal that I will not," the old man cried piteously.
"If he should betray us," Clearchus observed, "his own life would be forfeit, because we should reveal the part he had in bringing us into the city."
"Very well; you have most at stake," the Spartan said. "Let him go."
The chancellor did not wait for further permission. He disappeared into the passage like an old gray rat escaped from a trap.
"I am half sorry we spared him after all," Leonidas said regretfully. "Let us see where we are."
They passed through the curtained door and into the temple. Twilight reigned beneath the lofty dome where the bats were still flitting. This semi-darkness was artfully preserved so that the fire, which was the essential feature of the worship of Baal-Moloch, might be visible and effective during the sacrifices.
The Greeks found themselves in a vast hall of oblong shape. They were standing upon a platform of stone, raised for the height of a man above the main floor, to which a flight of broad and shallow steps descended. A huge dark mass stood before them exactly under the dome, the sides of which were pierced by narrow slits that admitted the light of day. This mass was the misshapen idol of Baal. The God was represented by a hollow statue of iron and bronze, sitting upon a throne. Its long arms terminated in hands that rested with palms upturned beside its knees. Its enormous head was inclined slightly forward, and the expression upon its face was so cruel and malignant that Clearchus felt his blood chilled as he gazed upon it and thought of the hecatombs of innocent victims whose lives had been sacrificed to its ferocity.
There were larger and more splendid images of Baal in other Phœnician cities, but none that was so venerated. It had been brought from the Temple of Baal-Moloch in the Old City on the mainland, where for centuries it had been the guardian of the place, receiving its sacrifices each year. In the old days even the first-born of the royal blood had been lifted in those blackened arms and rolled upon the iron knees to be roasted alive. The terrible face leaned above with distended nostrils, as though to inhale the odor of burning flesh, and thousands of mothers had watched its dreadful smile through the smoke with songs of praise on their lips and death in their hearts, while their babies writhed in agony in the pitiless embrace. Baal would accept no unwilling sacrifice, and the mother whose child was torn from her breast to be given to the God, not only lost her infant but was disgraced forever if she showed emotion while the rite was being performed.
In spite of themselves, the Macedonians were oppressed by a kind of superstitious dread as they looked at the grim visage that seemed to sneer down upon them.