Into the midst of the confusion rushed the Hebrew women, seeking the children who had been taken from them. The uproar of conflict gave way to the lamentations of mothers whose infants had been slaughtered. Others, more fortunate, sat with their babes in their arms, kissing them and feeling them over to discover whether they had been hurt. One young wife sat upon the steps at Clearchus' feet with her first-born and only child. Nathan recognized her as the woman who had been struck down by the priest in the market-place. The baby had been strangled and was dead.
"Hush!" she said, in a crooning voice, and, covering the child's head with her garment, she pressed its lips to her breast. For an instant she sat there, but the chill of the waxen mouth struck through her heart. She gave a startled glance at the baby's face, and then sprang up with a scream of despair and rushed out of the temple into the tempest, with the poor little body clasped in her arms.
Nathan called to Chares and Leonidas. "Alexander is on the wall," he said. "The streets are filled with the Tyrians. We must escape as we came. Listen!"
He held up his hand, and the Greeks became aware of a dull roaring that filled the city like the humming of a gigantic hive of bees.
"Even here we shall not be safe," Nathan continued. "Let us seek the secret passage."
"Chares!" cried one from among the women, and Thais ran forward, with her saffron robe torn so that half her perfect breast was exposed. She carried a dagger in her hand, and its blade was red; but her face shone with joy. The weapon fell from her grasp as she sprang to the Theban, who lifted her like a child in his arms and kissed her.
"Come," he said, as he set her down, "let us go."
Turning their backs upon the throng of the living and the dead, they descended into the secret passage and closed the entrance behind them.