SYPHAX SQUARES HIS ACCOUNT
King Azemilcus stood at a window of his chamber, with the aged chancellor at his side, looking out across the parapet of the wall. They were alone in the room, for the king had ordered his guard to await his commands in an outer apartment. The window opened directly upon the top of the wall, to which the royal palace was joined. Often during his long reign had the old king stood there, revolving his schemes in his cunning brain, while the salt breeze cooled his temples.
Beneath his feet the stones trembled with the shock of the great battering rams that were enlarging the breach in the wall west of the palace. In his ears sounded the tumult of the attack upon the two harbors, where the Macedonian triremes were seeking to break the barriers of chains. He saw the Tyrian soldiers upon the battlements, fighting against hope, with the valor of desperation.
The roar of falling masonry told him that the rams had done their work. The breach had become a wide gap, extending beyond the ends of the inner wall that had been built to block the assault. The vessels lying in wait drew nearer. Flights of arrows and volleys of stones, great and small, swept the defences. Troop-ships, provided with drawbridges at their prows, closed in at the breach. The bridges fell, and streams of men in armor began to flow across them. They gained the breach and held it. They scaled the slope of fallen blocks and reached the top of the wall. The Tyrians were forced backward or hurled into the sea.
"That must be Alexander," the king remarked, noting the irresistible vigor of the assault.
"Yes," the chancellor replied, "those are his plumes."
Alexander indeed was leading the charge along the wall toward the palace, fighting in the forefront as his custom was, while the shield-bearing guards pressed forward where he led. Their triumphant voices shouted his name. At one of the towers upon the wall, between the breach and the palace, the Tyrians made a stand, seeking to check the advance of their foes. The Macedonians hunted them out and drove them to the next tower. The battle raged in mid-air, and the bodies of the slain fell either into the sea on one side or into the streets of the city on the other.
"They will enter here," Azemilcus said. "I think it is time to go."
"It is time!" the chancellor echoed, gazing upon the slaughter like a man under the spell of a horrible fascination.
The king led the way into the large hall where the guard was stationed. It consisted of a company of a hundred men under the command of a young captain whose bronzed face and steady gaze showed that he was a veteran in service despite his youth. He had been pacing backward and forward before his men, who stood at attention along the wall. At sight of Azemilcus he paused and saluted. The old king placed a thin hand upon his shoulder.