It was during this terrible process of binding and gagging that the screams were made which Martha heard in the garden. It was effected; and the three men were bearing the silent and muffled body through the courtyard, when Martha rushed toward them with a loud shriek of supplication.
“Silence!” thundered Simon, “would you betray us?” And uncoiling his great serpent from his neck [pg 100](the leopard was locked up in the chariot), he threw it toward her. “Strike her!” he said, in a hissing tone. The serpent, as if acting intelligently, made an immense coil of its body and raised its head threateningly toward Martha. She fled in terror up the stairway leading to the flat top of the house.
“Pursue her!” said Simon to Caiaphas—“pursue her and keep her silent with your dagger until we have escaped.”
Caiaphas bounded after her. She turned and faced him on the house-top. He threatened to plunge the dagger into her heart if she made a sound. She backed before him to the parapet. It was at that moment when the moon, suddenly emerging from the cloud, revealed to me, as I was approaching my father’s house, the two figures; my sister raising her arms wildly to heaven, and the wicked priest threatening to strike.
At that moment I entered the courtyard and confronted Magistus and Simon, who were bearing my sister toward the gate. I drew the dagger Ethopus had given me, and plunged it into the side of Magistus who was nearest to me. He sank upon the ground with his burden, uttering a deep groan. Simon rushed upon me and in a moment we were engaged in a deadly struggle. He was a man of astonishing strength. He threw me at last upon the ground and had nearly wrested my dagger from me, when Ethopus who had been concealed behind the gate sprang to my assistance. He dragged the magician back by the shoulders, and at the same instant there was a loud scream from Martha on the parapet, and the sound of voices and footsteps at the gate. Two persons rushed [pg 101]in to our aid; and Simon suddenly springing from us all, escaped into the street, and in a second the wheels of his chariot rattled away with the utmost rapidity.
Caiaphas, seeing that his party was vanquished, fled away through the garden to the house of Magistus. Martha hurried down and rejoined her friends below. Ethopus brought lights as quickly as possible, although I had already recognized in the new-comers the good old Persian whom Barabbas held prisoner, and my late deliverer who had styled himself the Son of the Desert.
Mary was released from her wrappages and threw herself alternately into the arms of brother and sister. Ethopus enjoyed this scene with gestures of frantic delight. The happy party was suddenly startled by the groans of the wounded man, who had dragged himself away and was leaning against the wall of the house, bleeding profusely.
We laid him on the floor of the reception-room, and the Son of the Desert, who was an adept in such matters, stanched the blood and bandaged his hurt, pronouncing it severe but not mortal. When Magistus opened his eyes and saw the old Persian bending over him, he stared at him with amazement, and stammered forth:
“Surely this is my renegade brother-in-law, who has renounced the name and religion of his fathers and calls himself Beltrezzor.”
He was right. Beltrezzor was our uncle, our father’s only brother, our next of kin, our legal guardian!