Long after the easy heaving of the boat on the choppy waves told that they were well on their journey, Ruth continued to struggle and moan.
“I swear to you,” she would cry again and again to Binit, “I swear by the awful name of my father’s God, that if the chance come again, I will fling myself in the river. Death is sweet beside passing into Belshazzar’s cruel clutch. Before the throne of the Most High God, whose ear is open to the cry of the innocent, I will stand and curse you!”
“Hush!” vainly exhorted Binit; “think of being his Majesty’s favourite,—the jewels, the dresses, the eunuchs to serve you!”
“Away with them!” groaned the Jewess; “if indeed Belshazzar shall love me so well as to grant me one boon, it shall be this, to ask the heads of you two, and of Gudea.”
“Be still!” warned the wailer, producing her knife; “the boatmen will hear you.”
But, helpless as Ruth seemed, she was not utterly devoid of understanding. “You dare not!” she challenged defiantly, “dare not! Will the king give a shekel for my dead body?”
Tabni produced from his girdle a little flask of blue Phœnician vitrium. “We must quiet her,” he remarked grimly to Binit, “or there is trouble yet. She must sleep.”
The captive resisted, but her guards forced down the liquor by thrusting a blade betwixt her teeth. The draught burned like fire on Ruth’s tongue, but, once swallowed, she felt a fearful languor creeping over her. Vain to resist it: her eyelids became heavy as lead, and even the pain in her heart ceased galling. It was not long before her heavy breathing told that she slumbered.
“What has ailed your maid?” demanded a surly boatman from above. “You made wondrous ado over such a slattern!”
“Alas,” whimpered Binit, “the poor thing is tormented by most horrible ‘sickness-fiends’; I feel for her as for my own daughter.”