Books: OUT OF THE TRIANGLE
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MARY E. BAMFORD >> OUT OF THE TRIANGLE
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OUT OF THE TRIANGLE.
A STORY OF THE FAR EAST.
BY MARY E. BAMFORD.
CHAPTER I.
A voice rang through one of the streets of Alexandria.
"Sinners, away, or keep your eyes to the ground! Keep your eyes to
the ground!"
The white-robed priestesses of Ceres, carrying a sacred basket,
walked in procession through the Alexandrian street, and as they
walked they cried aloud their warning.
So, for four centuries, since the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, had
priestesses of Ceres walked and called aloud their admonitions
through this city; though of late years men had come to know that
what the sacred basket held was a live snake, supposed to be the
author of sin and death.
Before the great temple of Ceres in the southeast quarter of the
city, the crier stood on the steps of the portico, and proclaimed
his invitation: "All ye who are clean of hands and pure of heart,
come to the sacrifice! All ye who are guiltless in thought and deed,
come to the sacrifice!"
Among the passing people, the lad Heraklas shrank back. When the
sacred basket of Ceres had met him, he had bent his eyes downward,
deeming himself unworthy of the sight. And now, as the crier's
invitation rang from the portico, "All ye who are guiltless in
thought and deed, come to the sacrifice!" Heraklas trembled.
Swiftly he hurried away and passed down the broad street that led to
the Gate of the Moon on the south of Alexandria.
At length he reached the gate, but swiftly yet he pushed forward a
short distance along the vineyard-fringed banks of Lake Mareotis.
Heraklas lifted up his eyes, and marked how the vines by the lake's
side contrasted with the burning whiteness of the desert beyond. The
glaring sand shimmered in the heat of the flaming Egyptian sun. A
thin, vapory mist seemed to move above the heated, barren surface of
the grim sea of sand. Heraklas stretched out his hands in agony
toward the desert, and cried aloud, "O my brother, my brother
Timokles! How shall I live without thee?"
The soft ripple of the lake beside him seemed like mockery. The
tears rolled slowly down his cheeks, as he looked toward the
pitilessly unresponsive desert of the west and southwest. Then
Heraklas, helpless in his misery, raised his hands with the palms
outward before him, after the custom of an Egyptian in prayer, and
addressed him whom the Egyptians thought the maker of the sun, the
god Phthah, "the father of the beginnings," "the first of the gods
of the upper world."
"Hail to thee, O Ptahtanen," began Heraklas, "great god who
concealeth his form, . . thou art watching when at rest; the father
of all fathers and of all gods. . . Watcher, who traversest the
endless ages of eternity."
The familiar words brought no comfort. Between him and the
shimmering desert came the memory of his brother's face, and
Heraklas forgot Ptahtanen, and cried out again in desperation.
His eyes strained toward the desert. Somewhere in its depths, his
twin brother Timokles, the being whom of all on earth Heraklas most
loved, lived,--or perhaps, in the brief week that had elapsed since
he was snatched from his Alexandrian home, had died. Timokles had
forsaken the gods of his own family, the gods his own dead father
had adored, Egypt's gods. The lad would not even worship the gods of
Rome. Timokles had become one of the Christians, and had, in
consequence, been falsely accused of having, during a former
inundation, cut one of the dykes near the Nile. This offense, in the
days of Roman rule, was punishable by condemnation to labor in the
mines, or by branding and transportation to an oasis of the desert.
Timokles, innocent of the crime charged upon him,--having been at
home in Alexandria during the time when he was accused of having
been abroad on the evil errand,--was dragged away to exile, for was
he not a Christian? Living or dead, the desert held him. The Roman
emperor, Septimius Severus, who ruled Egypt, had lately issued an
edict that no one should become a Christian. What hope was there for
Timokles?
"He will never come back!" said Heraklas now, with a low sob, as the
desert swam before his tear-filled eyes. "O Timokles!"
There was a rustle among the leaves not far away. Heraklas turned
hastily.
But it was no person who disturbed his solitude. Heraklas saw only
the head of an ibis, called "Hac" or "Hib" by the Egyptians, and the
lad, mindful of the honor due the bird as sacred to the god Thoth,
the Egyptian deity of letters and of the moon, made a gesture of
semi-reverence. He remembered what the Egyptians were wont to say,
when on the nineteenth day of the first month, they ate honey and
eggs in honor of Thoth: "How sweet a thing is truth!"
Heraklas murmured with a heavy sigh, "Timokles told me he had found
'the truth' O Timokles, is thy 'truth' sweet to thee now? Oh, my
brother, my brother!"
Heraklas cast himself down among the vines, and wept his unavailing
tears. Little did the lad, reared in a pagan home, know of the
sweetness of the Christian faith, for which Timokles had forsaken
all.
Heraklas' small sister, the child Cocce, sat on the pavement in the
central court of her home in Alexandria. Above her towered three
palms that shaded the court. Beside the little girl was an Egyptian
toy, the figure of a man kneading dough. The man would work, if a
string were pulled, but Cocce had thrown the toy aside. Lower and
lower sank the small, brown head, more and more sleepily closed the
large, brown eyes, till the child drooped against a stone table that
was supported by the stone figure of a captive, bending beneath the
weight of the table's top.
As Heraklas entered the court his eyes fell upon his sleeping little
sister, but he noted more closely the stone captive against which
she leaned. Heraklas marked how the captive was represented to bend
beneath the table's weight. The boy's eyes grew fierce. Captivity
seemed a cruel thing, since Timokles had gone into it.
Heraklas flung himself on a seat covered by a leopard's skin, and
gazed moodily upward at the palm-leaves, one or two of which stirred
faintly under the slight wind that came from a corridor, whither the
wooden wind-sails,--sloping boards commonly fixed over the terraces
of the upper portions of Egyptian houses,--had conducted the current
of air.
Borne from the streets of Alexandria, there seemed to Heraklas to
come certain new, half-heard noises. He listened, yet nothing
definite reached his ears.
At length, seeing through a range of pillars a slave moving in the
distance, Heraklas summoned the man, and asked what was the cause of
the faintly-heard sounds.
"The people destroy the possessions of some of the Christians,"
humbly replied the slave, whose name was Athribis; and Heraklas,
stung to the quick by the answer, impatiently motioned the man away.
Left alone, Heraklas lifted his head proudly. He would ignore the
pain. What had he to do with the Christians? He, who had watched his
consecration-night in the temple of Isis; he, who had caught some
sight of the Mysteries sacred to that goddess; he, who had worn the
harsh linen robe and those symbolic robes in which a novice watches
his dream-indicated night--what had he to do with Christians? Would
that Timokles had observed the emperor's command that no one should
become a Christian! Heraklas groaned.
The dismissed man-slave, Athribis, looked cautiously back through
the pillars, and smiled. None knew better than he how any reference
to the Christians stabbed the hearts of this family. Athribis
himself hated the Christians. He longed to be out in Alexandria's
streets this moment, that he, too, might be at liberty to pillage
the Christians' houses. Who knew what jewels he might find? And he
must stay here, polishing a corridor's pavement, when such things,
were being done in the streets! His dark eyes glanced back again.
Heraklas' head was bowed.
Stealthily Athribis passed out of sight of the court. He threaded
his way through corridors.
"Whither goest thou?" asked another slave by the threshold.
"I go to the market to get some lentiles," glibly replied Athribis;
and, passing, he quickly gained the portal and the street.
"One, may find that which is better than lentiles," Athribis
communed with himself, as he wound hither and thither through the
excited crowds. "Should a Christian have jewels, and I none? I, who
am faithful to the gods!"
With this the slave plunged into a company of house-breakers, and
with them boldly attacked the dwelling of a Christian. It was easily
taken, and Athribis rushed with the company into the interior.
Stools and couches were wrenched to pieces, cushions were torn,
tables were overthrown.
"Woe to the Christians of Alexandria!" fiercely muttered one man.
"We will root them from our city! They shall die!"
The crude brick of the building gave way, in places, under repeated
blows. The stucco of the outer walls fell off, and was tracked with
the crushed brick into the halls. Some of the rude company, rushing
to the flat roof of the building, discovered there, hidden by a
wind-sail, a treasure-box, as was at first supposed. On being
hastily opened, however, the box was found to hold nothing but some
rolls of writing. Contemptuously the box was kicked aside.
"Come down! Come down!" cried voices from the court. "Here are the
Christians!"
The loud clamor from below announced that the Christian family had
indeed been discovered, and would be taken to prison.
The company on the roof made haste to descend, to witness the
family's humiliating exit. As Athribis passed by the box again, he
looked more curiously at it. Surely the scrolls must be of some
worth. He could not read, but perhaps something of value might be
secretly hidden inside each of these scrolls. Who knew? It must be!
It seemed incredible that even Christians would be foolish enough to
fill a treasure-box with nothing but rolls of writing, and then
conceal the box so carefully behind this wind-sail!
Athribis purposely lingered a little behind the other men. He
snatched up the rolls, and having hidden them in his garment,
hurried from the roof.
"I am a Christian," calmly said a voice in the court. "Yea, I have
striven to bring others to Christ."
There stood the father of the household, his wife, and their two
children, one a girl of thirteen, the other a boy a little younger.
They had broken the emperor's decree. The father did not deny the
charge brought against them. It was his voice that Athribis had
heard, and the same voice spoke on:
"My children," continued the father, "our days on earth come to a
close. Let us sing our twilight hymn, for now indeed our work is
nearly done."
Above the scornful tumult rose the four voices, singing the
"Twilight," or "Candle Hymn," of the early Christians. The
children's tones trembled a little at first, but soon grew firm, as
if sustained by the calmness with which the parents sang. The angry
faces around the court became yet more fierce with hatred, as,
through a moment's pause, the rioters listened to the words of the
hymn:
"Calm Light of the celestial glory, O Jesus Son of the Eternal
Father, We come to thee now as the sun goes down, And before the
evening light We seek thee, Father, Son And Holy Spirit of God. Thou
art worthy to be forever praised by holy voices, O Son of God; thou
givest life to us, And therefore doth the world glorify thee."
Mocking cries arose from the mob. Not daring to linger longer,
Athribis ran out of the house, and hastened homeward, full of
apprehension as to what might await him.
"Where are the lentiles?" asked the slave by the threshold, as
Athribis, forgetful, in his excitement, of the excuse he had made
for his departure, passed swiftly and softly in.
"I found none," quickly answered Athribis, with alarm.
He sped silently to his former place of work, and fell to polishing
the pavement with a zeal unknown before. He knew well enough that
the slave by the threshold would not believe in that excuse,
lentiles being plentiful enough. Terror had robbed Athribis'
deceitful tongue of its usual cunning, and now he silently bewailed
his startled answer. If the slave by the threshold should report to
Heraklas' mother the fact that Athribis had been away!
Athribis longed to have time to unroll the scrolls which he had
hidden in his garment, but he dared not look at them till he should
be alone.
A voice sounded in the court. Athribis redoubled his zeal: He
recognized the tones of Heraklas' mother.
"I was not long gone! I was not long gone!" the guilty Athribis
hastily assured himself. "Surely she hath hated the Christians, even
as I hate them! I was gone but a moment! Surely she cannot know! If
I find treasure in my rolls, I will give some to the slave by the
threshold. Surely, treasure is as dumbness to a man!"
The footsteps of the mother of Heraklas drew near. The servant bowed
over his work, and dared not lift his eyes. She did not stop! And
Athribis looked breathlessly after the woman, as she passed
majestically on.
"Surely she hath not known what I did!" he gasped as the stately
figure disappeared among the columns. "Isis preserveth me from
stripes! My feet are unbeaten!"
Athribis waited till night, when the household slept. Then he crept
out of the little chamber on the roof where the slaves were wont to
sleep, according to the custom of Egyptian households.
A dim thread of a moon floated toward the west. Athribis crept to a
far part of the roof. The wind blew somewhat, but it did not cool
the fever of excitement felt by him. Within a moment he might be
rich! He might find gold in these scrolls!
He drew out the scrolls. Surely there was something firm inside this
one! He felt something! He narrowly scanned the Christians' papyrus,
as he hastily unrolled it. His lips were parted with eagerness, his
breath panted into the heart of the scroll, as he held his face down
that he might see. He unrolled the papyrus to the end. He sat up,
and drew a breath. His bare feet kicked viciously at the unrolled
papyrus. No treasure in that first scroll! He seized the second.
With eagerness all the greater because of his former disappointment,
he searched through this roll, his face bent down till his eyelashes
almost swept the surface of the writing. In vain! There was nothing!
"These Christians! What cheats they are!"
He snatched the third roll. With trembling fingers he unrolled this,
the last of the papyrus scrolls. There must be something hidden! It
could not be possible that he would be disappointed in the last
scroll! Was there no treasure? Not a thin wedge of gold at the heart
of this papyrus? Not a jewel, not anything that savored of riches?
Athribis' shaking fingers unrolled the papyrus to its very end.
Nothing but the continuous writing, and the stick on which the
scroll had been rolled! His limp hand let fall the end of the
papyrus. It descended upon the heap at his feet. Had he dared, he
would have cried aloud in his disappointment.
But it was not his voice that pierced the night. Some one had seen
him!
"A robber!" cried a woman's tones. "A thief! On the roof!"
Athribis leaped to his feet. He caught the papyri. Alas, alas! they
were not rolled, now! The wind tossed the long streamers, and as
Athribis in fearful haste snatched them, the breeze blew one scroll
entirely free. It, swept from the roof, and, descending into the
court, hung in a long strip from one of the palms.
The dismayed Athribis cast the other papyri on the roof, and fled.
It was time. The house was being aroused by the cry of the woman.
With his bare, silent feet, Athribis sped through the shadows of the
corridors to what he thought a secret spot, and hid himself. The
house resounded with outcries. Feet ran hither and thither.
Out in the court, hanging all unseen from a palm-tree, swayed the
papyrus, the written copy of part of the Sacred Book of the
Christians!
CHAPTER II.
It was night on the Libyan desert. The stars glittered on the rocky
highlands that compose so much of that desert, and lit faintly, too,
the areas between, where stretches of sand waited to be shifted by
the next simoon that should blow.
In one spot, at the edge of a rock, there was a movement of the
sand. Out of it a form slowly rose.
The sand shook near by, and another person appeared. Another arose,
and another, till five had arisen.
The man who had first appeared spoke, slowly, in a voice that told
of exhaustion.
"The Emperor Septimius Severus reigneth over our land," he said. "He
hath forbidden that any one should become a Christian. But how shall
we cease to tell men of Christ? How shall he cease to draw men to
himself?"
"Severus hath not been always thus," answered another voice, faint
with weakness. "Proculus, the Christian, once saved the life of
either Severus or his child, and the emperor took Proculus into the
palace and treated him kindly, and chose a Christian nurse for
Severus' boy, Caracalla. When the Romans rose against the
Christians, Severus shielded our brethren. Oh, that the priests of
the false gods of Egypt had not enticed our emperor!"
"Alas for him!" responded the first voice. "The Emperor Severus
worshipeth the false gods of Egypt, but we serve the Lord Christ.
Farewell to Egypt's gods! They shall pass, but Thou shalt endure!"
"Amen," murmured the lad Timokles. "Even so! Thou art Lord of lords,
and King of kings, O Christ!"
Suddenly there was a cry of other voices. Up from the rocks of the
plateau behind the five there sprang a second group of persons.
The five Christians, knowing the voices of their former heathen
captors, fled. The lad Timokles was closely pursued. He felt, rather
than heard, close behind him, the footsteps of his enemy, and,
turning sharply, Timokles sped away in another direction.
Here and there, back and forth, the two ran in the star-lit
darkness. The five Christians were widely scattered now. Shouts and
cries came faintly from a distance. Timokles rushed toward the rocky
plateau.
"Stop, Christian, stop!" cried his enemy, leaping forward with
outstretched hand.
But Timokles fled, stumbling over stones. On came his enemy's swift
leap behind. A piercing cry, as of some one in agony, rang from the
desert's distance. Timokles sped faster.
"Stop!" commanded the voice of the runner behind. "Stop!"
A swift prayer burst from Timokles' lips. He fled on, his pursuer so
near sometimes that Timokles' heart failed him.
"Stop!" screamed his foe. "Stop!"
The fierce command pulsed through Timokles' brain. The man behind
suddenly slipped, stumbling over the stones. He fell heavily, and in
that instant's time, Timokles darted forward behind one of the
rocks, and, creeping underneath it, lay breathless in the darkness.
The man struggled to his feet. Up past the other side of the rock
rushed the pursuer. Timokles, quaking, expected every instant to be
discovered.
"Where art thou?" savagely called the man. "Where?"
He ran hither and thither with fiercely muttered imprecations. Now
his footsteps sounded farther off, and now again he ran back and
came softly stealing around among the rocks. Timokles laid his
branded cheek against the gravel, and waited.
The footsteps went, and came, and went again in the dark. Timokles
trembled from head to foot. He did not fear death, but he dreaded
capture and unknown terrors.
The dark form passed by again. A chill went over Timokles, as he
thought he saw a weapon in the man's hand.
The footsteps became inaudible once more. Timokles, waiting a long
time, imagined his foe might have gone. As the lad was about to lift
his head, a hand brushed along the side of his rock, and reached out
into the dark, underneath. Timokles was perfectly quiet. The hand
above him felt down the sides of the rock, waved in the darkness
above the boy, descended and rested an instant on the gravel next
him--but did not touch him. The silent menace of the groping hand
was terrible. Timokles held his breath.
The hand passed on, feeling of other rocks.
"O God of thy people, thou hast hidden me!" cried Timokles in his
heart, as he heard the soft rubbing of his enemy's hand against the
farther rocks.
The sound died away. Timokles lay listening for a long time. Once he
thought he heard a creeping sound, but it was only the wind.
Sleep came upon him at last, and when he woke it was day. He dared
not come out, but lay there through the torrid hours, moistening his
lips now and then with a little water from the small, skin water-
pouch he carried.
The sun plunged beneath the horizon at last, with the usual seeming
suddenness observed in the desert. Night was welcome to Timokles,
and he came forth. The lad's heart was very lonely. He looked toward
the northeast, and remembered his Alexandrian home--his mother, the
brother with whom Timokles' whole life had been bound up, the little
sister Cocce, whom Timokles had last seen playing gleefully with a
toy crocodile, and laughing at its opening mouth.
"O Severus!" whispered Timokles, "what didst thou see, when thou
visitedst Egypt five years ago, that thou shouldest decree such evil
against the Egyptian Christians now?"
Softly Timokles went his way in the dark. He was hungry, yet he
dared eat little of the dried dates he had with him. When would he
find other food?
For a time he looked warily around, but soon his sense of loneliness
overcame his fear, and he watched more for some sign of his four
friends than for an indication of an enemy.
"Perhaps some Christian hath escaped, even as I have," thought
Timokles.
He started.
Outstretched before him lay a figure of a man! Timokles stood
motionless, till he perceived the man be to be asleep. Then the lad
bent over the sleeper to scan his face. But, as Timokles stooped, he
dimly saw, in the relaxed, open palm of the man's hand, a small
stone of the triangular form under which the Egyptians were wont to
worship Osiris, Isis, and Horus. Such are the stones found in the
tombs of the Egyptians.
This was no Christian sleeper that lay at Timokles' feet! The lad
turned and fled into the distance.
Through the desert there wailed a thin, plaintive cry. It was the
voice of a night-wandering jackal.
Timokles was dizzy to faintness, and staggered as he was driven on.
He had been discovered and taken. His life had been spared that he
might henceforth be a slave.
"I bear this for thy sake, O Lord, dear Lord!" murmured the
exhausted lad, as the blows drove him through the pathless desert.
Again came the plaintive cry of the wandering jackal.
"For thy sake!" faintly repeated Timokles.
A few minutes passed, and once more the jackal's inarticulate voice
wailed through the desert, but Timokles had fallen, helpless. A man
sprang forward, and the lash fell again and again on Timokles'
prostrate body, but the boy did not stir.
"Now see how the Christian would die in the desert, and cheat us of
all the work he might do!" grumbled the vexed voice of a dismounted
camel-rider. "He is young. There are many years of work in him!"
"Leave him!" scornfully advised another, who held a torch. "Some
beast will find him."
Nay, but he shall go with me to Carthage," asserted a third, from
the height of his camel's back. "Carthage knoweth what to do with
Christians!"
"Who art thou that thou shouldest own the Christian?" demanded the
first, angrily gazing up at the presumptuous rider. "Did I not find
him?"
The mounted camel-rider laughed, and tossed something toward the
irate speaker. The man caught the object, a ring of gold, containing
a scarabaeus.
"Take it," said the giver to the appeased rival. "The Christian is
mine."
The unconscious Timokles was taken up at a sign from the camel-rider
to one of his servants, and the cavalcade proceeded on its way. As
his camel paced forward, Pentaur, the purchaser, glanced back twice
or thrice.
"Truly," he assured himself with much complacency, as he perceived
Timokles being carried, "I follow the maxim of Ptah-hotep: 'Treat
well thy people, as it behooveth thee; this is the duty of those
whom the gods favor.'"
As Pentaur, for that moment, thought of the dread hour when, after
death, according to Egyptian belief, he should stand before the
judgment-seat of Osiris, the camel-rider felt convinced that he
would have merl which might stand him in good stead in that ordeal.
Little by little, Timokles regained consciousness. He marveled to
find himself carried. He had expected to be killed where he fell.
The many painful welts of the lash's stripes stung him with keen
pain.
"O mother! mother!" Timokles' heart cried silently.
Had she indeed lost all love for him, since she had told him she
wished he had died rather than become a Christian?
"Lord Christ," cried Timokles' breaking heart now, "I have left all
for thee!"
The company pushed on rapidly. At length, after morning with its
heat had come, the party halted, and the slave who had carried
Timokles flung him on the sand, the slave comforting himself that
possibly the evil of the Christian's touch might be warded off by a
symbolic eye of Horus that the pagan wore tied to his arm by a
slender string. Such eyes were often used by Egyptians as amulets
and ornaments.
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