The following morning however had hardly dawned, before a fresh danger revealed itself. Disappointed on the previous day in their malicious designs, more than forty of the Jews bound themselves by a solemn vow that they would neither eat nor drink till they had put the Apostle to death. Accordingly they went to the chief members of the Sanhedrin, and proposed that they should present themselves before the commandant and request him to allow St Paul to be brought down and placed a second time before them, in order that they might resume the enquiry so tumultuously interrupted, and they, on their part, undertook that he should not reach the council-chamber alive, for they would murder him on his way down from the fortress. But their design in some way reached the ears of the Apostle’s nephew[1090], who was now present in Jerusalem, and he no sooner heard of the danger which threatened his uncle, than he obtained admittance into the barracks, and imparted to him the intelligence. Thereupon St Paul called one of the centurions, and requested him to take the young man to Claudius Lysias, for he had something to tell him. The officer complied, and conducting him to the commandant told him of St Paul’s message. Claudius Lysias received the young man kindly, and leading him cautiously aside enquired what he wished to say. The other thereupon acquainted him with the plot that had been laid, and was dismissed with strict injunctions not to divulge the fact that he had given this information. Thus assured of the danger that threatened his prisoner, and knowing that he was responsible for his safety as a Roman citizen, Lysias resolved to send him away that very night under a strong escort to Cæsarea, and there leave him in the hands of the governor Felix. Summoning therefore two of the centurions, he gave orders that 200 of the legionary soldiers, with 70 cavalry and 200 spearmen[1091], should be in readiness to proceed thither by nine[1092] in the evening. In the meantime he wrote to the governor a dispatch, giving a fair and clear account of the case, save in the statement that he had rescued St Paul in the first instance because he had discovered he was a Roman citizen, and in the suppression of all allusion to his intention to scourge him (Acts xxiii. 26–30).