Crash! Before the battering beam the door was splintering. “We will never leave you!” came from the young men; but Daniel answered with a gesture of command. It was he who was prince, not Darius. “Go! I command it!” cried he, almost arrogantly; “or your own blood and God’s wrath are on you.” The tone, the majesty of his presence, these made his words as law. Darius’s heart cried out in revolt, but he bowed his head and obeyed. They thrust open the inner entrance, and a dank stairway wound down into the darkness. They kept Zerubbabel’s lamp. Isaiah left his for Daniel. No instant for long partings. Isaiah strode over beside Shaphat—“You are a true son of Judah,” said he simply. But Shaphat only bowed his head. “The One God spare you, my father!” came from Darius’s trembling lips, though the fear was not for self. “And you, my son”—like words between Daniel and Isaiah, and that was all. They saw the civil-minister standing, sword in hand, across the narrow entrance, hoary, but then, if never before, terrible. And at his side, steadfast and unflinching, was Shaphat, the one-time recreant. A last crash—the beam, swung by twenty arms, beat the outer door inward. It toppled on the bricks. Half a score of torches tossed together and flickered on bared blades and lance-heads. A great yell of triumph, followed by a howl of surprise. A last vision was branded on Darius’s memory. He heard the clash of steel above him, the crash of conflict. Then the stairway turned, cutting off sight and sound, and all about was blackness. [Illustration: BELSHAZZAR PURSUES IN VAIN] CHAPTER XXI The last glimmer of light from above had vanished. The darkness, deeper than that of deepest night, crowded about the three. The little lamp in Isaiah’s hand shed only a tiny gleam that made the shadows behind and before tenfold the blacker. As they descended the air grew foul, so that the lamp sank to a poor spark, and all were gasping. It was like passing alive into Sheol, and threading the avenues of the dead. No word, save when Isaiah halted an instant and pointed to a ponderous bronze lever set in the brickwork. “This controls the sluice,” quoth he, in a whisper; “we pass beneath the river soon.” Darius had caught the lever in a giant clutch, and twisted it in its socket; it would play less easily now, and delay the flooding. Then the air around them grew yet more foul, so that they were fain to bow their heads and haste onward, catching the purer breaths that hung along the slimy bricks at their feet. And above him, and all around, the Persian heard what sounded as a rushing wind—yet not a wind, for it sang and sang, without gust or crooning, one ceaseless, monotonous murmur, and he knew that it was the great Euphrates speeding above his head. No longer any stairs—their path led right onward.