So narrow the way that they could have reached to each wall at once with outstretched hands. But they seldom did so, for all the bricks were slimy with an ooze that made the flesh creep to the touch. And Darius trod through a plashing mire, cold, fetid, unsunned for many a long year. What monsters lurked in the all-encircling dark? Did not the dread “Scorpion-Men” of the Chaldees’ tales here find dwelling? Were they not near the gates of Ninkigal, “Lady of Torment,” of the Anunnaki, the “Earth-Fiends”? Once Zerubbabel, just ahead of Darius, had stumbled; they heard a splash and clatter of some object escaping into the dark—some vile, light-hating creature that loved this pathway of the dead. Yet there was no time for halting or even for trembling. Above them the rush of the river became a maddening torture. Every heart-beat seemed long, every breath of the death-laden air bought with a pang. And behind them at the mouth of the tunnel was the old man Daniel with Shaphat,—renegade once and hero now,—sacrificing themselves for the fugitives. But how long might such as they hold back Igas-Ramman and his scores? How long before hostile hands would be wresting on that sluice lever and this thoroughfare of the dead become a tomb indeed? Darius knew that Isaiah was counting the brick piers bedded in the casement; but, though he stared into the blackness ahead until his eyes nigh throbbed with the pain, he met only darkness and ever more darkness. Once he cried aloud to Isaiah, “How many piers are yet to pass?” His words seemed to have awakened all the ghosts and ghouls of this foul country. Echo pealed upon echo, his words were multiplied a score of times. Hidden voices flung back his question out of murky deeps. And he thought (for what were not his thoughts at such a moment?) that these same tongues were answering for Isaiah: “Forever! Forever! You must run this course forever!” Onward and ever onward, till senses reeled and ears were filled with a buzzing that dimmed the fearful music of the river. Almost was Darius ready to pray for death, if life were longer to be this. But still Isaiah’s lamp went on before him, and still the Persian followed, his feet obeying his instinct, not his numbing will. The Jews wasted no breath on speech. The journey was seeming interminable, when Isaiah uttered a great cry of relief: “Praised be Jehovah. The last pier is passed; we soon mount upward!” But the words had just crossed his tongue when the three groaned together, “Hark!” And blended with the steady rushing of the Euphrates swelled another rushing, as of water, splashing and swirling rapidly in the tunnel, but far behind. “They have opened the sluice at last,” came from Isaiah, with awful calmness; “we must haste, and may the Lord still speed us!”