The work of death went on, the murderers hewing a way for themselves through the crowded aisles. Meanwhile, in the vast gallery, which ran quite round the building, the terrified multitude, mostly women and children, shrieked and wept and prayed, calling aloud on the name of Jesus. A few men tried to climb out through the windows; but this was impossible, and would have been useless, for the mob were waiting outside with firearms to pick off the fugitives. Jack stood where he was; for his own life he did not care the turning of a straw, and his instinct of protection kept him beside the Selferians. He saw all the work of murder going on in the church below. And now the Moslems had reached the altar. Some of them sprang upon it, while others tore the pictures, smashed the woodwork, and broke open anything they thought might contain treasure. There was on the reading-desk a large, beautiful, and very ancient Bible, bound and clasped with silver. With a yell of triumph, a Moslem seized it, tore out the leaves, and flung down the desecrated volume. "Now, Prophet Jesus," he shouted, "save Thine own if Thou canst! Show Thyself stronger than Mahomet!" For one brief moment a wild ecstatic hope sprang up in the heart of John Grayson. He looked up, and half expected the solid roof to open, revealing God's heaven above them, and in it the "sign of the Son of Man." His Christian lips re-echoed the Moslem cry, "Save Thine own! Show Thyself stronger than Mahomet!" "There was no voice, neither any that answered." The silence of the ages--that strange, mysterious, awful silence--was not broken; it lasted, as it lasts still. In the over-wrought brain of John Grayson some chord snapped then. "There is no Christ," he said. "He cannot hear us; He is dead long ago. There is no God; He is nothing but a dream--a dream of happy men, who sit at ease in quiet homes." He did not know that he spoke aloud, but a woman near him heard the words. "How can you say there is no God?" she remonstrated. "It is not true;--but _God has gone mad_!" The next moment a shot from below struck the speaker, and she fell into Jack's very arms. The Turks were firing up into the crowd in the gallery. But that process was by far too slow. Now they were dragging mattrasses, rugs, clothing, light wood work from the adjoining priests' houses, and piling them on and amongst the heaps of dead and dying in the church. Then they carried in great vessels of kerosene, and poured their contents over the whole mass. To this horrible sacrifice they set fire in several places. The flames arose; the crowd in the gallery saw the awful fate prepared for them, and one wild, wailing shriek of terror drowned every other noise.