But to find the Apostle Apollos was no easy matter in this dim light clouded with incense and mist blowing in from the sea. The sailor went clambering the stone stairs to the upper galleries, while Onesimus picked his way past the prostrate worshipers towards the altar, where Apollos would be likely to appear if he dared to try to speak after the singing. Then, he caught sight of the venerable Apostle. There was no mistaking that aged and beautiful figure—dressed in pure white, with cork sandals, with hair and beard as white as washed silk, and brow as lineless and radiant as the snowy mountain peaks—standing calmly against one of the Temple pillars to the side of the high smoke-clouded altar; but when Onesimus would have pressed forward to him, he found the way through the last cloister stopped by a half-dozen bloodhounds tied to the Temple columns to prevent the rescue of Apollos by his followers; and one glance told Onesimus that Apollos stood so motionless because he was bound by ankles and wrists to the upright column. “Bah,” said a bearded Roman guard clad in armor to his eyes, who was standing behind the leashed bloodhounds, “he saved others; let him save himself! He raised others from death by his magic tricks. Now he’s dead man himself under this wolf pack if he budge a hair, where he stands. Give me the leashes. I’ll let the line out to close on him, when the singing stops,” and suiting the act to the word, the Roman took the leash ends of the bloodhounds and gave them line to creep up within touch of the bound man if he but stirred a hair’s breadth. Onesimus moved up cautiously behind the Roman. He had the short dirk in his belt that all Greeks wore, and from the gold cord round his neck hung the usual traveler’s sword. He was of two minds—whether to trip the Roman guard and snatch the bloodhounds’ leash, or jump forward in the gathering cloud of mist and incense, cut Apollos’ bonds and himself divert the attack of the bloodhounds—when he noticed something with his keen mountaineer eye that the Roman guard did not see. Apollos’ wrists and ankles had been bound to the pillar by deer thongs. The hounds had sniffed forward and were licking at the deer thongs; and through the dark, Apollos’ gleaming black eyes were boring to Onesimus’ very soul with unspoken message. They forbade word or move for his rescue. They seemed to redirect the younger man’s glance back to the bloodhounds. The blood hounds were licking the deer thongs and the raw hide was stretching as it always stretches when wet, and Apollos had let it slip down over his hands from his wrists to the floor, where the dogs, in growling and snarling to snatch at it, had bitten through the thongs binding his ankles. The Apostle did not move by a hair’s breadth. His brow was radiant with a glowing light and his hair shone like fuller’s white.