The cymbals clashed. The silver trumpets blew. The lines of chanting priests had seized bells to ring in rhythm and fans to send up the clouds of incense. And there was heard the hunting horn of Diana coming down from the fleecy meadows of mid-heaven to pasture her stallions and mares in the ocean deeps—the vestal virgins’ high clear soprano gave back refrain to the chant of the priests—when a blast of wind from the tidal waves of Diana’s stallions and mares champing out to sea, blew through the Temple pillars, sending the clouds of incense and mist back over the worshipers. Onesimus saw Apollos leap from the pillar to the altar stairs; and when the Roman guard would have unleashed the hounds to tear him down, an unseen foot tripped the soldier to his face on the tessellated floor of the Temple, and the hounds were upon the fellow in a savage attack that called the attention of the priests. Taking quick advantage of the diversion and the back-blown cloud of sea mist and incense smoke, Onesimus with a bound followed his Master, who had passed swiftly to the stairs behind the altar, that led both to the vestal virgins’ galleries above and to the famous underground labyrinths of Crete. “Follow me not, beloved! Farewell,” Apollos had turned. “Escape back to the ship with your seaman and his daughter! Take them to Thecla in the caves! Seek me not! Farewell for a little time—” Again the cymbals clashed. Again the silver trumpets blew. Again the bells rang in rhythm to the chant of the priests and refrain of vestals. Again the fans sent back the cloud of incense above the altar. Again was heard Diana’s hunting horn coming down from the fleecy meadows of mid-heaven to pasture her stallions and mares in the ocean deeps; but of Apollos was nought to be seen. “Bah,” said a Roman guard standing near the astounded Bishop of Ephesus, “’twas but a trick of levitation, which all these Eastern magic fellows play. The fellow has lifted himself up by his sandal straps and disappeared through the clouds of smoke, as he did when he was tried before our Emperor Domitian for tearing a boy’s entrails out. Wasn’t I there? Didn’t I see him? Didn’t he defy our Emperor to his face? They could prove nothing against the scoundrel—he wraps himself in his cloak like this”—the guard imitated a man hiding his face in his cape— “I see him plain as I see you, we all see him, the Emperor was about to have him seized and burned as all these Greeks and Jewish sorcerers ought to be burned—and there, as we look, the knave disappears from our very eyes and reappears down in a cave among his followers by the sea, where he takes ship and flees for Asia again. If I’d been Emperor, I’d have had him seized where found and burned on the spot. ’Tis only a trick of levitation—holding the breath, mumbling a hocus-pocus, and up they go—”