At the wharf the maddened animals could not be stopped until they had been circled again and again. But hardly had the wheels ceased to move, when Marsyas leaped to the ground, and, flinging the lines to a slave, put up his hands to Agrippa. "As the first debt to thy manhood and to the alabarch forget not this opportunity to help him! Hear them! They want Jewish blood; Lydia's blood! There is none in Alexandria to stay them! Help, my lord! Beseech Caesar in thy people's behalf, as I beseech thee now! Answer, answer!" "I hear, Marsyas," Agrippa responded, "and by all that I hold sacred, I promise thee Flaccus' end! God help thee! Farewell!" Pausing only for the word, Marsyas turned and ran with frantic speed back into the city. He saw, at every step, that which made his heart chill in his bosom. The tide of the riot had turned, and that which was not already pouring in upon the Nazarenes, was rushing into the Regio Judaeorum. CHAPTER XXXII SANCTUARY The cluster of vagabonds hanging before the alabarch's mansion stayed no longer after the breezes brought the first sound of tumult which announced a rarer sport elsewhere. In a twinkling the Regio Judaeorum was silent and deserted. Except for the gusts of far-off turmoil, the cooing of pigeons in towers, the clashing of palm-leaves, the creak of crazy gates in the wind, the casual calling of Numidian cranes or the crowing of poultry were the only sounds in the quarter--lonesome, nature sounds, signals of a householder's absence. But it seemed as if the Regio Judaeorum listened and waited. After Agrippa's departure, the alabarch came into his presiding-room, without purpose and visibly uneasy. Lydia followed him, and, at a look from her father, came close to his chair and mingled her yellow-brown curls with his white locks. The silence over the quarter had become oppressive and the slightest break would have been no less grateful than distinct, when it seemed that cautious footsteps pattered by without. The two stirred and listened. After a moment, they heard others, very swift and soft, as if many were running by a-tiptoe. There were whispers and rustlings, excited words cried under the breath. The two in the presiding-room looked at each other. Had the vagabonds returned to their place for mischief, outside the alabarch's mansion? Lysimachus stepped to the windows and listened. But Lydia stood still, dreading without understanding that which he might hear. East and west, far and near, sounds were drifting in and passing toward the New Port, sounds as if a multitude hastened in one direction. Above these stealthy, fugitive, whispered noises, there came freshened uproar from pagan Alexandria, swift, high, relentless and carrying like fire on a wind. As they stood thus, perplexed and alarmed, Vasti appeared like a shadow out of the dusk and caught the alabarch's arm.