In the hideous uproar that ensued, events followed swiftly. Vasti and her tall torch, in fearful fellowship, shrilled and spun on the rock in a frenzy of heathen triumph. Marsyas, for the instant stunned and scorched, flung his arm over his face, to shut out the horror. But the Jews, the instant the ram was dropped, realizing that their citadel was hopeless with breaches in its gate, and seeing a respite in the riot's attention upon Lydia, broke from the sanctuary and poured like a sea in flight into the open. The miraculous intervention of the bayadere gave them the opportunity to save themselves. But when Marsyas came to himself and sprang to take up Lydia, the inundation of fleeing Jews had swept over the reader's stone behind him, and Lydia was gone! CHAPTER XXXIV CAPTIVES OF THE MIGHTY The second night after the riot about the Synagogue, one of Flaccus' sentries, posted about the small cramped portion of the Regio Judaeorum, into which the forty thousand Jews had been driven, brought his spear at guard and called "Halt!" But the object approaching spun on toward him noiselessly, passed the lines, and disappeared up the dark, sandy roadway, into the night on the beleaguered quarter. "Ha, ha! Ho, ho!" roared the next post, who had heard his challenge, "challenging sand-columns, Sergius? Flaccus should know of thy thoroughness!" The discomfited sentry muttered and shouldered his weapon. But the column of sand disintegrated before a hovel, and became a snaky woman-shape that disappeared into the dark door of the house. Within, she stumbled over prostrate bodies, sleeping on the earthen floor, and, muttering in Hindu against the darkness, stopped finally. "Master!" she called softly, in her native tongue. There was instant reply. "Thou, Vasti! The Lord God be praised! What news?" The woman felt her way to the voice, and, encountering the alabarch's outstretched hands, began at once, in a whisper: "I have come, but not to abide," she said. "The Nazarenes took Lydia, and fled with her unto Judea!" "Unto Judea! Away from me?" the alabarch said piteously. "Nay, but Egypt hath risen against her. The Roman hath put forth all his soldiery to look for her. If she remained in Alexandria she would surely die!" The alabarch moaned. The last of his fortitude had gone with Lydia, and helpless, disgraced and old, he was beginning to surrender. The bayadere put her hands on him. "Be of hope," she insisted, "for the white brother departed at sunset to seek for her, and to get protection from the Herod!" "Judea!" the alabarch repeated miserably. "There she entereth into equal danger, for there it is death to be a Nazarene!"