Part 5

“After they had rested and been well fed, Phrynis gave orders for soldiers and sailors to prepare for the great machine which would soon be at our gates, by building an _inner_ wall behind that which encircled the city. To do this it was necessary to pull down a great many houses, and, among them, my own beautiful home, and even the little temple of Phœbus Apollo. Before this was done, we held a solemn service within the temple, and again Chares renewed his vow to make the statue, and begged forgiveness of the god for having to destroy one of his dwelling-places. I thought my heart would break when instead of the white house I knew and loved, with its marble columns, its flights of marble steps leading to a garden beautiful as a dream, I saw waste land, scattered over with stones and rubbish, all the roses trampled under foot, and desolation far and wide about the new wall that was rising. But we were fighting for our lives, and there was no time either for sorrow or regret.

“Meanwhile, the war machine which Demetrius was preparing for our destruction was nearly completed. It was being built upon that part of the island already in possession of the enemy, and marvellous tales about its size and deadliness were daily brought into the city by those of our soldiers who had seen it. The name they said that was given to the new engine was _helepolis_, which means _destroyer of cities_. As time went on, I could think of nothing but this awful monster, which I was quite sure _might_ be overcome if only one could think of the means.

“By now, so many were the plans I had made of our city that there was scarcely a yard of it I did not know, and one day I said to Chares,

“‘If only we could discover to which point of the walls this _helepolis_ will be brought when it begins its attack upon us.’

“Chares glanced at me quickly.

“‘Why?’ he asked.

“‘Because, if only I knew that, I should also know at once what to do.’

“I spoke with great confidence, for I was really quite sure of the plan I had in mind—though _why_ I was so sure, I could not tell.

“Chares looked at me again, and then as though he had dismissed the subject, said, ‘To-day I will take you where you may work at your maps and plans in greater quiet.’

“Since the destruction of our house, another in the heart of the town had become our General Headquarters, and here everything was crowded and rough and noisy with the incessant tramping of soldiers about its door, and there was no spot in it that I could call my own. So I was glad that Chares had found a place for me, and, when after several hours’ absence, he returned, I willingly followed him to a house on the hill-side beyond the walls. We passed through a quiet garden and presently entered a room, where, to my surprise, I saw our general Phrynis, several other officers, and one or two men I knew to be engineers. These men smiled in an amused way when I came in, and I heard one whisper to another,

“‘Have we been brought here to consult with a child?’

“But Chares drew a stool up to the table in the window space, and told me to open the ground plans of the city and the maps I had brought, and when the men crowded round to see, I noticed that their faces altered as they passed my drawings from one to the other in silence.

“At last Phrynis, who was very grave, spoke touching a point on one of my plans of the town.

“‘Cleon,’ he said, ‘if the new war engine should be posted at _this_ part of the wall, what would you do supposing you had everything you wanted at your command?’

“Then I began to explain very fast and confidently—(for it all seemed quite simple to me)—just the way in which I would lay a mine under that part of the wall, and just the spot where the engine would sink, if certain directions were carried out.

“The men glanced at one another again in silence, and all at once Phrynis rose. ‘The work begins to-night,’ I heard him say. ‘There is no time to lose. Back to the city.’

“The soldiers clattered out, leaving me alone with Chares, who took my hand and whispered hurriedly, ‘It is right you should know—though you understand that no word must cross your lips. It is _there_, opposite the place on the plan pointed out to you by Phrynis, that the machine will be planted. This we have learnt through our spies. So important is the secret that Phrynis would hold no meeting in the city itself, and therefore have we come to this quiet place. You are to follow and direct the work as soon as it grows dark.’

“Can you at all imagine what a thrilling night that was for me when by the light of torches I saw hundreds of men working under my direction? At the time I was too preoccupied to wonder how it happened that I knew exactly what to say and do. It seemed to me every now and then that I had done and said the same things many times before and therefore need not hesitate, nor even think. It was as though something was happening in my sleep, quite easily and naturally.

“When the first streak of dawn was in the sky, the work was finished, and, all at once worn out, I was almost carried by Chares to our barracks, where I slept for hours. All the rest of that day we waited in suspense, for, though we knew the war machine was ready, we were not sure when the attack would be made.

“It came the next morning. Shouts and battle cries from the besiegers, and terrific blasts from their trumpets were followed by flights of arrows, as the huge monster moving towards us over the waste ground beyond the walls drew near.

“I watched it, with my heart thumping. The ground already in the possession of Demetrius had been levelled so that the ‘destroyer of cities’ might move more easily, and I knew just where the mine would strike it—if only we had not been deceived about the track over which it was to pass!

“But suppose Demetrius had changed his plans? Or that the spies were wrong? Suppose the machine should pass a shade too far on the right or the left of the mine. It would then arrive safely beneath the wall, and we should all, I thought, be destroyed. For never had I, or any of the Rhodians, imagined such a monster as this!

“It was like a square castle upon wheels. Thousands of soldiers pushed it forward, but their toil was made easier by the wheels or castors which turned every way under the great frame supporting it. Nine storeys I counted, with staircases leading up and down from one to the other. The whole monster, half animal, half tower (as it looked), was covered with iron plates like the scales on a serpent. In the front of each storey there were little windows with leather curtains which moved up and down, covering them—meant, no doubt, to break the force of the stones and darts we should hurl in our defence. On it came, towering above our walls, its windows like the awful eyes of some dragon, glaring at its victims. As yet it had not begun to spit forth stones and darts and flaming torches, but evidently it was only waiting for this till it should be closer at hand, and more deadly in effect.

“While I held my breath in terror lest anything in my plan should go wrong, I yet noticed with pride the spirit of our men who shouted their battle-cries, and shot streams of arrows in return for those sent over by the enemy foot-soldiers. Nearer and nearer came the monster—my heart stood still—and then, just as I was feeling I must faint or scream, with such a crash as to make the whole city totter, it suddenly disappeared into the ground. _Almost_ disappeared, for only the topmost and smallest storey was visible!

“At first it seemed as though the whole world had been suddenly struck dumb. Not a sound was heard from either side, besiegers or besieged. Then, after that moment of deathly silence a cry went up from the city that was like nothing I ever heard. The next moment I felt the arms of Chares catching me before I fell to the ground.

“The excitement and suspense had been too much for me, and when I opened my eyes I was lying in our barracks, and Phrynis, Chares, and crowds of other people, were waiting to embrace me, and call me the saviour of our city.

“For the war had ended while I was unconscious. Phrynis afterwards told me that messengers from many parts of Greece had for some days past arrived at the camp of Demetrius, urging him to make peace with us on our own terms. But he added: ‘It was the failure of his last and greatest engine rather than the entreaties of his friends that decided him to struggle no more for victory. The victory is ours, and we owe it to you, Cleon, a child in years, but a man in genius.’

“Such praise as this might well have filled me with foolish pride and vanity if I had not been quite sure that somehow or other I had been _helped_. I had not thought out the plan at all. It had come ready-made into my mind. But when I tried to explain this to Phrynis, he merely laughed at what he called my modesty, and I could see he did not understand. It was only Chares who understood, and made _me_ understand also. But that came much later on, as I presently will tell you.

“Meanwhile everyone was mad with joy that the siege which had lasted a whole year, and was the most wonderful and celebrated that had ever happened, was over. Trumpets blew, bells rang, the city adorned with flowers and crowded with rejoicing people gave itself up to festivity.

“But in all this triumph I had no share, for I was too ill and unhappy to take any part in the victory rejoicings. Not only had excitement, lack of food, and the long strain of the war injured my health but sad news soon came to me from Athens, where my mother and sister were living.

“Chares had taken me to live with him at his house in Lindus, a town in the island not far from Rhodes, and there I heard that my mother was dead. She was ill when tidings of my father’s death reached her, and from the shock and grief of this news she never recovered. So the war had robbed me of both my parents and separated me from my sister, to whom some friend in Athens had offered a home.

“You may imagine that I was a very unhappy little boy in those first days of victory, and it was not for a long time that I could bring myself to take joy in the great work that lay before my friend, Chares.

“Almost as soon as the fighting ceased, he began the statue promised to the god, Phœbus Apollo—that statue which became one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

“To explain how such a statue as this, requiring enormous sums of money and an enormous quantity of metal became possible to make, I must tell you what happened after we made peace.

“Demetrius was a generous enemy, and just before withdrawing all his troops from the island, he actually sent us all the very war machines he had built for our destruction, saying that he could not sufficiently admire our gallant defence! Now the materials of which these engines were made were immensely valuable, and the citizens agreed to sell them and to put the great sum of money they received for them at the disposal of Chares.

“So Chares began his work, and for twelve long years I saw the famous statue of the Sun-God growing under his hands in the open-air workshop he used for his task.

“By the end of those twelve years I was, of course, a grown man. Many things had happened. I had worked hard and was now a very famous engineer, well known in all the islands of the Mediterranean. I had caused my old home to be rebuilt, as well as the little temple to Phœbus Apollo. I was married, and had little children of my own, who played in the garden I had known as a boy. It was lovely as ever now, for in that warm climate plants grow quickly, and once more it was full of roses and fragrant with the scent of lemon groves.

“All this you must understand before I tell you what happened on the evening of the day the great statue was finished.

“That evening Chares was my guest, and the next day was to be one of special rejoicing. For not only was there high festival in the city—because, at last, the statue was to be set up at the entrance to the harbour—but it was also the marriage day of Chares and my sister, Penelope, who had now come to live with us. By this time she was a beautiful maiden of eighteen, and I was only too happy to think she was to be the wife of my friend.

“Long after all the house was quiet that night, and everyone else slept, Chares and I sat on the terrace that overlooked the sea, and talked of the future and the past.

“‘Cleon,’ said Chares, after a silence, ‘have you no wonder about the part you played in the siege, you being then but a child?’

“‘I have wondered, indeed, and I still wonder,’ I answered. ‘Often I have seemed to be just about to understand the miracle of my knowledge when I planned the overthrow of the war engine And a moment later I am again confused.’

“‘Come!’ exclaimed Chares, after a silence. ‘Let us go to the temple in the grove. It was there I made my vow to Phœbus Apollo, and it is just that there I should return thanks on this, the happiest evening of my life, when my work is at last finished.’

“We rose and walked across the moon-silvered lawn towards the little temple gleaming white amidst the lemon trees.

“I can never forget the beauty of the night. We could hear the gently murmuring sea where it lay under the moon, calm as a shining lake.

“The shadows of the trees lay motionless on the grass, and made a lovely tracery upon the temple roof, and the air was full of sweet scents. Once again, as when I was a boy, I picked a handful of roses, and laid them on the altar at the feet of the statue, which, carefully preserved during the war, stood once more on its marble pedestal. We knelt before it, and Chares offered a strange prayer. From his words I knew that he was praying to a _Spirit_, and that the statue before which he prayed only represented one little idea (which was all we poor human beings might understand) of some God greater than we could know, or than any statue could suggest. His prayer ended, he turned to me, and I saw him take something from the folds of his tunic. The moonlight glittered on what I now saw to be a crystal ball which he put into my hands.

“‘Look steadfastly within it,’ he said gravely. ‘Here, in this temple, it may be, you will understand.’

“Full of wonder, I began to gaze into the depths of the crystal, for the moonlight was so bright that everything reflected in the ball was plainly visible. At first I saw nothing but a little upside-down picture of the temple itself, and the overhanging trees, but after a moment this reflection melted away, and other scenes appeared, dissolving and reappearing so rapidly that I could catch but a glimpse of each. Then, all at once, a clear steady vision, upon which I looked intently, took the place of these shifting ones. There were pyramids in this scene, visible from the open door of a vast hall with sculptured figures at the entrance. And in that hall I saw _myself_! But I was not clothed in my ordinary linen tunic. I wore a strange robe, and a still stranger head-dress, and I was bending over something that looked like a plan of a building. For a moment I was puzzled, and altogether confused—till in a flash I _remembered_, and as the truth came to me, I gave a startled cry.

“Chares was looking at me with a smile as I raised my head.

“‘I was Sheshà—chief engineer and architect among the priests of Egypt, long ages ago,’ I exclaimed.

“‘Do you understand now why you were able to plan that mine, and save our city?’ asked Chares quietly. ‘It was knowledge you had already gained in another far-away life, though you were ignorant whence it came, and why the work was easy to you.’

“I was struck dumb with wonder, for not only did I remember my life as Sheshà, but fragments of many other lives since then began to come back to me, some vividly, some only as a sort of confused dream.

“But Chares put his hand on my arm and led me out of the temple.

“‘Leave your memories now, and let us go in and sleep,’ he said. ‘See, a new day has begun—the greatest day for me in this my present life.’ He pointed to the east, where the first grey streaks of dawn were visible, and I followed him into the house. So for the first time I _remembered_. There have been many, many lives since, and in some of them I again forgot all that had gone before. But, once more now, the old man you know as ‘Mr. Sheston,’ remembers again, otherwise he would not be telling you this story—which is nearly at an end.

“When the sun rose we were awakened by the sound of trumpets, the clashing of bells and the shouting of the workmen who were dragging the huge brazen figure on its wheeled platform from the workshop. Later on in the morning, came the procession through the city, where Chares led my beautiful sister up to the great temple. Children strewed flowers before them as they passed through shouting multitudes, praising Chares and showering blessings upon him and his newly made bride.

“By sundown, hundreds of workmen working with a will had set up the statue, on a pedestal at the entrance to the harbour, and now crowds of the citizens took ship, to view it from the sea.

“In a gorgeously painted barge, all my household, with Chares and my sister in the places of honour, floated out of the harbour, and we turned to gaze at the wonderful figure. It flashed and glittered in the light of the setting sun, as though the god thus by a gracious sign accepted the gift. A mighty and beautiful figure it was, towering against the sky; a giant in bronze, proud, stately and awe-inspiring—a fit memorial of the famous siege of Rhodes. Well might it become, as it did, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

“‘It will last for ever—like the Pyramids!’ I whispered to Chares as I took his hand.

“Little did any of us know that it would last little longer than one lifetime. In eighty years that marvellous statue was a heap of ruins. A great earthquake, which shook Rhodes to its foundations, shattered it also to fragments, and only a memory of one of the most famous statues in the world remained. And even that memory faded and grew false, for legends gathered about the celebrated ‘Colossus of Rhodes,’ and men actually believed that it had stood astride the harbour and that ships in full sail passed under its huge body as under an arch.

“This could only have been thought possible by men who had forgotten, or never knew, the beautiful Greek sculpture. Never could a Greek artist have made a figure ugly and grotesque as this would have been, if later descriptions had been true. And I who saw the statue daily, smile when, sometimes even in these days, I read such a description of it in books of history. Chares was a true artist, and his simple, noble statue was worthy of him, and worthy of its fame as one of the World’s Seven Wonders.”

* * * * *

Mr. Sheston’s voice died away, and at this moment Martha came in with a lamp; the room was all at once lighted up, and the old man glanced at the clock.

“I must take you back at once,” he said. “Aunt Hester will be getting anxious.”

He rose quickly, and Rachel knew without being told that she mustn’t ask him any questions. He had become the kind, ordinary old gentleman he seemed to most people—not at all the same person who in the firelight had looked so mysterious and had told her the whole long story to which she had just listened, as though he were reading it from a book!

As she lay in bed that night, Rachel’s mind was full of the great statue and the great siege, and in imagination she saw the sun-god proudly guarding the harbour of “Cleon’s” brave island.

“I _do_ wish there hadn’t been an earthquake,” was her waking reflection.

FOURTH WONDER

Lessons always began for Rachel with a chapter in the Bible which she read to Miss Moore. She was allowed to choose her own chapter, and one morning, as she opened her Bible at random, the word _Ephesus_ struck her. She wondered why this name immediately reminded her of Mr. Sheston and the story of Rhodes, for at first they seemed to have nothing to do with one another. Then she remembered that on the map—(why it was actually _seven_ days ago since he had shown her that map)—she had seen the town _Ephesus_ marked on the coast of Asia Minor.

“Shall I read this? It’s the nineteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles,” she asked suddenly, addressing her governess.

“Very well,” agreed Miss Moore.

So Rachel began to read how St. Paul, having come to Ephesus to preach Christianity, had roused the anger of a certain silversmith, Demetrius by name, who “made silver shrines for Diana.” This man, as it appeared from the story, was greatly afraid of losing his trade, because so many people were becoming Christians that no one, he thought, would care any more for the silver shrines. He therefore tried to stir up the citizens against St. Paul and his teaching, by calling together a great crowd of people, to whom he declared that all the silversmiths and workmen would suffer through this new religion of Christianity. “_So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at naught_,” he said, “_but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth_.”

Rachel read this with interest, for she had actually _seen_ some of the temples built thousands of years ago, in honour of certain gods, and she guessed that the temple for a goddess, “whom all Asia and the world worshippeth” must have been particularly magnificent. She went on to the next verse, which showed that Demetrius had succeeded in rousing the people to defend their old worship: “_And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, ‘Great is Diana of the Ephesians.’ And the whole city was filled with confusion ... some therefore cried one thing and some another: for the assembly was confused, and the more part knew not wherefore they were come together._”

Then the story went on to relate how a man called Alexander tried to speak to the clamouring people, and could not make himself heard for the noise, for “_all with one voice about the space of two hours cried out ‘Great is Diana of the Ephesians.’_”

Thanks to Mr. Sheston’s story of Rhodes, and thanks also to her own strange magical journeys, Rachel had some sort of picture in her mind of the scene described in the Bible.

Ephesus was not so very far from Rhodes, and it was on the coast. There must then, have been a deep blue sky above that temple round which the people shouted “_Great is Diana of the Ephesians_,” and dazzling sunshine, and a glimpse of wonderful blue sea!

Before Rachel had finished the chapter she had made up her mind to ask Mr. Sheston about Diana of the Ephesians. She liked the name very much, and it certainly sounded as though something interesting—perhaps _exciting_ might be connected with it. Suppose it should even lead to an “adventure”? She scarcely dared to hope for this, but all the same there _was_ a little hope at the back of her mind.

Anyhow, there was something, though of a different nature, to look forward to this very afternoon, for a little girl was coming to tea.

“She’s the daughter of an artist I happened to meet the other day,” Aunt Hester had explained at breakfast time. “He turned out to be a friend of your father’s, and, when he heard you were here, he said he would like his little girl to meet you, so I invited her to come to-day.”

“What is her name?” had been Rachel’s first question.

“I don’t know. I forgot to ask. But she’s about your age. She’s coming early, so you needn’t do any lessons this afternoon.”