A third time the priestess leapt, replying in her own voice, “Health for thy servant who is sick.”  Then came the answer in the second voice—­“I hear you, but I see no sacrifice.”

“What sacrifice would’st thou, O Queen?  A dove?”

“Nay.”

“What then, Queen?”

“One only, the first-born child of a woman.”

As this command, which they supposed to be divine and from above, issued out of the lips of the gashed and bleeding Pythoness, the multitude that hitherto had listened in perfect silence, shouted aloud, while the girl herself, utterly exhausted, fell to the earth swooning.

Now the high priest of El, who was named the Shadid, none other indeed than the husband of her who lay sick, sprang upon the platform and cried:—­

“The goddess has spoken by the mouth of her oracle.  She who is the mother of all demands one life out of the many she has given, that the Lady Baaltis, who is her priestess upon earth, may be recovered of her sickness.  Say, who will lay down a life for the honour of the goddess, and that her regent in this land may be saved alive?”

Now—­for all this scene had been carefully prepared—­a woman stepped forward, wearing the robe of a priestess, who bore in her arms a drugged and sleeping child.

“I, father,” she cried in a shrill, hard voice, though her lips trembled as she spoke.  “Let the goddess take this child, the first-fruit of my body, that our mother the Lady Baaltis may be cured of her sickness, and that I, her daughter, may be blessed by the goddess, and through me, all we who worship her.”  And she held out the little victim towards him.

The Shadid stretched out his arms to take it, but he never did take it, for at that moment appeared upon the platform the tall and bearded figure of Issachar clad in his white robes.

“Hold!” he cried in a loud, clear voice, “and touch not the innocent child.  Spawn of Satan, would you do murder to appease the devils whom you worship?  Well shall they repay you, people of Zimboe.  Oh! mine eyes are open and I see,” he went on, shaking his thin arms above his head in a prophetic frenzy.  “I see the sword of the true God, and it flames above this city of idolaters and abominations.  I see this place of sacrifice, and I tell you that before the moon is young again it shall run red with the blood of you, idol worshippers, and of you, women of the groves.  The heathen is at your gates, ye followers of demons, and my God sends them as He sends the locusts of the north wind to devour you like grass, to sweep you away like the dust of the desert.  Cry then upon El and Baaltis, and let El and Baaltis save you if they can.  Doom is upon you; Azrael, angel of death, writes his name upon your foreheads, every one of you, giving your city to the owls, your bodies to the jackals, and your souls to Satan——­”