-Hur. He controlled himself
enough to think. Honor and duty bound the Roman to the platform;
but what had he to do with such motives then? The bench was a
thing to run from; while, if he were to die a slave, who would
be the better of the sacrifice? With him living was duty, if not
honor. His life belonged to his people. They arose before him
never more real: he saw them, their arms outstretched; he heard
them imploring him. And he would go to them. He started--stopped.
Alas! a Roman judgment held him in doom. While it endured, escape
would be profitless. In the wide, wide earth there was no place in
which he would be safe from the imperial demand; upon the land none,
nor upon the sea. Whereas he required freedom according to the forms
of law, so only could he abide in Judea and execute the filial
purpose to which he would devote himself: in other land he would
not live. Dear God! How he had waited and watched and prayed for
such a release! And how it had been delayed! But at last he had
seen it in the promise of the tribune. What else the great man's
meaning? And if the benefactor so belated should now be slain! The
dead come not back to redeem the pledges of the living. It should
not be--Arrius should not die. At least, better perish with him
than survive a galley-slave.

Once more Ben-Hur looked around. Upon the roof of the cabin the
battle yet beat; against the sides the hostile vessels yet crushed
and grided. On the benches, the slaves struggled to tear loose from
their chains, and, finding their efforts vain, howled like madmen;
the guards had gone upstairs; discipline was out, panic in. No,
the chief kept his chair, unchanged, calm as ever--except the
gavel, weaponless. Vainly with his clangor he filled the lulls
in the din. Ben-Hur gave him a last look, then broke away--not
in flight, but to seek the tribune.

A very short space lay between him and the stairs of the hatchway
aft. He took it with a leap, and was half-way up the steps--up far
enough to catch a glimpse of the sky blood-red with fire, of the
ships alongside, of the sea covered with ships and wrecks, of the
fight closed in about the pilot's quarter, the assailants many,
the defenders few--when suddenly his foothold was knocked away,
and he pitched backward. The floor, when he reached it, seemed to
be lifting itself and breaking to pieces; then, in a twinkling,
the whole after-part of the hull broke asunder, and, as if it had
all the time been lyi