plenty in the city. But they did not get far; they were met
by a temple-servant flying towards the great hall, who warned them
to return thither at once: the Imperial soldiers had discovered the
entrance to the aqueduct and posted sentries in the timber-yard. They
turned and followed him with loud lamentations, and hardly had they
got back into the temple when a new terror came upon them: the iron
battering-ram came with a first heavy shock, thundering against the
southern wall.

The Imperial troops were in fact masters of the secret passage; and they
had begun the attack on the Serapeum in earnest. It was serious--but all
was not yet lost; and in this fateful hour Olympius and Memnon proved
their mettle. The high-priest commanded that the great stone trap-doors
should be dropped into their places, and that the bridges across the
gulfs, in the underground rooms reserved for the initiated, should be
destroyed; and this there was yet time to do, for the soldiers had not
yet ventured into those mysterious corridors, where there could not fail
to be traps and men in ambush. Memnon meanwhile had hurried to the spot
where the battering-ram had by this time dealt a second blow, shouting
as he went to every man who was not a coward to follow him.

Karnis, Orpheus and the rest of the high-priest's guests obeyed his call
and gathered round him; he commanded that everything portable should be
brought out of the temple to be built into a barricade behind the point
of attack, and that neither the most precious and beautiful statues, nor
the brass and marble stelae and altar-slabs should be spared. Screened
by this barricade, and armed with lances and bows--of which there were
plenty at hand--he proposed, when the breach was made, to check the
further advance of the foe.

He was not ill-pleased that the only way of escape was cut off; and
as soon as he had seen the statues dragged from their pedestals, the
altar-stones removed from the sacred places they had filled for half
a century, benches and jars piled together and a stone barricade thus
fairly advanced towards completion, he drafted off a small force for the
defences on the roof. There was no escape now; and many a one who,
to the very last, had hoped to find himself free, mounted the stairs
reluctantly, because he would there be more immediately in the face of
the foe than when defending the breach.

Olympius distributed weapons, and went from one to another, speaking
word