Hundreds, rushing upon the wall, though a goodly distance from the
point at which the strange man had mounted, climbed it and beat off
the sentries.
And the foremost who reached the top saw the Roman Tower directly
opposite Seraiah shudder suddenly and sink in a roaring cloud of dust
upon itself to the earth.
Instantly the maniac below broke the tense silence with a scream that
was heard in the paralyzed Roman camp: "It is He, the Deliverer! Come!"
Of the thousands of Jews that heard the madman's cry, every heart
credited it. Hundreds melted away suddenly, as if stricken with terror
at what they might see; other hundreds scrambled down from their
places to run purposelessly, crying aimless things to the night over
the city; yet others covered their faces with their arms and fell in
their places, expecting the end of the world; and of the rest, the
less imaginative, the more composed and the more curious, remained on
the walls to see enacted a further miracle. Uproar had broken out
instantly among the four stolid legions of Titus on the Assyrian
bivouac. Lights flashed out everywhere; great running to and fro could
be distinguished; rapid trumpet-calls and the prolonged roll of drums
from company quarters to quarters were echoed back from Antonia and
from Hippicus. The startled shouts of commanders; the nervous dropping
of arms; the sharp excited response to roll-call; the sound of
sentries challenging, the curt response by countersign, showed
everywhere irregularities and the symptoms of panic in the immovable
ranks of Titus.
Seraiah meanwhile had disappeared from his place as mysteriously as he
had come.
Many of the Jews who remained on the wall believed that he had passed
into the Roman camp and was troubling it. The fall of the tower, and
the confusion it had wrought in the Roman camp, never occurred to them
to have been fortuitous incidents with which Seraiah had nothing to
do. Of the thousands that witnessed that miracle, most of them were
convinced that the hour had come.
Meanwhile Jerusalem was roaring with excitement. The city was ready
for a Messiah. Seraiah had arisen at the psychological moment. Earlier
the Jews would have been too critical to accept him readily; later
they would have reviled him for coming too late. Whatever his advent
lacked in thunders, in darkness, voices, and shaking of the earth, had
been passed by his miraculous work against the Romans.
Philadelphus, who had seen the fall of the tower, and had dropped down
from the wall as soon as he had explained it all to himself, came upon
new disorders. Great concourses of awakened Jews were hurrying to the
walls to see what had happened, or to behold the Roman army wiped out
by the Angel of Death as the army of Sennacherib had perished. Others
collected at the end of the Tyropean Bridge and watched the pinnacle
of the Temple for the miracle which should restore the city. But the
burned ruin where the Herodian palace had stood was the center of the
most characteristic frenzy.