Ben-Hur

by Carol Wallace

  But the worst moment for the slaves was still to come. Ben-Hur’s eyes followed the tribune as he retreated to his platform, where his helmet and armor lay ready. A soldier came to the steps below and held out a large key; Arrius saw the key and nodded. The soldier walked forward between the ranks of slaves behind Ben-Hur and began shackling them. The chains clanked and the key made a distinctive click as each heavy circle of iron was made fast around an ankle. Ben-Hur tried not to count as the soldier came nearer and nearer: two clicks for each oarsman, three on each side of the aisle, ten rows from bow to stern. He stared at Arrius, buckling on his sword belt, loosening the sword in its sheath.

  In that moment Ben-Hur was glad of his oar. He felt the grain of the oak, worn smooth by his hands in the short month since the ship had been launched. As he pulled the long shaft of wood through the water, pressed the handle down, and lifted it free, he thought about the lead weight in its core and how it offset the length of the shaft. There was a moment in each cycle of movements when the long cylinder was perfectly balanced. Ben-Hur focused on this, trying to see, in his mind’s eye, the instant when the oar hung weightless in the oarlock, blade parallel to the water, before he turned his wrists and dipped it and pulled. It was a movement he had made so often that he was rarely conscious of it, but on that night, with the incense of the altar swirling through the cabin, the clatter of weapons being carried to the deck, the ever-nearing clank of the fetters, he tried to think only about his oar.

  A model of a first-century seagoing crane used to pull enemy ships out of the water

  He tried not to hope. Arrius had been careless, talking to him. As a commander he should not have singled out a mere slave. As a human he should not have mentioned the future to a man who could be chained to a bench, with no hope of escape. Ben-Hur felt the anger surging in him and a bitterness that was familiar from his first days as a galley slave. He thought he had mastered them.

  Against his will, he glanced again at the tribune, who lay now on his couch with his eyes closed. The soldier with the key was beside Ben-Hur when Arrius rolled upright and made a sign. The soldier moved away, leaving the chains and fetters lying on the boards next to the bench.

  Nothing had changed. Yet he was not chained. Ben-Hur rowed on, wrestling his long spar of oak through the dark, salty sea and trying not to feel hope. He was still one of 120 slaves laboring to propel a fragile ship into battle against a foe he couldn’t identify or imagine. On deck men were sharpening their daggers and the barbed heads of spears. One shouted as a jar of oil tilted, threatening to spill. Arrius huddled into his cloak a few feet away, resting while he could, but every other man was alert and apprehensive. All the same, Ben-Hur felt himself a new man. The Roman tribune had singled him out and acknowledged him as an individual. Surely the God of his fathers was smiling on him now.

  But as the hours passed, Ben-Hur’s sense of good fortune diminished. The galley slaves were never more of an asset to the Romans than in battle, when the ability to maneuver a ship with precision and speed could turn the tide of the fighting. Yet at those moments, they had more incentive than ever to try to escape. The long months of routine labor might crush all initiative in them, but when they were exposed to mortal danger, animal instinct took over and they would take any risk to survive. Enslaved by Rome, they were Rome’s enemies as surely as the antagonists bearing down on them—who might even be their compatriots. For slaves and masters alike, battle threatened the balance of power. Thus the chains. And as the preparations continued, every man’s sense of danger grew. The bull-hide armor was hung over the side of the ship, but what protection would it offer if the hull was rammed? Buckets of water were stationed near oil tanks and fireballs; netting was stretched over the deck. The marines had their shields and breastplates and helmets. Yet the enemy was similarly prepared. And the greatest danger—one never faced by soldiers on land—lay in the water all around them, the enemy of pirates and Romans alike.

  A prop sword from the 1959 MGM film

  The slaves, both the rowers and the relief crew, were crowded below deck, surrounded by guards, wearing only their tattered loincloths and their chains. The ship suddenly rolled, and there was shouting on deck that quickly died away. Ben-Hur thought he heard a new, faint sound—maybe the rigging of another galley or the splash of its oars nearby. The Astraea had been the only ship on the sea when Arrius called him on deck, but now it seemed she had joined a fleet. As tribune, Arrius would be the commander in chief, Ben-Hur knew, and the ship would fly the purple pennant of his command. That made it a prominent target.

  At a signal from the deck, the rowers halted the galley, then resumed rowing slowly. The slow pace and the silence from above seemed like a warning; every man tensed his muscles. Even the ship seemed to hold its breath.

  Suddenly trumpets rang out above with a bold, commanding chord. The hortator responded by hammering on his sounding board, and the rowers reached forward. They dipped their oars deeply and pulled with all their force. The galley leapt forward so fast that everyone standing staggered. Before they had regained their balance, a chorus of trumpets sounded from behind the rowers, but it was muffled and mixed with what might be a clamor of voices.

  One more stroke; then a mighty blow hit the ship. Men fell, scrabbling over each other to rise, but the slaves on the benches gripped their oars and strained to keep moving the ship forward. There was a tremendous groan, scraping, an infinitely long moment when every man heaved on his oar till it bent; finally the galley shot forward again faster than ever, leaving behind it an inhuman chorus of screams.

  Terror, agony, wood grinding on wood, metal meeting flesh, limbs torn apart, a hellish confusion of sound and image beyond the hull of the ship—but inside it, nothing to see besides the orderly ranks of slaves pulling their oars and their replacements standing at the ready. Yet the men were aghast. Eyes rolled; brows furrowed. The death and destruction just dealt by Astraea might be invisible to them, but it was still very real. Worse, at any moment, they might suffer likewise. Outside more shouting, more trumpets; Ben-Hur felt pounding and rumbling beneath the keel. Something broke. Something jagged scraped the whole length of the hull. A long, bubbling howl rose and rose, then stopped abruptly with a thump. Every man aboard envisioned a skull meeting the ship’s rudder.

  In that instant the galley was free, moving swiftly again, and joyful shouts rose from the deck. Astraea with her lethal beak had sunk an enemy ship. But there was no time to spare; soldiers ran down the gangway and began plunging cotton wads into the jugs of oil, then passing them, dripping, back up to the deck. Clamor from above and a word of warning, followed by cheers: the catapult had found its enemy.

  Ben-Hur heaved steadily on his oar, listening to the tumult. He could make out the twang of bowstrings, the creak of the siege machines, and he thought, not far away, the hortator of another ship, shouting as he set the rowers’ pace. The Astraea suddenly heeled over so sharply that the starboard oars no longer reached the water. The timbers groaned and on deck the soldiers cheered, but shrieks could also be heard more faintly, along with the whine of a winch. An enemy galley had come within range of Astraea’s grappling hooks and was now being lifted by its prow, shedding men and weapons into the water as it rose. Higher, higher—Ben-Hur had seen the seagoing crane in action on another ship. The arm of the crane would extend its full length, dangling the enemy craft over the surface of the sea like a fish on a hook, and finally release its hold and drop the galley vertically into the water, which would rush into its hull and sink it. Every man aboard would die.

  The noise was all around them now, noise and worse. Injured soldiers were carried down the gangway, out of the way of the fighting. Their groans and howls so near at hand, the blood running beneath the benches and the torn flesh of their wounds went unattended as the slaves kept rowing and the battle above continued. Other galleys had launched fireballs, and a yellowish smoke came billowing into the rowers’ cabin. It bore the unsettling scent of roasting flesh
, and more than one man turned pale. They had rowed through the remains of a burning galley, where slaves died chained to their benches.

  “Oh, gods, let me drown instead,” muttered a man behind Ben-Hur.

  “Silence!” the nearest soldier shouted.

  With a crash, the ship stopped. Oars were jerked from the rowers’ hands as they tumbled off the benches, and a trampling sound from the deck was quickly drowned out by a long, deep grinding against the hull that could be felt as much as heard. The galley had run afoul of another ship and the two vessels were locked in a violent embrace. The hortator’s gavel paused, and when it resumed, it could barely be heard through the din as clashing and roaring erupted above.

  But the regular blows of the mallet on the wooden table could not restore order. Some slaves were staring upward as if they could see the battle through the wooden planking of the deck; others darted their eyes around, searching for escape as they forgot the shackles on their legs. Another soldier dashed down the hatch, but this time, Ben-Hur saw, he was not Roman. A thick black beard and pale skin divided his face in half while his shield was made of bull hide and wicker. Where had he come from?

  Suddenly Ben-Hur understood: they had been boarded. The hull pressed against Astraea belonged to pirates. From the uproar on deck, the fighting was vicious. Now a sequence of loud, howling cries was heard and a rush of feet. Three Roman soldiers were driven partway down into the cabin, then rallied and pushed back upward while all the time the hortator continued to hammer out the beat for the rowers.

  But not a slave touched his oar. Panic had overcome discipline. Ben-Hur looked around the cabin and saw that each man was thinking only of himself and how he might escape or survive. And upstairs—what was becoming of Arrius? An icy needle of fear sliced through Ben-Hur’s mind. Arrius had seen him as a man, not a slave. What if the tribune was dead or wounded? What if the barbarian pirates had taken him captive?

  Ben-Hur was moving before he finished his thought. Arrius had kept him unchained, an act that could save his life. But he was still a slave. If Arrius died, he would never be anything else. If Arrius lived, he might have a future. As he leapt up the stairs, he saw once again the image that had haunted him for so long: his mother and sister dragged off by soldiers as he cried out. His mother in a dead faint, his sister shrieking, their captors expressionless—he could never erase that sight without help from the Roman commander.

  He caught a glimpse of a red and murky sky. His hand touched the deck and slid in the dreadful glaze of oil and blood. The air was thick with ash, stinging his eyes and throat. With another step upward he saw ships on every side, shattered or burning. Close at hand, men struggled in a meaningless melee, forward and backward with roars and wails, too close to use their weapons.

  Then his foothold was abruptly knocked away. The deck seemed to be lifting itself and breaking into pieces. In a shocking instant the hull split in two, and as if it had been lying in wait, the sea hissed and foamed over the shattered boards. It leapt over men and weapons, mast and sail, swallowing everything, and Ben-Hur knew only darkness.

  CHAPTER 11

  FLAMING SEA

  The water sucked him downward in a relentless whirl, slamming him against spars and debris. His lungs burned and burned worse. A freak current hurled his heels above his head. He was about to give in to the pressure, open his mouth to the searing liquid, when his head broke the surface and he gasped air instead.

  His eyes smarted, clouded with salt and the oil floating on the surface. He could make no sense of what he saw. Brilliance flashed on blackness. A huge patch of dark loomed above him, blotting out the erratic light, then struck him so hard on the head that he saw stars and sank for an instant. But in a gesture faster than thought, his long rower’s arms reached up to the edge of the floating mass. His hand tore on a nail, found a better grip. After a pair of ragged breaths, he lifted his torso onto the wreckage and lay with his face on the wet wood, retching. All around he heard shouting, explosions, crackling and hissing, a bellow of agony, and the constant little lap of water against the spar he clung to.

  A hand reached up and seized his wrist, followed by a pallid, bearded face. The man shouted something at him and brandished a crescent-shaped dagger. Judah saw his own hand reach forward, tear the dagger from the man’s hand, and thrust it at his face. Before he knew it, the man had sunk in a flurry of red-tinged bubbles, and Ben-Hur looked at his own hand, still holding the dagger. Had he just killed a man? So quickly, without thought? There was blood on his hand. He had broken one of the commandments. But what else could he have done?

  FILMING SHIP SEQUENCES

  For both the 1925 and the 1959 movies, filmmakers built full-size galleys to complete some of the sea battle scenes, though large miniatures were also used. The 1959 film’s galley sequences were shot in a man-made lake or a tank large enough to allow the set to sink.

  The 1925 sequence was shot on the open sea, and there were some issues when the set caught fire and extras who couldn’t swim jumped overboard.

  In the scene when Ramon Novarro, playing Judah, attempts his rescue of the Roman tribune, “I jumped through the burning hole [in a sail] to save Arrius’s life,” he said in a 1961 interview, “and I still have a few marks on my body from that.”

  He rolled onto his side and looked at the sky, gasping. To his right, not far away, a ship was burning and the black shadows of soldiers fell writhing from the deck to the sea while the galley slaves bawled below. A hand tugged his ankle and another face looked up at him with one blue eye, the other dangling from a shiny red concavity on the cheekbone. Ben-Hur lifted the curved dagger and the hand let go. A bank of smoke descended, so acrid that he coughed convulsively. Isolated for a few seconds, he emerged into the midst of a pitched battle on the surface of the sea. Romans with their daggers hacked furiously at pirates with wicker shields, clinging to a length of mast and most of a sail. Both sets of men saw him, turned, and tried to grasp his bit of planking, momentarily distracted from their struggle.

  In that instant Ben-Hur understood his position. He was everyone’s enemy. Luck, on his side for once, had provided him with a piece of wood that could keep him alive in the stinking melee of the sea battle—but only if he clung to it and beat back all others. He drew his legs out of the water and tucked them beneath him. A glance over his shoulder showed him a massive swell coming. The mountain of water was studded with debris. Ben-Hur spotted a smooth cylinder skimming the forefront of the wave and like lightning secured his dagger between his teeth.

  The years at the bench had sharpened his reflexes. His eyes and his body had recognized a fragment of an oar and prepared themselves for its weight so that when his hands closed around the oak shaft, his legs and trunk accepted the heft provided by the lead at the core. One of the Romans had an arm halfway across the planking, and Ben-Hur rotated to bring down the oar on it. The arm broke and the man roared as he slid back into the sea. The roar stopped short when he sank.

  But there was no respite. A new sound of rushing water and a telltale regular thump came from the right. A veil of smoke tore and a two-deck galley appeared, headed in Judah’s direction. He threw himself down to try to paddle his plank. The fragment of oar had no blade, so he tucked it beneath his belly and used his hands, cupping them to move the water. The galley came on, throwing a tall bow wave. On deck, Roman armor glittered, reflecting light from patches of burning oil on the water. The hortator’s rhythm quickened, and Ben-Hur found himself obeying it, paddling at the beat to escape the rushing menace. The iron beak made the water boil in advance of the bow, and Ben-Hur dug his hands as deep in the water as he could, pulling with the same effort he had used on the rower’s bench just minutes earlier.

  The beak passed beneath him and his luck held: the bow nudged the end of the plank, sending him alongside so that, in the strangest moment of that grim night, he lay on his plank, gliding next to the ship, between the towering hull and the blades of the oars. Above him the loom of oars
swung back and forth as the slaves pulled; to his side the blades dipped and turned, one stroke, two, three . . . And the galley was gone, leaving a glossy wake on the black water.

  Ben-Hur crumpled to the surface of his plank, gasping for air. He lay shuddering for a long minute. Near and far, he heard the din of battle: thuds and crashes, cries, wails, splashing. He hardly noticed the muffled clang as his plank hit another floating object, but a moan followed and he lifted his head. He had to be vigilant. His precious plank might keep him alive through the night, but every man in the sea who could still think would have the same idea. Men outnumbered planks—he could be knocked into the sea at any time. He glanced into the water.

  There was a Roman sinking beside him, red cloak billowing around his face. The helmet dipped beneath the surface. An elaborate patterned breastplate swam upward, drifted downward. The face broke the surface and the mouth gaped. Judah felt his mind moving slowly as the face fell away from him through the water again. Wait . . . He reached out a hand. That face . . . His hands stretched forward and met the cloak. He hauled. The body turned over. The cloak tore away from the breastplate. His fingertips caught the back of the helmet, and leaning off the plank, he managed to flip the body over and bring the face back to the air.

  It was Arrius. Ben-Hur’s fingers were more clever than his brain, feeling for the clasp of the helmet’s strap. He unhooked it and pulled it off, letting the polished bronze sink to the depths. Then he leaned out farther, trying to get a purchase on the buckles of the cuirass. One buckle, two; he wrestled with the sodden leather to pull off the hammered metal. All that carving, all that gilding, the grandeur of the empire, nothing more than a faint gleam as it followed the helmet into the murk. Now Arrius was just a man, just flesh and blood like Ben-Hur. Easy enough to grasp beneath his armpits. He dragged the Roman tribune’s head out of the sea. One more heave and his shoulders lay on Ben-Hur’s plank.