Explore "Joel: A Boy of Galilee" by Annie Fellows Johnston on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
HIGH up among the black lava crags of Perea stood the dismal fortress of / Macherus. Behind its close prison bars a restless captive groped his way / back and forth in a dungeon cell. Sometimes, at long intervals, he was / given such liberty as a chained eagle might have, when he was led up / into one of the towers of the gloomy keep, and allowed to look down, / down into the bottomless gorges surrounding it. For months he had chafed / in the darkness of his underground dungeon; escape was impossible.
It was John Baptist, brought from the wild, free life of the desert to / the tortures of the "Black Castle." Here he lay at the mercy of Herod / Antipas, and death might strike at any moment. More than once, the / whimsical monarch had sent for him, as he sat at his banquets, to be the / sport of the passing hour.