They beat their breasts and shrieked with fear.

His blood was upon them! The home-bred and the foreign, priest and layman, beggar, Sadducee, Pharisee, were overtaken in the race, and tumbled about indiscriminately.
If they called on the Lord, the outraged earth answered for him in fury, and dealt them all alike.

It did not even know wherein the high-priest was better than his guilty brethren; overtaking him, it tripped him up also, and smirched the fringimg of his robe, and filled the golden bells with sand, and his mouth with dust.
He and his people were alike in the one thing at least--the blood of the Nazarene was upon them all! When the sunlight broke upon the crucifixion, the mother of the Nazarene, the disciple, and the faithful women of Galilee, the centurion and his soldiers, and Ben-Hur and his party, were all who remained upon the hill.

These had not time to observe the flight of the multitude; they were too loudly called upon to take care of themselves.
"Seat thyself here," said Ben-Hur to Esther, making a place for her at her father's feet.

"Now cover thine eyes and look not up; but put thy trust in God, and the spirit of yon just man so foully slain." "Nay," said Simonides, reverently, "let us henceforth speak of him as the Christ." "Be it so," said Ben-Hur.
Presently a wave of the earthquake struck the hill.