A very dim light was close to the window.
‘I wonder,’ thought Blodget, ‘if she will scream before I can get a gag put into her mouth? If she does, I may have dangers to encounter; but I never yet abandoned an enterprise on that account, nor will I now.’
Truly dangerous was a climate in which such a man as Blodget lived.
He now looked carefully to the right and to the left of the place of which he was, so as to assure himself that no sentinel was close at hand, and then he boldly flung up the cords to which the hooks were attached, to the balcony.
It took him three or four efforts before he succeeded in getting the hooks to hold fast, and then he found that the cords easily suspended him.
This was rather a ticklish part of the business to climb up to the balcony now with the possibility, if not the probability, that some one might see him; but yet he meant either to do it or abandon the whole affair at once, so he set about it with a feeling that might be said to approach to recklessness.
He reached the top of the parapet of the balcony, and rather rolled over it than stepped over, so that he exposed himself to observation to as small an extent as, under the circumstances, it was at all possible so to do.
There he lay crouched up in the balcony, pretty well shaded by its stone work and parapet from any further observation from without.
He breathed in rather an agitated manner for a few moments, for he had undergone, to tell the truth, very great personal exertion.
Soon, however, he recovered sufficiently to assist him in going on in his enterprise; and accordingly, sidling along very carefully till he got quite close to the window, he cautiously tried if it were fast.