“Name your condition,” she gasped.
“Can you, will you keep a secret?” he wrote.
“I will,” she answered.
“On your life and honour?” he wrote again.
“Yes, on my life and honour,” she answered, firmly, for a moment feeling re-assured by his change of manner.
He now wrote on the tablet.
“I am the slave of Colonel Blood; they call me Sinbad, and am supposed even by my master to be both deaf and dumb; but I am not.”
“Not deaf and dumb?” she answered. “Then you knew the sounds of the bell I rang?”
“I heard it,” he whispered, “and knew its meaning.”
“My meaning?” she asked.