“None of us is safe,” said Captain Arnold. “Is it possible to lie in wait for the guards who come to give you food, Pilescu, overpower them, and escape down the golden stair?”
“We could try,” said Ranni doubtfully. “But I fear it would be no use. Still, it seems the only thing to do.”
At that moment Jack came up. He had been showing the other children the queer pot of yellow paint that he had taken from the storeroom among the caves in the mountain. He looked very peculiar because he had tried out some of the paint on his own face, and his skin was now as bright yellow as the Folk of the Mountain!
Ranni and Pilescu, who did not know about the pigment, stared at him in horror.
“Jack! What is the matter with you?” cried Pilescu. “Are you ill?”
“Very!” grinned Jack. “I think I must have got yellow fever, Pilescu! Have you got any medicine to make me better?”
The other children crowded round, giggling and laughing, and Pilescu knew it was a joke. He looked closely at Jack.
“You have got yellow paint on your face,” he said. “You look like one of the Folk of the Mountain!”
“And you, Pilescu, would look exactly like one if you painted your face,” said Jack, “because you have a flaming red beard as they have. But yours is a real red beard, not a dyed one!”
No sooner had Jack said these words than the same thought flashed into Pilescu’s head and Captain Arnold’s at the same moment. Pilescu snatched the pot of pigment from Jack and looked at it. He dipped his finger into it and rubbed it over the back of his hand. At once his skin gleamed the same yellow as the skin of the Mountain Folk.