"I think we'll send the message," said Stephen. "It would be different if we were all men here, but——"
Victoria turned, and ran back to the open door.
"The pigeon shall go in five minutes," she called over her shoulder.
Stephen and Nevill went to the dining-room.
The landlord was there, drunk, talking to himself. He had broken a dish, and was kicking the fragments under the table. He laughed at first when the two Englishmen tried to impress upon him the gravity of the situation; at last, however, they made him understand that this was no joke, but deadly earnest. They helped him close and bar the heavy iron gates; and as they looked about for material with which to build up a barrier if necessary, they saw the sisters come to the door. Saidee had a pigeon in her hands, and opening them suddenly, she let it go. It rose, fluttered, circling in the air, and flew southward. Victoria ran up the dilapidated stairway by the gate, to see it go, but already the tiny form was muffled from sight in the blue folds of the twilight.
"In less than two hours it will be at Oued Tolga," the girl cried, coming down the steep steps.
At that instant, far away, there was the dry bark of a gun.
They looked at each other, and said nothing, but the same doubt was in the minds of all.
It might be that the message would never reach Oued Tolga.
Then another thought flashed into Stephen's brain. He asked himself whether it would be possible to climb up into the broken tower. If he could reach the top, he might be able to call for help if they should be hard-pressed; for some years before he had, more for amusement than anything else, taken a commission in a volunteer battalion and among many other things which he considered more or less useless, had learned signalling. He had not entirely forgotten the accomplishment, and it might serve him very well now, only—and he looked up critically at the jagged wall—it would be difficult to get into that upper chamber, a shell of which remained. In any case, he would not think of so extreme a measure, until he was sure that, if he gave an alarm, it would not be a false one.