The sheikh now conveyed to Alured his views on the proposed exchange of prisoners, which Hugo translated sentence by sentence; but under cover of this game of question and answer, the brothers were able to exchange confidences unsuspected.
Alured told Hugo of his identity with the famous “White Knight,” his position as commandant of Santa Fé, and his resolution to effect his brother’s escape. Hugo, in turn, told briefly how, awaking from his swoon after the fatal combat, he found himself on a Spanish privateer, which was taken soon after by a Barbary corsair. In the fight, he received a new wound that all but cost him his life; but the admiration of the Moors for his prowess saved him from the doom of his companions, and at the court of Grenada he had been kindly treated, though strictly guarded, till the Moorish king’s plan of using him to entrap the dreaded White Knight caused his removal to Tormas.
At this point Ali Atar, having said his say, broke up the conference and dismissed his interpreter; and as Hugo turned to quit the hall, his brother had just time to warn him that any man who should say to him, “Beware of the White Knight!” was the chosen agent of his escape, and to be trusted accordingly.
But the wily sheikh, though no longer suspecting this Christian envoy, was far too wary to let him spend a whole night at large in the castle, and learn the strength of its defences and its garrison. As soon as Alured had partaken of some food, he was escorted out of the fort by the commandant’s black guards (who were indeed such in a double sense) without being allowed even to see the Spanish prisoner for whose release he was treating; and Ali Atar chuckled grimly at his success in “outwitting the unbeliever,” little dreaming how signally the unbeliever had just outwitted him.
A few days later, a small party of Moors from Tormas, and a detachment of equal number from the garrison of Santa Fé, met midway between the two forts, and Don Alvar was formally exchanged for El Zagal—the invalided sheikh being represented by his second in command, and Alured by his veteran seneschal.
Hugo, however, was not with the Moorish party; for as Ali Atar’s bodily powers weakened, his jealous vigilance grew keener than ever. True, the captive (though resolute neither to break his knightly vows, nor forswear his religion) had skilfully avoided any open gainsaying of the hints thrown out by his jailers as to the service expected of him, and allowed them to think that he would comply when the time came. But the crafty old Moor meant to be on the safe side, and kept the precious hostage all the more carefully in his sight, the weaker he grew.
To the free-born, high-spirited Hugo this constant sense of being watched and spied upon, and kept in like a chained dog, would have been galling at any time; for he was not only a prisoner but a slave—the slave of those “heathen dogs” whom every Christian of that age, alas! thought himself bound to hate and curse and slay, in place of trying to enlighten them and do them good. But now that he had learned that his brother was alive and near him, and the freedom of which he had begun to despair actually within reach, this degrading bondage became intolerable. Every hour seemed a day, every day a year, as he waited in vain for the promised signal of deliverance; and, worse still, every day that went fruitlessly by brought the time nearer when the Moors would attempt their plan of using him to ensnare his own brother. At any moment he might have to choose between death and treason to his country and his God; and his own choice would doom him to die like a felon and a slave, in place of falling (as he had always hoped) fighting for some good and holy cause in the ranks of his Christian brethren. Bitterer than all was the thought of perishing just when help was at hand, and the last hour of his weary bondage about to strike.
Had this grinding torment lasted longer, the captive must have been crushed by it; but a change was at hand.
On the seventh day after the exchange of prisoners, as Hugo sat moodily by the sick sheikh (who would hardly let him out of his sight now), a soldier came to report the arrival of a deserter from Santa Fé.
“A deserter!” cried Ali Atar, regaining for a moment all his lost energy. “Bring him to me at once, that I may learn what these Spanish dogs be about.”