Mitsos whistled.
"It is then good that I came," he said. "I suppose this Turk next door is your keeper. Oh, Yanni, but we shall have bitter dealings with him before you get out of this. I shall stop here to-night—there is a room I may use next this—and you inside and I outside must just examine the lie of things. I will go out now, round to the stables to see if the horses are properly cared for, and before I come back I will have gone round the outside of this place and seen what is beyond these walls. And you look about inside."
Mitsos returned in about an hour. "It wasn't good," he said, "but it might have been worse." From the square it was impossible to get into the place, except through the gate, and equally impossible to get out. To the right of the gate stood the corner house of the square, and next to it a row of houses opening out on the street leading from the square, and there was no getting in that way. On the left the long wall of the back of the house looked out blankly into another corresponding street running into the square, but farther down things were not hopeless; for the house next Mehemet's stood back from the street in the middle of its garden, and was enclosed by an eight-foot wall. "None so high," quoth Mitsos, "but that a bigger man than you could get up." Standing on the top of the wall, it would be possible to get onto the roof of the block of buildings in which they were, and from there down onto the balcony, which was covered in and supported by pillars, one of which stood in front of Yanni's door. "And where a man has come, there may two go," said Mitsos, in conclusion; "so do not look as if the marrow had left your bones; Yanni."
"It's all very good for you," said Yanni, mournfully; "but here am I cooped up like a tame hen for a month, or it may be more, in this devil-kennel place, with a garden to walk in and an orange to suck. Eh, Mitsos, but it will be a gay life for me sitting here in this scented town. A fat-bellied, slow-footed cousin will you find when you come for me. I doubt not I shall be sitting cross-legged on the floor with a narghilé, and a string of beads, and a flower in my hair."
"Oh, you'll soon get fit again on the mountains," said Mitsos, cheerfully. "I expect it will be quick going when I come to fetch you out of this."
Yanni nodded his head towards the Turk's room next door.
"Some night when you come tramping on the roof overhead," he said, "will he not wake and pluck you by the two heels as you come down onto the balcony?"
Mitsos grinned.
"There will be fine doings that night," he said. "If only you looked into the street we could arrange that you should be at the window every night, and I could whistle you a signal; but here, bad luck to it! I could whistle till my lips were in rags and you would not hear. I shall have to come in myself."
Mitsos stopped in Tripoli two days, and before he left Yanni had plucked up heart again concerning the future. However much the Turks might in their hearts distrust the scornful clan, they could not afford to bring that nest of hornets about their ears without grave reason. Yanni had but to ask for a thing and he had it; it was only not allowed him to set foot outside the house and garden. About his ultimate safety he had no shadow of doubt. Mitsos had examined the wall again, and declared confidently that he would not find the slightest difficulty in getting in, and that their exit, with the help of a bit of rope, was in the alphabet of the use of limbs. The Turk who was Yanni's keeper was the only other occupant of that part of the house, the story below being kitchens and washing-places not tenanted at night. "And for the Turk," said Yanni, "we will make gags and other arrangements." In the mean time he announced his intention of being a model of discretion and peacefulness, so that no suspicion might be aroused.