"Why are you here, Sharu?" I asked.
"Ghron sent me," she replied. "He is impatient for your decision."
I thought quickly. Our only hope lay in the sympathy of this girl, whose attitude in the past had at least demonstrated her friendliness. "Had we a dagger and a needle," I said in a low whisper, "we could give Ghron his answer upon the morning of the day after tomorrow."
"What reason can I give him for this further delay?" she asked after a moment's thought.
"Tell him," said Nur An, "that we are communing with our ancestors and that upon their advice shall depend our decision."
Sharu smiled. She drew a dagger from its sheath at her side and laid it upon the floor and from a pocket pouch attached to her harness she produced a needle, which she laid beside the dagger. "I shall convince Ghron that it is best to wait," she said. "My heart had hoped, Hadron of Hastor, that you would decide to remain with me, but I am glad that I have not been mistaken in my estimate of your character. You will die, my warrior, but at least you will die as a brave man should and undefiled. Good-bye! I look upon you in life for the last time, but until I am gathered to my ancestors your image shall remain enshrined within my heart."
She was gone; the partition dropped, and again we were left in the semi-darkness of a moonlit night, but now we had the two things that I most desired—a dagger and a needle.
"Of what good are those?" asked Nur An as I gathered the two articles from the floor.
"You will see," I replied, and immediately I set to work cutting the fabric from the walls of our cell and then, standing upon Nur An's shoulders, I removed also that which covered the ceiling. I worked quickly for I knew that we had little time in which to accomplish that which I had set out to do. A mad scheme it was, and yet withal within the realms of practicability.
Working in the dark, more by sense of feel than by sight, I must have been inspired by some higher power to have accomplished with any degree of perfection the task that I had set myself.