"But that night sleep would not come to my eyes. The face of the beautiful girl haunted me, and a great longing came over me to behold her again. I even began to hope that the conjoining of our fortunes might bring the damsel to me, to be the joy of my life and the pride of my future home. Already I was framing in my heart the sentences wherewith I would plead my cause after the battle was over, both with my grandsire and with Mustafa Khan. And I vowed that, in the fighting to come, I would do some deed of daring that would surely win the girl's father to my side.
"Meanwhile I wandered around the battlements, and half unconsciously I found myself on the walls at a place that surmounted the house which sheltered my beloved, with her mother and their women attendants, God is my witness, but I had no thought of profane prying, contrary alike to the laws of the Prophet and to the laws of hospitality. But my eyes fell on a beam of light coming from a tiny window niched deep down in a recess of the building. And even as I saw this, there came to my ears a faint, regular sound—a muffled 'tap, tap, tap.' Instantly every fibre of my being was in a quiver.
"I know not what instincts guided me—to burst asunder the bonds both of conventionality and of religion that might have restrained me, to make suspicion of some vague unseen danger stifle within my breast every tender thought of awakening love. But in my surge of excitement love and faith were alike forgotten. I ran from the walls, and without consulting anyone returned but a few minutes later with a coil of rope in my hands. To fasten this to one of the parapets, to tie a few knots at intervals so as to give me handhold and foothold—all this was the work of another minute or two. Then, slowly and cautiously, hand under hand, I was descending into the well-like recess toward the one tiny shaft of light that pierced its black darkness.
"'Tap, tap, tap'—the mysterious sound grew more and more distinct as I dropped down and down. Then, all of a sudden, the playing of a zither and the full-throated song of a woman smote my ears, and I arrested my descent. Almost could I have climbed back again, unseeing and ashamed. But in a brief momentary interlude in the music I heard, loud and unabashed now, the steady 'thump, thump, thump' as of a hammer, and straightway I knew that the song and its accompaniment were but part of some devilish plot—a means devised to muffle the sound of the other operations, whatever these might be. In another moment I was abreast of the window, small as a loophole for musketry, but all-sufficient for my requirements, I had the rope twisted around my leg, and, secure against slipping, I craned forward to peer inside.
"My irreverent eyes fell on no woman's face—the music was floating upward from an adjoining chamber. But in the room into which I gazed was a strange sight—four men stripped to the waist and toiling for all the world like diggers of a well. The flagstones of the floor had been torn up, and a great hollow cavern had been dug below. From this cavity two of the figures were passing up baskets of mud and gravel, into the hands of Mustafa Khan himself, who was bestowing the material around the walls of the room. The fourth man, also in the pit that had been dug, was tapping a long iron crowbar into a hole that had evidently been pierced in the soft ground in the direction of the fortress wall.
"I knew little enough about engineering in those days, but it needed only common sense for me to realize that the miscreant Mustafa had betrayed our hospitality for no other purpose than to breach the walls of the citadel. If there had been women in one pannier there had been men in the other, and, to balance the camel's load, there had been powder and tools for the nefarious task, the crowning achievement, no doubt, of an elaborate conspiracy.
"But I lost no time then in trying to piece together the details of the scheme. It was action that was needed now. So, just as silently and cautiously as I had descended, I climbed back again by my rope and regained the battlements. I paused just for a moment to listen to the sweeping chords of the zither, played by no unskilled hand, and to the rich notes of the woman's voice swelling into the midnight air. Then I gathered the rope in my arms, and sought the sleeping quarters of my grandfather.
"The old Tiger of the Pathans, as I knew well, was prepared to be aroused at any hour of the night. Even his tulwar was buckled to his belt when, in answer to my summons, he stepped forth into the outer chamber. He listened to my eager story, peering at me the while from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. But not even the twitching of a muscle in his face betrayed surprise.
"At the close of my narrative he laid a kindly hand on my shoulder.
"'O son of my dead son,' he said gravely, 'if what you have seen to-night be not a dream, then have you done me great service. But go now and sleep, and prepare yourself for what is to come. Rest assured, more than ever before, that Allah is on our side, and that, even as I said to you last night, our enemies are being delivered into the hollow of our hands.'