Captain Percival now rose to his feet with an effort. “I am afraid I shall have to be carried, Forli,” he said, with an attempt at a smile. “I was able to walk across the room this morning, but your news has, for the present, demolished what little strength I had left.”
“You had better sit down, Captain Percival,” the colonel said. “The governor will doubtless send some men with a stretcher at once, and I need hardly assure you how great a pleasure it has been to me to be employed on so successful a mission. I shall tell General Cialdini that you have been found.” And so saying, after shaking hands with Captain Percival and the other prisoners, he left the room with the governor.
Frank also went outside, as, seeing how weak his father was, he quite recognised the wisdom of Signor Forli’s advice that he should not be told too much at once; and, indeed, he felt that he could no longer suppress his own emotions. Leaning against the wall in the passage, he cried like a child.
Assisted by Signor Forli, Percival went round and shook hands with the other three prisoners.
“I was right, you see,” he said: “I told you last night, when we were all brought up here, that our deliverance was at hand, but I hardly thought that it could be so near. Soon you too will see your friends, from whom you have been kept a much longer time than I have.
“We have only met once before,” he said to the professor, “when nearly two months ago we were all brought out and placed in a vehicle together, and driven here. On the way we told each other what our real names were, and the addresses of our friends, so that if by some miracle one of us should issue alive from our horrible dungeons, we might let the friends of the others know how and where they had died. Thank God, we shall now all be bearers of good news.”
“I fear that I shall never be so,” the weakest of them said, feebly.
“Do not think that,” Signor Forli said cheerfully: “good food, fresh air, and, more than all, freedom, will do wonders for you. I, like yourselves, have been a special prisoner in a fortress for upwards of three years, and you see me now as strong and as well as I was when I entered it. Make up your mind that you will get well and cheat these tyrants, who had thought to kill you by inches.”
Four of the jailors now entered; one of them carried a stretcher, another had a bottle of excellent wine and four large glasses, which he filled and handed to the prisoners.
“This is the first taste of freedom,” one said, as he emptied his glass. “There, friend,” he went on, as one of the jailors partly lifted the sick man and placed the glass to his lips, “that is your first step towards health and strength. I can feel it already tingling in my veins, which years ago a glass of pure spirit would hardly have done. No, we will take no more now,” he said, as one of the men was about to refill his glass. “Leave it here; another glass now would intoxicate me, after five years on water alone and starvation diet.”