“You? why, I thought you were happy enough. You haven’t said a word lately about escaping.”
“No,” replied Yussuf smiling; “but sometimes those who are so quiet do a great deal. I am afraid of the winter coming with its snow and shutting us in for months when we could not escape, for, even if the snow would let us pass, we should perish in the cold. I have been hard at work.”
“You have, Yussuf? What have you been doing? Oh, I know; making plans.”
“And ropes,” said Yussuf gravely.
“Ropes? I have seen you make no ropes.”
“No, because you were asleep. Wait a moment.”
He rose quietly and walked to the entrance, drawing the rug that hung there aside and peering out, to come back as softly as he left his seat, and glancing at where the professor, wearied out with a hard day’s work, was, like his companions by the fire, fast asleep.
“The guards are smoking out there, and are safe,” said Yussuf. “See here, Lawrence effendi, but do not say a word to a soul.”
“I shall not speak,” said Lawrence.
Yussuf gave another glance at the Chumleys, and then stepped to a corner of the great hall-like place which formed their prison, drew aside a rug on the floor, lifted a slab of stone, and pointed to a coil of worsted rope as thick as a good walking-stick, and evidently of great length.