Leaving the wicket, Ahmed silently groped his way to the charpoy on which the swordsmith was sleeping, and gently awakened him. In a low whisper he conveyed the news of his discovery. Hamadi at once rose, and, trusting to the pitch darkness of the colonnade, opened the wicket fully, and listened with all his ears.
Tom and Abdul had no sooner crossed the square than the bolts of the shop door opposite which they had been standing were softly drawn back, and Hamadi, followed by his apprentice, glided barefoot after them. Each bore a sword—good weapons, as Hamadi, who had made them, well knew. Hamadi saw a vision of great prosperity and high favour with the sheikh. He would follow up the strangers, if strangers they indeed were, to the house where they harboured. There he would leave Ahmed to keep watch, while he himself sped to the kasbah and told what he had seen. Without doubt the sheikh would reward him handsomely.
By the time Hamadi and his boy had left the shelter of the colonnade, the strangers had turned the corner of the far side of the square; but the pursuers ran quickly across the open space and gained the corner while their quarry was still in sight.
Tom and his companion, picking their way with all caution through the dark, uneven, dirty passages that led from the kasbah to the outer wall, went out slowly. Every now and again they stumbled over a loose cobble or a heap of refuse; then there was a little noise that might betray their presence to any one who happened to be within a few yards of them. At such times Abdul would throw a hurried glance back; well he knew what their fate would be if they were captured.
Suddenly he edged a little closer to Tom and whispered—
“Men follow us!”
By this time they were almost within reach of the wall. Tom was alive to the danger in which the pursuit had placed them. Descending the wall, they would have to grope for foothold. Before they could get clear, the pursuers would have come up behind, and might either topple down upon them loose boulders from the wall, or, if they bore firearms, have them at their mercy. The two hurried their steps.
“They are close behind—two men!” whispered Abdul.
Tom glanced to each side along the wall. There was no convenient place in which they might take refuge with any prospect of eluding their pursuers. They were now hasting along at a half run beneath a long wall that possibly enclosed some gardens of houses backing on the ramparts. Here and there this wall was broken by a doorway; but the gates, when Tom tested them by a push, were always closed. Abdul was making for the spot at which they had entered the village; it was the nearest, indeed the only practicable, place of descent. But to descend, with the pursuers upon them, would be dangerous, perhaps fatal. To leave this place of exit, and move farther along the ramparts or back into the village, would be almost equally dangerous and would lose precious time. The only other course open to them was to tackle the problem of disposing of the pursuers. Tom nervously fingered his revolver; but a shot would rouse the whole village and multiply the pursuers perhaps fiftyfold.