A red light flashed fitfully through one of the iron gratings, and the swarthy visage, heavy moustache, and scarlet fez of the Turkish sergeant appeared, as he held up a flaring torch and gazed in, with something of wonder and alarm in his dark and dilating Asiatic eyes. The iron door was hastily opened, and several soldiers, clad in short blue jackets, and tight red trousers, ran down the steps, and preceded by the chaoush with the torch, began to lay about them on all sides with bamboo rods, caning all without discrimination.
As the sergeant rushed forward, a prisoner, in sheer mischief, put out a foot and tripped him up. With a malediction the non-commissioned officer fell flat on his face, with the burning link almost in his mouth, by which—Barek Allah!—his sacred moustaches were scorched off in a moment; and as the light went out, two or three of his comrades fell over him in the dark, increasing the confusion. A hand now grasped mine with fierce energy. It was Callum's.
'Now,' said he, 'now or never! follow me!'
And he dragged me up the steps and through the open door, which we could easily distinguish by a faint light beyond it. As we issued into the yard before the Turkish guard-house, Callum, with admirable presence of mind, closed the barrier of the vault, turned the key, and by an additional wrench broke it in the lock, leaving the chaoush and his soldiers to fight or fraternise with the prisoners, as they pleased.
'Let us be but through the outer barrier, and we are free!' said I.
The night was starry but dark, for the moon had not yet risen, and an increasing wind rolled the waves of the Propontis on the rocky beach.
There was no time for calm deliberation; no leasure to undo an error, for we had nothing to guide our decision but the quickness of instinct and the rapidity of desperation. Our lives would be lost or won in less than five minutes—a dreadful reflection to me, even now, when all the danger is over and I sit in my quiet quarters writing of what is all happily past.
The gate was closed and secured by a transverse wooden bar. Muffled in his blue greatcoat, the Turkish sentinel stood near it, with his musket on his shoulder, and the long bushy tassel of his scarlet cap drooping down his back. I could mark his sharp Asiatic features defined against the sky. He stood still and motionless as a bronze statue, with his lacklustre eyes fixed on the stars, and absorbed apparently in one of those waking dreams peculiar to those Osmanlies who spend their spare paras in opium and raki.
'Mac Innon,' whispered Callum, 'to you I leave the undoing of the gate; give me the sentinel to manage—'
'You will not kill him?' said I, hurriedly, seeing that there was a wild gleam in Callum's eyes, and that he had, between his teeth, a skene-dhu, which, by being concealed in his hose, had hitherto escaped the search of our captors.