"No, Sire, I was arrested the moment I returned to camp."
"You succeeded, I know, from the movements of the enemy: although the slowness of the Padishah in ordering an advance, when Scanderbeg was diverted by your ruse, prevented our taking advantage of it."
"Yes," said Ballaban, "I succeeded as well as any one could, not being seconded from headquarters. But I did some service incidentally, and picked up some helpful information. The night after leaving the hamlet we fired, I fell in with a company of Arnaouts who were coming to the rescue. They would have got into the narrow valley before our men got out, had I not managed to trick them. I was in disguise and readily passed for an Arnaout lout, giving them false information about the direction our party had taken, and so lost them an hour or two, and saved the throats of Lovitsch's fellows, a mere rabble, good enough for a raid, but not to be depended upon for a square fight. But we must have no more raids. Scanderbeg has means of communication as quick and subtle as if the clouds were his signals and the stars were his beacons.
"I then came upon a Dibrian settlement, pretending to be a fugitive from the valleys to the north; and entertained the villagers with bug-a-boo stories about the hosts of men with turbans on their heads and little devils on their shoulders who had destroyed all that country, and were now pouring down toward the south.
"By the way," continued Ballaban laughing, "there was an old fellow there, very lame, with a patch over one eye, who could hardly stand leaning on his staff, he was so palsied with age. But the one eye that was open was altogether too bright for his years; and his legs didn't shake enough for one who rattled his staff so much. So I put him down as one of Scanderbeg's lynxes—they are everywhere. I described to him the Moslem movements in such a way as to let a trained soldier believe that we had entirely changed front, with the prospective raising of the siege of Sfetigrade and alliance with the Venetians for carrying the war farther to the north. The old codger took the bait, and asked fifty questions in the tone of a fellow whose head had been used for a mush-pot instead of a brain-holder; but every question was in its meaning as keen as a dagger-thrust into the very ribs of the military situation. Well! I helped him to all the information he wanted; when with a twinkle in his eye, he hobbled away, as wise as an owl when a fresh streak of day-light has struck him: and before night the whole country to the borders of Sternogovia was alive with Scanderbeg's scouts; and every cross-path was a rendezvous of his broken-winded cavalry.
"I saw one thing which gave me a hint I may use some day. At a village the women were carrying water from a spring far down in a ravine, though there was a fine flowing fountain quite near them. It seems that a dog had got into the fountain about a month before, and was drowned. These Dibrians believe that, if any one should drink the water of such a spring before as many days have passed as the dog has hairs on his tail, the water will make his bowels rot, and his soul go into a dog's body when he dies.
"The next night I spent inside the walls of Sfetigrade."
"No!" cried the chief. "Why, man, you must fly the air with the witches!"
"Not at all, I have some acquaintances in that snug little place; and when they go to bed they hang the key of the town on a moonbeam for me. If it is not there, I have only to vault over the walls, or sail over them on the clouds, or burrow under them with the moles, or hold my breath until I turn into a sprite, like the wizards on the Ganges, and lo! I am in. Well! that night I lodged with a worthy family of Sfetigrade, pretending that I was a poor fugitive from the very town we had raided a few nights before. And, by the hair of the beautiful Malkhatoon![52] I saw there the very captive I had taken. She lay asleep on a cot just within a doorway—unless I was asleep myself and dreaming, as I half believe I was."
"Yes, it was a dream of yours, no doubt, Captain," said the chief, "for when a young fellow like you once gets a fair woman in his arms, as you say you had her in yours the night of the raid, she never gets out of the embrace of his imagination. He will see her everywhere, and go about trying to hug her shadow. Beware illusions, Captain! They use up a fellow's thoughts, make him too meek-eyed to see things as a soldier should. The love passion will take the energy out of the best of us, as quickly as the fire takes the temper out of the best Damascene blade."