"Masa, where are you? Masa, my white dove, Masa!"
All is still; no answer comes, no voice replies in tender greeting to his anxious and repeated call.
"Masa! where are you, Masa?"
The silence is profound. He utters a cry that resounds fearfully through the cave. He gropes about in the darkness. Then he turns again, and cries out loudly, but all is still as before. He goes back to the passage, and into the first grotto, the one with the large opening in the roof, to the place where the sky can be seen. The clouds have disappeared, and the moon sheds its soft light into the cave.
"Masa, are you asleep?" he cries, as he kneels down beside the cushions.
But they are empty, and things are thrown about in disorder in the grotto. The moonlight shines brightly in the cave, and shows that a terrible struggle has taken place here. The carpets and cushions are thrown together confusedly; fragments of broken cups and saucers strew the ground, and every thing is overturned. At last he must recognize the fact. Masa is gone, he has been robbed of his Masa.
He sinks down upon the earth and cries in loud, heartrending tones: "Masa is gone; the slave-dealer has recovered his slave. Oh, horror, Masa is gone!" He springs to his feet, and rushes toward the entrance; then he stands still again, and cries in piercing tones that make the rocks reverberate: "Masa, where are you?" No answer. It was thus that her father had cried out a few days before: "Masa, where are you?"
Punishment has overtaken the undutiful daughter, and him who had harbored her.
"Masa, where are you?" For the second time, the agonized voice of love resounded through the cave. Masa is gone.
Ah, where can she be? All is still. A struggle has taken place here. Hired assassins, perhaps robbers, have broken into this paradise here beneath the earth that he considered so secure. But nothing is secure from man; cruel men have broken into his sanctuary and desecrated his paradise.