And the poor slave was all the time thinking to himself that when he got home with his lord, Jigerdilla would treat him exactly as Potiphar's wife treated Joseph. A woman has no need to betake herself to the Old Testament to learn how to avenge herself on the man who has slighted her advances.
She will certainly get him beaten to death by her husband.
And to make the resemblance between the two cases more complete, there was a vision to be interpreted.
"What is the meaning of the dreams I've just been dreaming?" growled Ibrahim, in the tree. "I dreamt that a hen pounced down upon an eagle and flew away with him—not the eagle with the hen, but the hen with the eagle."
"Just you come down from that tree and I'll let you know all about it," thought Valentine to himself, and while Ibrahim was plucking the plums, he took out of his master's discarded girdle the key of his own fetters and quickly freed his feet. Then he planted himself close beside the tree.
Ibrahim was so busily engaged in plucking his fruit, and so lost in admiration at his beautiful bonameras, that it quite escaped him that the sun was going down, and that they had begun to sound the retreat in the fortress. Now this signified that everyone was to leave off laboring in his field or vineyard, for at the third signal the gates were closed, and whoever then remained outside had to stay there all night. Only at the third signal did Kermes reflect that it was growing late, and begin to climb down from the plum tree. First he handed to Valentine the basket-load of bonameras, and then he slowly began to let himself down, and begged his slave to help him.
And Valentine did help him, for just when Ibrahim was hanging with both hands to a branch between heaven and earth, Valentine threw the basket at him, plums and all, tore him to the ground, bound his hands to his back, and kicked him into the kiosk. The neighbors observed nothing of all this, for they were much too intent upon getting to the town themselves before the gates were closed, to notice what others were doing.
Valentine next locked the door of the kiosk and set about tearing up the mortar flooring.
Jigerdilla had spoken truly; there was no lack of ducats. Valentine did not let the opportunity escape him, but swept all the gold pieces together and put them into Ibrahim's knapsack. Then he donned the Turk's kaftan, turban, and girdle, compelling him to put on his own slave's clothes; and when it grew dusk, he threw a rope round his neck, and said to him:
"Now we are going to Onod, and if you dare to utter a word by the way, I'll break your own ax to pieces over your bald pate!" And as Ibrahim Kermes was very anxious about his beautiful ax, and still more so about his skull, he allowed himself, with true Mohammedan resignation, to be driven through the alley between the vineyards into the wood and from thence into the next village. There Valentine hired from the Christian magistrate a four-horse wagon, and drove with his captive master to Onod, where he arrived early next morning safe and sound.