Then she picked up the splendid tresses and began plaiting them together into strong knots.
"Wouldst thou ever have thought," said Azrael, "that the locks of thy hair would be so intermingled?"
Mariska gratefully pressed the hand of the odalisk.
"How can I ever thank you for your goodness?"
"Think not of it. Fate orders it so—and someone else," she muttered softly.
And now the attached ladder was long enough to reach the bottom of the palisades. Then they pitched down all the pillows and cushions of the divans till they covered the sharp stakes, so that their points might not hurt the fugitives. Moreover, Azrael tied the tough shoots of the gobæa to the cross piece of the window with the wraps of her turban and girdle.
"And now let me go first," said the odalisk, when all was ready; "if the branches of the creeper do not break beneath me, then thou canst come boldly after me, for thou and the child together are not heavier than I am."
The sky was dark and obscured by clouds; no one saw a white shape descending from one of the black windows of the fortress down the wall, lower and lower, till at last it got to the bottom and vanished in the depths of the ditch.
Mariska was waiting above there with a beating heart till the odalisk had descended; a tug at the gobæa-rope informed her that Azrael was already below, and Mariska could come after her.
A supplicating sigh to God ascended from the anxious bosom of the Princess at that supreme moment of trial; then she fastened to her breast with the folds of her garment the little one, who, fortunately, was still sound asleep, and stepping from the window entrusted herself to the yawning abyss below.