“Patience,” whispered Hassan; “this blanket will soon make you warm. Meantime I will see if there be wood or dry weeds to restore this dead fire.” With the staff in hand he went round and round the hut, but his search was fruitless. He lay down, and, putting his ear to the ground, thought he could distinguish some sound: he crept quietly up to the top of a bank at a distance from the water, and could descry, about a mile inland, a large fire and some tents.
“Dry clothes and some warm drink she must have,” he said to himself, “and there is no time to lose. I know not what men these may be, but the risk must be incurred.” He felt his girdle, and to his great joy found that his dagger was safe in its place: he then returned to the hut and asked Amina if she felt herself sufficiently recovered to go to some tents and a fire not far off.
“Let me die here,” she murmured; “you have saved me from those cold and rushing waters. Let me go to sleep here, Hassan, while you sing to me. Sleep, sleep.”
Hassan saw that her mind was overpowered by exhaustion, but he so much feared the effect of the wet clothing on her delicately nurtured frame that he decided to reach the fire with as little delay as possible.
“Light of my eyes!” he said, sitting down beside her, “Hassan lives only to serve you, and were it safe I would sing you to sleep and watch at your door while you rest, but danger and pain would follow, unless you can reach the warmth of the fire.”
“Where is the fire?” said Amina, trying to shake off the lethargy that threatened to overpower all her faculties.
“It is not far,” he replied; “if you will come, I will soon carry you there, and you can sleep as you go.”
“I will do whatever you say,” murmured the exhausted girl, whose ideas were still so confused that she knew not what she said. “Let us go to Boulak, and there you shall sing to me, and I will not tell anybody except Fatimeh how I love you; but do not let us go into that cold water again.”
Sweet to Hassan’s ear were some of these words, though spoken in half-unconsciousness; but his first thought now being to convey Amina to the fire, he grasped the staff in his hand, and carefully wrapping the blanket around her so that nothing but her face was exposed to the night-air, he lifted her gently in his arms.
The motion, together with the warmth of the blanket, restored her scattered senses, and also the circulation of her young blood, which had been chilled by long immersion in the water. Who shall tell what were her sensations as she found herself thus tenderly borne along by her devoted lover, or what were those of Hassan when, from the position of her head, he felt her warm breath upon his glowing cheek? When Hassan arrived within three or four hundred yards of the fire he could perceive that it was in the midst of an Arab encampment, containing at least a dozen tents.