“They won’t kill the young Saeb so easy as that,” he growled, without looking at me, his eyes still fixed on the house I had just left.
“Oh, if they have taken him, let me go back and give myself up instead!” I cried; but the man shook me off, and bade me roughly be silent.
“Here he is!” he muttered at last, and almost as he spoke Mr Fraser appeared on the parapet, having crossed as before, without giving the signal.
“I fear I alarmed you, madam,” he said, breathlessly; “but at the moment when I was about to leave the roof, I heard a slight jingle of ornaments, and, glancing towards the stair, saw a woman creeping away. To allow her to give the alarm would have been fatal to our hopes, and I sprang upon her like a wild cat. She was old, but she fought fiercely enough, and ’twas more than a minute before I could get her gagged and bound with strips of her own cloth. She was more frightened than hurt, I fancy; but I trust I han’t inconvenienced any friend of yours?”
“Oh, sir, ’twas my woman Misery, the second worst of my enemies,” I said, almost sobbing, as Mr Fraser paused in unfastening the basket from the rope, and looked at me.
“Why, then, save that she’s a woman, I could wish I had used her worse,” said he, cutting the rope, and so leaving it to hang down from the side of Sinzaun’s house. “Is she likely to be soon discovered, do you fancy, madam?”
“When Sinzaun brings the Nabob to the feast he has prepared, which may be at any moment. Oh, dear sir, take me away,—save me; don’t let me be dragged back to slavery after enjoying this one taste of liberty!”
“Why, no, madam; we’ll carry you to the Agency at once, and there you’re on British ground. Put this on over your clothes,” and he handed me just such a white wrapper as the woman had worn who had directed me through the window at noon, and who I now perceived must have been himself in disguise, “and we’ll set out.”
While speaking, he and the Tartar had been excessively busy in hacking to pieces the basket and other traces of their occupation that lay about; then Mr Fraser took up my pacquet of papers, and the Tartar led the way down the stairs and so through a passage and two doors into the street. Do you realise, Amelia, that I had not stood in a street for near a year? ’Twas that time, also, since I had walked any distance, and the Moorish slippers I wore were not the easiest of foot-gear to walk in. Seeing my difficulty, Mr Fraser offered me his hand, and though the Tartar grumbled at the civility, as being inconsistent with our disguise, we held each the other’s hand for the whole distance, to my great comfort, under the cover of my veil. Stealing along thus in the darkness, with the Tartar going first to watch for any danger, and choosing out the narrowest and darkest by-ways for us to pass through, we saw at a distance a glare of lights, and heard the sound of music and shouting.
“Sure his Highness is on his nightly rounds,” says the Tartar.