He poured the medicine down her throat. (P. [48].)
She looked at him for some moments in surprise.
“Now I begin to understand to what chance I owe my deliverance,” she said at length. “Since I have been in Thiuli’s house I have been called Fatima, which I understand is your sister’s name.”
After some little conversation Mustapha discovered that Fatima and Zoraida were in the palace, but that, according to Thiuli’s custom, he had given them new names when they became his property, and they were now called Mirza and Nurmahal.
Fatima, the rescued slave, could not but see how disappointed Mustapha was that he had failed in his attempt to carry off his sister, and she did all she could to encourage him to make a further effort, telling him that she had a plan which might prove successful.
So Mustapha took heart and questioned her as to how he should set about his task.
“I have been a slave in Thiuli’s house for the last five months,” she said, “and from the first day thought out a means of escape, but it was too difficult to carry out unaided. In the inner courtyard you may have noticed a fine fountain, which casts its water on high from no less than ten different jets. Now there was a similar fountain in my father’s garden, which was fed by water conducted to it by an underground passage, and I wished to find out if Thiuli’s fountain was supplied in a similar manner. So one day I began to praise it to Thiuli and to say what a clever builder he must have had to design it. ‘I designed it myself,’ said he, well pleased, ‘and what you see is not the most wonderful part about it, for the water has to be brought here from a distance of a thousand feet at least. I had a lofty arched underground passage built from my courtyard to a brook and I had the waters of the brook turned into this passage, through which it now flows and supplies my fountain with water. I designed and superintended the building of the whole thing myself.’
“After hearing this I longed for the strength of a man that I might be able to raise one of the stones in the courtyard, reach the underground passage, and be free. I can show you the direction in which this passage lies and by it you can one night obtain entrance to the palace; but you will need one or two men to assist you, for you will have to overpower the black slaves who keep watch over the quarters where the women slaves are kept.”
In spite of the fact that he had already had two failures Mustapha once more took heart, trusting that Allah would allow him to carry out successfully the plan of Fatima the slave girl. He promised her that he would arrange for her to reach her own home when he had rescued the others, as a reward for lending him her assistance in gaining an entrance to the palace.
His principal anxiety was how he should obtain the assistance of two or three men. Suddenly he remembered Orbasan’s dagger and the promise the Robber Chief had made that he would come to his aid if ever he were in need of help.