“It gives me new life to see a countryman here, and one who wants to help me,” said the poor fellow. “I thought all the world had deserted me, and that I should be left to die in this strange land, among worse than heathens, who treat me as a dog; or that I should be tempted to give up my faith and turn Mohammedan, as others have done.”
I cannot repeat all our conversation. At last an idea struck me.
“I’ll tell you what,” said I; “just do you pretend to be mad, and play all sorts of strange pranks, and do all the mischief you can; and then the captain will propose to buy you, and perhaps the old Moor will sell you a bargain, and be glad to be rid of you.”
“A very good idea,” he answered. “But here am I chained up like a dog, and how am I to get free?”
“No fear,” said I, producing a knife which Peter had given me, containing all sorts of implements, and among them a file. “You shall soon be at liberty, at all events.”
Accordingly I set to work, and in less than an hour I had filed the chain from off his legs. While we were filing away, we arranged what he was to do. He was to make a huge cap, with a high peak of straw, and he was to cut his jacket into shreds, and a red handkerchief I had into strips, and to fasten them about him in long streamers, and he was to take a thick pole in his hand, covered much in the same way, and then he was to rush into the house, shrieking and crying out as if a pack of hounds were after him.
“They will not wonder at seeing me mad, for I have done already many strange things, and very little work, since I came here,” he remarked. “But what it to become of the chain?”
“You had better carry that with you, and clank it in their faces,” said I. “Make as if you had bitten it through. That will astonish them, and they will, at all events, be afraid to come near your teeth.”
To make a long story short, we worked away with a will, and in half an hour or so he was rigged out in a sufficiently strange fashion. I have no doubt, had Peter been with us, he would have improved on our arrangement. I then, advising Lyal to follow me in a short time, stole back, and took my place unobserved in the old Moor’s dining-hall. The captain guessed what I had been doing, but the rest of the party had been too much engaged in their potations to miss me. After a little time I stole over to the captain and told him the arrangements I had made, that he might be ready to act accordingly.
In a short time the silence which had hitherto prevailed was broken by a terrible uproar of dogs barking, and men hallooing and crying out at the top of their voices; while, above all, arose as unearthly shrieks as I had ever heard. Presently in rushed a crowd of black and brown servants, followed by a figure which I recognised as that of Lyal, though he had much improved his appearance by fastening a haik over his shoulders and another round his waist, while he waved above his head a torch, at the risk of setting his high straw-cap on fire. The people all separated before him, as he dashed on, right up to the old Moor, who, with a drunken gaze of terror and astonishment, stared at him without speaking.