"Now!" came between Godfrey's teeth; and three swords were ready to flash. The lady smiled, sprang before them. At sight of her the sentry bowed low.
"Habib," said she, gently, "these are they I said I would bring you. Remember—you have for them neither ears nor eyes."
"I am blind and dumb, my Citt," was the answer.
She beckoned, the three followed; the guardsman was lost in the gloom. "I begged his life of Iftikhar a year since," explained the lady, "therefore Habib is grateful."
A second gallery, an open arcade, a sight of the stars twinkling between the plumes of the palm trees, and the puff of the sluggish southern wind. They came to a new door, where a lamp burned low. The door was open. A stairway wound upward lit at intervals by flickering sconces. The lady halted.
"Cid Richard," said she, "you shall go up with me, and take your wife; let these two remain below in the shadow."
Musa smiled and salaamed; Godfrey laughed in his beard. "You need no comrade now, fair knight," said he to Richard.
The Norman's step was on the stairway, as he leaped ahead of the lady. At last! At last! That was all he knew. God had indeed "stopped the mouths of the lions, had quenched the violence of fire!" Three steps Richard had covered with his bound; but at the fourth he was frozen fast. A cry, a cry of terror, of despairing pain, sped down the stairway:—
"Morgiana! Help me, for the love of God!"
Whose voice? Longsword knew it above ten thousand; and with it flew others—curses, howls, cries for help.