“The doors below are locked and guarded, but I will bring thee out by a better way, and with this thou may’st climb up out of the ditch.”
He thrust into Hugo’s hand a long pole with an iron hook, used for taking down the lamps in the great hall. Hugo clutched it (with a passing thought that it might serve as a weapon), and followed his guide round the angle of the wall.
This inner wall was but twelve feet high, and the ditch below, though deep, was narrow, and almost dry in places. Neither seemed formidable to the active Englishman, who was about to let himself drop, when Yakoob laid a restraining hand on his arm, and uttered a skilful imitation of the cry of a night-bird.
The cry was at once echoed below, and from behind a huge heap of dry forage glided two dim forms, whom Hugo (though he could barely see them) easily guessed to be Alured and his assistant.
Yakoob let down a silken cord, to which Alured made fast a heavy purse.
The rascal drew up his ill-got gains with greedy haste, and then produced a strong rope, which he knotted round a jutting pinnacle.
Hugo shot down it like an arrow, but hardly had he touched the earth, when Yakoob shouted from above, with all his might—
“Hither, hither, true believers! here is a Christian dog escaping!”
In fact, this double-dyed traitor, who really was a follower of Don Alvar, and had been well paid by him and Alured to aid Hugo’s escape, had all along intended to earn a twofold reward by helping him up to a certain point and then betraying him.
Even Alured and his veteran helper were paralyzed for a moment by this new and fearful dilemma; but Hugo was as prompt as ever. Clutching his pole by the end, he darted it upward, and just caught with his hook the traitor’s skirt as it hung over the parapet. The sudden tug flung Yakoob headlong into the muddy ditch, and Hugo, in turn, shouted lustily—
“Help, brothers, or the infidel will escape!”
“Where is he?” cried several Moorish soldiers, rushing up.
“Yonder he lies,” said Hugo, pointing to the half-seen form of the stunned Yakoob, now almost buried in the mud. “I cannot drag him forth unaided. Seize and hold him fast!”
“We will!” cried they; and, leaping into the ditch, they pounced upon the wrong man, and dragged him off, he being so smeared with mud as to defy recognition.