To get at him it was necessary to put the girl Fanoum to the question.  This was done.  Giafar ibn Mulk, enticed into the house, proved to be a young man of prudence and resource.  He could not, he said, conduct them to his master, because he had been told to conduct the Marquess; but an equally sure guide could be found, and there were no objections to his delaying his own illustrious convoy for a week or more.  Further than that he could not go, nor did the near prospect of death, which the abbot exhibited to him, prove any inducement to the alteration of his mind.  ‘Death?’ he said, when the implements of that were before him.  ’If I am to die, I am to die:  not twice it happens to a man.  But I recommend to these priests the expediency of first finding El Safy.’  As this was to be their guide up Lebanon, those priests agreed.  El Safy also agreed, when they had him.  A galley was got ready for sea; the provisional Grand Master of the Temple wrote a commendatory letter to his ’beloved friend in the one God, Sinan, Lord of the Assassins, Vetus de Monte’; and then, in two days’ time, Milo the abbot, Jehane with her little Fulke, a few women, and El Safy (their master in the affair), left Acre for Tortosa, whence they must climb on mule-back to Lebanon.

CHAPTER VII

THE CHAPTER OF THE SACRIFICE ON LEBANON; ALSO CALLED CASSANDRA

From the haven at Acre to the bill of Tortosa is two days’ sailing with a fair wind.  Thence, climbing the mountains, you reach Musse in four days more, if the passes are open.  If they are shut you do not reach it at all.  High on Lebanon, above the frozen gorge where Orontes and Leontes, rivers of Syria, separate in their courses; above the terrace of cedars, above Shurky the clouded mountain, lies a deep green valley sentinelled on all sides by snow peaks and by the fortresses upon their tops.  In the midst of that, among cedars and lines of cypress trees, is the white palace of the Lord of the Assassins, as big as a town.  A man may climb from pass to pass of Lebanon without striking upon the place; sighting it from some dangerous crag, he may yet never approach it.  None visit the Old Man of Musse but those who court Death in one of his shapes; and to such he never denies it.  Dazzling snow-curtains, black hanging-woods, sheer walls of granite, frame it in:  looking up on all sides you see the soaring pikes; and deep under a coffer-lid of blue it lies, greener than an emerald, a valley of easy sleep.  There in the great chambers young men lie dreaming of women, and sleek boys stand about the doorways with cups of madness held close to their breasts.  They are eaters and drinkers of hemp, these people, which causes them to sleep much and wake up mad.  Then, when the Old Man calls one or another and says, Go down the mountains into the cities of the seaboard, and when thou seest such-a-one, kiss him and strike deep—­he goes out then and there with fixed eyeballs, and never turns them about until he finds whom he seeks, nor ever shuts them until his work is done.  This is the custom of Musse in the enclosed valley of Lebanon.