“No, indeed; I would have given much to know, and assuredly the dog, whoever he was, should have been made to suffer.”

“It was Hassan.  The villain met me when I was with the gang, and boasted that it was he who had sent me there.  He had told the news to some official, who had, of course, repeated it to the sultan; doubtless he concealed his own share in the matter, otherwise he too would, next time he returned here, have had to pay for his part in it.”

“I will make him pay more heavily than the sultan would,” Ben Ibyn said sternly; “I will speak to my friends among the merchants, and henceforth no Berber will buy aught from him; and we have hitherto been his best customers.  But let us not waste our time in speaking of this wretch.  How comes it that you are walking freely in the streets of Tripoli?  I can see that your face is stained, although you are no longer a Nubian.”

Gervaise told him how it was that he was free to walk in the city after his work was done.

“I shall now,” he went on, “be able to carry out any plan of escape that may occur to me; but before I leave, as I shall certainly do ere long, I mean to settle my score with Hassan, and I pray you to send one of the men who were with me in the galley, and whom you took into your employment, directly you hear that his ship is in harbour.  Do not give him either a note or a message:  bid him simply place himself in the road between the prison gate and the palace, and look fixedly at me as I pass.  I shall know it is a signal that Hassan is in the port.”

“Can I aid you in your flight?  I will willingly do so.”

“All that I shall need is the garb of a peasant,” Gervaise said.  “I might buy one unnoticed; but, in the first place, I have no money, and in the second, when it is known that I have escaped, the trader might recall the fact that one of the slave overseers had purchased a suit of him.”

“The dress of an Arab would be the best,” the merchant said.  “That I will procure and hold in readiness for you.  On the day when I send you word that Hassan is here, I will see that the gate of my garden is unbarred at night, and will place the garments down just behind it.  You mean, I suppose, to travel by land?”

“I shall do so for some distance.  Were I to steal a boat from the port, it would be missed in the morning, and I be overtaken.  I shall therefore go along the coast for some distance and get a boat at one of the villages, choosing my time when there is a brisk wind, and when I may be able to get well beyond any risk of being overtaken.  Now, Ben Ibyn, I will leave you; it were better that we should not meet again, lest some suspicion might fall upon you of having aided in my escape.  I cannot thank you too much for all your past kindness, and shall ever bear a grateful remembrance of yourself and your family.”

“Perhaps it were better so,” Ben Ibyn said; “for if the Moors can find any excuse for plundering us, they do so.  Have you heard the news that the Sultan of Turkey’s expedition for the capture of Rhodes is all but complete, and will assuredly sail before many weeks have passed?”