Is it loaded?"
"Yes," said Nadeg. "I loaded it again after firing."
"Yes, give it to him!--If you will not remain, Mohammed, take the
weapon, and, if I hear a shot, I shall know you are attacked and in
danger; then I will wake my father, and beg him to send the soldiers
to your assistance. But stay with me yet awhile, my friend!"
"No, Osman, I can remain no longer. I must be off! My heart is
filled with a sense of impending evil, with gloomy forebodings."
"Then go, Mohammed, and may Allah bless and protect you! Oh, that
this fearful night were at an end!"
Mohammed hastens away down the garden path, and soon disappears in
the darkness.
"Stay with me, you good, faithful servants. Oh, how anxious I am,
how wildly my heart beats! Yet I do not fear for myself, but for my
dear friend Mohammed. Pray to Allah for grace and mercy! Yes, let us
all pray to Allah!"
Mohammed rushes on through the night, down the stone stairway. He
flies with the speed of an arrow from rock to rock. Now he is down
by the cave. He looks behind him once more. There is nothing to be
seen, nowhere a human figure. Nothing! Osman must have been
mistaken; no one observed him, no one was there! He creeps through
the fissure in the cliff, to the inner grotto to the place where the
passage becomes narrow, and where Masa was to have rolled the stone
before the opening.
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