While Felix held his own against two of the wretches, I grappled with the other. We had been fighting an endless time, it seemed, before I dared believe I was his master, and at that instant events took a new turn. More likely not twenty seconds had gone by since the attack began, but these were so furious that none of the three guardsmen had breath to call for help. Suddenly one of Felix’s pair broke from his grasp and went sprinting down the hall.
“Help! Help!” he shouted at the top of his voice.
Then for the first time I saw what a wolf in strength and swiftness Felix was. I had better compare him to some splendid denizen of the deep, such as a great gleaming swordfish whose shadow in the water is the nightmare of the sharks, and which causes their teeth to chatter like castanets. For in battling the sea and its creatures, these graces had come upon him. The giant threshing tunny had taught him nimbleness, and the writhing tentacles of the octopus had proved the strength of his hands.
Although the second man tried to hold him, Felix flung him from him in one wrench, then darted in pursuit of the runaway. I trow he was not two ticks of a clock behind him at the start, and although they vanished almost instantly in the shadows, I had no trouble following the race. The volume of the quarry’s shouts for help had not begun to reduce when they suddenly stopped.
Yet a heavy trouble began to lie on my exultant spirit. What was the good of winning the brabble if we lost the prize? The turmoil had slacked off, with Felix’s man groaning and clutching his knee, and my fellow panting and grunting, although not struggling very hard, in my grasp. And in this quiet I could vision the half-score or so stout watchmen in various parts of the building having heard the shouts, and rushing to their fellows’ help. The wonder was that they had not already appeared.
“Get away as fast as you can!” I shouted to Haran-din in his native tongue. “The outer gate’s unlocked.”
“Nay, I can’t keep my course in the murky gloom,” he answered calmly.
“Try it anyway, for the love of God! The alarm’s raised now, and the pack will be upon us——”
“I think not. The watchmen doze at their posts, and they’ll pay no mind to calls for help. Why, the halls ring with them day and night as some poor soul is prodded or beaten, or belike is devil-ridden.”
Although I could hardly believe the more hopeful words, the rest that he spoke had curious results. Pinning my man down with one arm and one knee, I struck him in the face with my free fist. It was a short blow, but the hardest I had ever dealt, and I aimed it where Felix had bade me, at his jawbone. A marvel to me was the way he wilted. It was a lesson in human vulnerability I would not soon forget.
Just then Felix appeared, dragging by the collar the fellow he had chased. He too was hors de combat, and his capturer lost no time in heaving him into an empty cell whose door stood ajar. It came to me that one of the nine corpses on their way to the Potter’s Field had been found here tonight, and its heaving-out had left the cage for our convenience, and that the new-freed soul that had lately dwelt in the cankered flesh made merry on its flight to Heaven over the upshot. Swearing by San Pietro, the patron of fishermen, Felix seized my sleeping beauty by the scruff of the neck and dropped him beside his own. When the last of the three, awake but harmless, had joined his mates, my copemate shut the door and shot the padlock.
He was more than my copemate, I thought, half in warmheartedness I could not stay, half in a great dismay. He had proved himself the captain of the venture.
Meanwhile I had got my hand on Haran-din’s arm and was tugging him out of the cell. God knew I could hardly bear to touch the silver skin, and to grasp it tightly was unspeakably worse, because there was no firm flesh inside, only a moving jelly. Still, I did not let go. Sick in the belly, faint in the heart, I led him up the hall, down the steep stairs, through the anterooms. It was a thing I could do, and I did it. Although it was not of the splendid order of the things Felix could do, I felt fierce pride.
Our pace seemed no faster than a turtle’s as it makes across hot sand toward the cool sea. I dared not tug too hard on Haran-din’s arm, lest it pull out of its socket. Felix, pacing ahead of us only to turn back and wait our crawl, begged and cursed in vain. We could hurry no more than the black oxen of Time. Even so, the star of the gateway grew and brightened.
At last we passed through it, and the still-tainted air that Haran-din breathed must have seemed as sweet as the perfume of Paradise to a hero newly slain for Allah’s glory.
4
I got my Infidel into the gondola and Felix pushed off. No longer did we look the part of a Venetian lordling and his rascal—our faces, hands, and garments were smeared with jail filth—nor smell it either, unless I missed my guess. So there was nothing to stop us from heaving together on the oar. Truly our fat duck cut the water on the way to the rendezvous. Her owner, the voluble gondolier, had never raced her so fast to get to a fire.
When we came up to the Grazia da San Pietro, not one of her crew would lay hand on the lazar. Only by help of a rope passed around his waist was I able to hoist him aboard. My first thought was to leave the gondola adrift, but since our course lay toward San Paolo’s bridge, I decided to tow her for a little so the stink would get out of her and her jocund owner could retrieve her before he cast too many curses on our heads. She slowed our passage only a minute or two before I cut her loose. Now the breeze would ground her within a cable’s length of her destination.
I got two pieces of worn sail out of a cubby. One I spread on the hard boards for Haran-din to lie on; with the other I covered his pale, wasted form. It was a poor bed at best, I thought; but perhaps he could not feel its hardness beneath his rotted bones. If he needed no covering against the cool breeze and the cold splashings, at least it shielded him from our sight. But perhaps he was as insensible to this as to the rest, and the mercy was wholly ours.
As I thought of this, a sudden weakness came upon me, and I leaned against the rail, my eyes streaming tears. At last I must lean over, ghastly sick. Still I did not seem lowered in the estimation of the oarsmen, rough, lewd, hard-bitten fellows though they were. Not one of them glanced at me; instead they talked quietly to one another above their stroke.
The ship sped, and soon we were well away. The moon set, and still no bell towers clanged an alarm, and only owls and bats could find us in this close dark. Surely we could rest our fears till sunrise provided the rowers did not rest their arms; and by then I hoped we would be seven leagues out on the Adriatic—perhaps much farther if Neptune gave us a fair wind and tide. If so, we would be out of danger except for provost galleys set on our track. Since there was no indication that our means of flight had been discovered, we had every prospect of a clean escape.
No great danger lay in Captain Vico. He had not seen my face and had laid himself open to a beheading on the charge of receiving bribes. The guards we had laid out had had only dim looks at us in the fetid gloom.
The ebb tide had turned back soon after our setting forth, and now before a southeast wind was making into the Gulf of Venice with far more power than usual. And this was the wind we had most hoped to be spared, since it was directly contrary to our course. It was rising a little with the tide. While there was not the slightest sign of a brewing gale, our rowers were hard put to it to make headway. This would have roweled our nerves even on a lawful journey, with no gnashing of teeth behind us. Our destination, Zara, lay nearly sixty leagues beyond Chioggia—two days’ sail in the best of weathers. Now, as the dawn cracked, we had barely cleared the shoals off the mouth of the Adige.
I had hoped we would be a speck in the great glittering blue of the Adriatic long before this, instead of, as Felix put it, two shouts and a halloo from port.