have been in our hands for weeks.
How comes it that you did not discover these things before? You had my
orders."

"Because, General, until they knew that they were to go free none
of these prisoners would tell us anything. However closely they were
questioned, they said that it was against their oath, and that first
they would die. A long while ago I asked this very man of Egypt, and he
vowed that he had never been there."

"Be comforted, Olaf," broke in Martina, "for what more could he have
told you?"

"Nothing, perchance," I answered; "yet I should have gained many days of
time. Know that I go to Egypt to search for Heliodore."

"Be comforted again," said Martina. "This you could not have done until
the peace was signed; it would have been against your oath and duty."

"That is so," I answered heavily.

"Olaf," said Martina to me that night after Jodd had left us, "you say
that you will go to Egypt. How will you go? Will the blind Christian
general of the Empire, who has just dealt so great a defeat to the
mighty Caliph of the East, be welcome in Egypt? Above all, will he be
welcomed by the Emir Musa, who rules there, when it is known that he
comes to seek a woman who has escaped from that Emir's harem? Why,
within an hour he'd offer you the choice between death and the Koran.
Olaf, this thing is madness."

"It may be, Martina. Still, I go to seek Heliodore."

"If Heliodore still lives you will not help her by dying, and if she is
dead time will be little to her and she can wait for you a while."

"Yet I go, Martina."

"You, being blind, go to Egypt to seek one whom those who rule there
have searched for in vain. So be it. But how will you go? It cannot be
as an open enemy, since then you would need a fleet and ten thousand
swords to back you, which you have not. To take a few brave men, unless
they were Moslems, which is impossible, would be but to give them to
death. How do you go, Olaf?"

"I do not know, Martina. Your brain is more nimble than mine; think,
think, and tell me."

I heard Martina rise and walk up and down the room for a long time. At
length she returned and sat herself by me again.

"Olaf," she said, "you always had a taste for music. You have told me
that as a boy in your northern home you used to play upon the harp and
sing songs to it of your own making, and now, since you have been blind,
you have practised at this art till you are its master. Also, my voice
is good; indeed,