“Send this prisoner to me at once, Jodd, with an interpreter.  I would question him myself.”

“I fear he is not fit to come, General.”

“Then I will go to him.  Lead me, Martina.”

“If so, you must go far, General, for he died an hour ago, and his companions are making him ready for burial.”

“Jodd,” I said angrily, “those men 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, it is my only gift.  It was my voice that first brought me to Irene’s notice, when I was but the daughter of a poor Greek gentleman who had been her father’s friend and therefore was given a small place about the Court.  Of late we have sung many songs together, have we not, certain of them in that northern tongue, of which you have taught me something?”