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riano on a somewhat similar occasion, he felt it difficult to screw up his courage to the point of springing across a black chasm, which he was aware descended some forty or fifty feet to the causeway of the street, and the opposite parapet, on which he was expected to alight like, a bird, appeared dim and ghostly in the uncertain light.
Twice did the courageous man bend himself to the leap, while the blood rushed with apoplectic violence to his bald head; and twice did his spirit fail him at the moment of need!
"Oh, Bacri!" he said in a hoarse whisper, wiping the perspiration from his brow, as he stood on the giddy height, "if there were only a damsel in distress on the opposite side, or a legion of Turks defying me to come on, I could go over, methinks, like a rocket, but to be required to leap in cold blood upon next to nothing over an unfathomable abyss, really--. Hast never a morsel of plank about thee, Jacob?"
Fortunately for all parties, Jacob had a flower stand on his roof, to which he returned with Mariano, who wrenched a plank therefrom, and brought it to the point of difficulty.
After this they met with no serious obstruction. Sometimes descending below the streets and passing through cellars, at others crossing roofs or gliding along the darkest sides of dark walls and passages, they traversed the town without being challenged, and gained the southern wall near the point at which Mariano had crossed it on a former occasion.
Here the Jew bade them God-speed, and left them.
"I hope thou art sure of the road, Mariano?" said Francisco anxiously.
"Trust me, father; I know it well. Only have a care that you tread lightly and make no noise.--Come."
Leading them to the point on the ramparts where poor Castello's head still stood withering in the night-wind, Mariano bade them remain in shadow while he attached the rope to the spike.
The sentinel could be dimly seen, for there was no moon, pacing to and fro within two hundred yards of them. They wat