“That must be a slight exaggeration,” remarked the president, now feeling horribly uncomfortable. “Nevertheless, I should like to be quite sure that he had reached the inside of the prison walls. They are very long about it; they ought to be back by this time.” “Do you wish that I should go and see?” asked Ben Safi, pitying his friend’s uneasiness. “I shall be much obliged to you.” At the moment when Ben Safi was leaving the court, a distant clamour was heard from without, followed by several successive gunshots. A sound of many footsteps was audible, as if a crowd of men were approaching. The doors were thrown open violently, and Djilali made his appearance. His clothes were torn and soiled with dirt, and his right eye seemed to have suffered severely. “Ouf!” he puffed out, “my back is broken! May Sidi Abd-Allah burn me, if he is a man.” “Explain yourself. Tell me!” said the court, on thorns. “Ben Serraq?--” “Ben Serraq, indeed? If ever you contrive to get him into prison, I will consent to be roasted alive.” “He has escaped, then?” “How should it be otherwise: he is the devil in person?” “Have the goodness to tell me how you could have been so stupid as to let a single man break away from ten of you.” “The thing was very simple, and he was not long about it. When we got to the prison, at the instant when they opened the door, he unceremoniously seized the sentinel’s gun; he twisted it round like the sails of a windmill, and threw down three-fourths of our number flat on our backs. I immediately rushed upon him; together with the rest who were still on their legs, and you see”--here he exhibited his exterior, including his black and swollen eye--“what I got by it. After having nearly felled me by putting his doubled fist into my eye, he seized me by the skin, and threw me, like a bundle of old clothes, on the top of my comrades. We were all left rolling pell-mell together; and, when I got up, I saw that demon already landed on the other side of the river. The guard came out and fired more than thirty musket-shots at him while he was climbing up the bank; but, bless me! they might just as well have dusted his back with pepper and salt. The bullets were flattened without hurting him.” “The thing is prodigious!” “After he got to the other side of the river, no one knows what became of him. Some say that he burrowed into the ground, whilst others declare that he took flight with a couple of great black wings that suddenly grew out of his sides and unfolded wide. The soldiers belonging to the guard will have it that he laid hold of a horse that was grazing there, that he jumped on its back, and set off at full gallop.” LANGTHWAITE.