Skene said no more, but cast a quiet glance at me, that I knew meant he trusted me, and for which, more than all I had yet had from him, I thanked him. But hard work had I to refrain myself, when Idonia besought me with tears not to leave her and, when presently her guardian bore her half fainting up the ladder, to appear smiling and confident. "I will follow you by and by," said I, and then sat down, suddenly sick at heart, upon a wooden grate of ship's goods; for the tumult at the gate was now grown intolerably affrighting. "You must try another way than this," said Skene, who had now gained the sill, and I comprehended that he was about to draw up the ladder after, in order to mask their way of escape when the door should be forced in or burnt. I nodded, remembering that Idonia had been moved by the same consideration formerly, when the soldiers came with their warrant of search; and so the ladder was drawn up and I left. It is not fit that I should describe all that followed, for no man can exactly report all, when all is in turmoil and an unchained madness hurrieth through every mind; madness of defiance and that hideous madness of fear. For if ever man gazed into the very eyes of the spectre of fear, it was I then, whom nameless horror possessed, so that more than once, when the hammering upon the gate shook even the flags with which the hall was paven, I shrunk back to the farthest corner in the dark, biting my knuckles till they bled; and even when the door was half down, and I at the breach making play with my sword to fend off the foremost that would enter, I felt my heart turn to water at the sight of that grinning circle of desperate and blood-hungry faces, and at the roar as of starved forest beasts ravening after their prey. My defence came to an end suddenly; for although I might have made shift awhile longer to avert the danger from the gate (but indeed I was nigh spent with my labours there), I chanced just then to gaze sidelong at the shuttered window upon the left of it, and saw the shutter all splintered, and a fellow with a great swart beard, already astraddle on the ledge. Without a moment's parley I ran my sword half to the hilts into his side, and as he sank down in a huddle, I left the sword sticking where it was, and ran for my life. How I got free of the house I know not, but it was by a window of the kitchen, I think, or else a hole I burst for myself; but by some venture of frenzy I gained the street, or rather an enclosed court, arched under at the further end by a sort of conduit or channel in the wall; and so, half on my belly shuffling through this filthy bow, I came by good hap into the open street, that I found was Tower Street, where at length I thought it safe to take leisure to breathe, and look about me.