But what was her surprise, when the man (who, as she believed, had been mortally wounded), suddenly leaped up, clasped her wildly in his arms, and, while the same shrilling signals which she had before heard from a distance now vibrated in her ears, all the desolate thickets of the forest seemed at once to start into life, and a troop of Moorish warriors formed themselves into a circle round the cross. Meanwhile Zulma laughed aloud.--“Have we caught thee at last,” cried she, “thou rarest and shyest of birds?--Methinks thou wilt not again escape from us!”--The Lady Bertha, however, with a vehemence and strength which the Moor little expected, forced herself out of his embrace, and fled, as she had before done (when Gabrielle and Blanchefleur were carried away), to the cross, climbing up the high rocky pedestal on which it was placed, and clinging to the pillar of this holy emblem. It was indeed moving and wonderful, to behold how that innocent damsel stood there on high, with the light of the lamp on her graceful form, and contrasting in her beauty like a visitant from heaven with the crowd of hateful figures that now moved around her. Zulma, meanwhile, had folded her veil into the shape of a turban round her swarthy visage, and said,--“Now I am again like myself. Did you indeed believe, lady, that I was contented with the life that I have dragged on here among the Christians?--You must now go with us to Carthagena, and will there learn more of this world’s happiness, than in your whole simple life till now you could even have dreamed.” With contempt and disgust Bertha turned from her, and in a firm voice addressed herself to the Moorish chief, calling on him to remember his own honour as a knight and soldier, and not to debase himself by joining with a mean and lying slave, in order to force from her home a virtuous damsel of noble birth. The reckless libertine, however, answered her with scornful laughter, and then said,--“For this time your old stratagems, your saintly gestures, and severe looks, may not avail; for now, lady, you have no sighing lover before you (like my countryman, who was so easily repulsed), but the wise Alhafiz, who is here to fulfil the commands of Nurreddin, the grand emir, and will without fail bear you to his master’s arms in Carthagena.”