He carried his burden safely within the doorway of Pelagia's house, into the crowd of peeping and shrieking damsels, where twenty pairs of the prettiest hands in Alexandria seized on Orestes, and drew him into the court.
'Like a second Hylas, carried off by the nymphs!' simpered he, as he vanished into the harem, to reappear in five minutes, his head bound rip with silk handkerchiefs, and with as much of his usual impudence as he could muster.
'Your Excellency--heroes all--I am your devoted slave.

I owe you life itself; and more, the valour of your succour is only surpassed by the deliciousness of your cure.

I would gladly undergo a second wound to enjoy a second time the services of such hands, and to see such feet busying themselves on my behalf.' 'You wouldn't have said that five minutes ago, quoth the Amal, looking at him very much as a bear might at a monkey.
'Never mind the hands and feet, old fellow, they are none of yours!' bluntly observed a voice from behind' probably Smid's, and a laugh ensued.
'My saviours, my brothers!' said Orestes, politely ignoring the laughter.

'How can I repay you?
Is there anything in which my office here enables me--I will not say to reward, for that would be a term beneath your dignity as free barbarians--but to gratify you ?' 'Give us three days' pillage of the quarter!' shouted some one.
'Ah, true valour is apt to underrate obstacles; you forget your small numbers.' 'I say,' quoth the Amal--'I say, take care, Prefect .-- If you mean to tell me that we forty couldn't cut all the throats in Alexandria in three days, and yours into the bargain, and keep your soldiers at bay all the time--' 'Half of them would join us!' cried some one.

'They are half our own flesh and blood after all!' 'Pardon me, my friends, I do not doubt it a moment.