This point of view is presented in his book, with a very effective
eloquence. She ended, he says, by shedding tears over him, sacred,
redeeming tears, while he also wept with joy in the manner of a
converted sinner. Directing him to hide in the bushes and wait patiently
(a police patrol was expected in the Settlement) she went away towards
the houses, promising to return at night.
As if providentially appointed to be the newly wedded wife of the
village blacksmith, the woman persuaded her husband to come out with
her, bringing some tools of his trade, a hammer, a chisel, a small
anvil.... "My fetters"--the book says--"were struck off on the banks
of the stream, in the starlight of a calm night by an athletic, taciturn
young man of the people, kneeling at my feet, while the woman like a
liberating genius stood by with clasped hands." Obviously a symbolic
couple. At the same time they furnished his regained humanity with some
decent clothing, and put heart into the new man by the information that
the seacoast of the Pacific was only a very few miles away. It could be
seen, in fact, from the top of the next ridge....
The rest of his escape does not lend itself to mystic treatment and
symbolic interpretation. He ended by finding his way to the West by
the Suez Canal route in the usual manner.
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