My weary and aching frame soothed and refreshed by the pelting rain, I must have fallen into a kind of doze, for I was suddenly startled into full consciousness by the feeling that some one was meddling with my bonds, which, the next moment, severed by a sharp knife, fell from my limbs.  Then a small soft hand seized mine and dragged me swiftly away from the stake to which I had been bound.  It was so intensely dark just then, however, that I was quite unable to see where I was going, and was obliged to trust implicitly to my unknown guide.  For two or three minutes we twisted hither and thither, blindly, so far as I was concerned, and then another flash came which enabled me to see that my companion was, as I had already suspected, my faithful little friend Ama, and that she was conducting me, by a somewhat circuitous route, toward the gate in the palisade.