Before the façade of this edifice, a row of illuminated lanterns of various gaudy colours hung on orange-trees, while through its open door and arches of trellis-work came the hum of voices, a warm glow of light that gushed into the pitchy obscurity without, and the perfume of roasting coffee, with the fragrant odour of stewing kabobs. The building was spacious, and contained every requisite comfort as some one says somewhere, 'but clean sheets and a Christian bed.'
Entering, we found a number of Turks, all well armed of course, seated on mats round a species of raised divan; they were smoking and were attended by long-haired Greek girls, who were tripping about with their beautiful feet bare and stockingless, supplying these heavy-brained but true Believers with coffee in diminutive cups, or tobacco bruised with apples for their long chibouques, paper for cigarettes, and kabobs on wooden skewers, with caviar, olives, and cheese.
As we entered, all raised their dark and glittering eyes to scan us, by the light of a huge gilt lantern that hung from a dome in the centre of the Khan.
'Salaam aleikum,' said we, touching our caps.
'With you be Allah,' muttered all present; and the keeper of the Khan, a lively Greek in wide blue breeches, a tight brown jacket, a white apron and glittering skull cap, hurried forward to attend us.
As an excuse to remain and to observe the company, rather than from any necessity for refreshment, we asked for coffee and a slight supper. In a few minutes we had the first, black and fragrant, with milk, hot cake, and a preserve of grapes boiled with walnuts, all placed before us upon two little trays in a corner of the apartment, where a charming young Greek girl, with her black hair plaited over her delicate white ears, arrayed the mats and cushions for us; then cigars were brought, and seating ourselves, we proceeded to refresh and inspect the goodly company.
Little or no notice was taken of us by these lumbering and ponderous Orientals, for whom even the emotion of curiosity would be too exciting. Yet the large and crowded hall of this Roumelian khan presented one of the most striking scenes I have witnessed.
Therein seemed all the races of the Turkish empire at coffee and chibouques.
The old Effendi, grave, solemn, pretentious, and stupid; his turban white as snow, or green, to mark his descent from the Holy Prophet; his beard black as night; his nose fierce and aquiline; his eyes sparkling, and his heavy moustache curling over the amber mouth of his long chibouque; his scarlet nether garments and buff boots; his ample shawl, long caftan, and gilded dagger completing the picture. The noble Albanian, in his red jacket embroidered with blue cord; his ample white kilt (like ours, above the knee); his red-bandaged hose; his yataghan, musket, and brass-butted pistols. The sombre Armenian, with his long beard and flowing robes, his grave and respectful visage surmounted by an enormous kalpec of black felt. The handsome and lively Greek, unabashed by the presence of his Turkish tyrants, and all chatter, fun, and gaiety; closely shaved and bare-legged; with a blue turban, short trousers, and black shoes. The hardy Islesman in his shaggy capote; the modern Turkish artillery officer, in his tight surtout with gold fringe epaulettes; his little fez, with its brass plate; his red trousers strapped tightly under French glazed boots; his gold belt and keen Damascus sabre—oriental in face, but decidedly occidental in dress, and almost in idea; for the corps ofTopchiswere all organisedà la Franqueby the Sultan Selim. There, too, was a fierce and scowling Tartar—dropped Heaven knows from where—but armed to the teeth, with dagger, pistols, bow and arrows, toasting dough-balls in the brazier. A moolah and a dervish in their grey felt caps that taper like an extinguisher: and lastly, there was a disgusting Stamboul Jew, crushed in aspect, cunning in eye, with contracted brow and blubber lip; avaricious in soul and unyielding in purpose. A few black slaves, hideous in face and scanty in attire, but very intent onbacksish, may complete this sketch of a picturesque group—or if aught be wanting, let me mention the powerful form of Callum Dhu, in his belted plaid, green kilt, and white sporran, as he sat hobbing and nobbing with a dervish over a dish of mutton ham; though honest Callum knew as much of the language and ideas of the dervish as he did about the nature and habits of 'the Dodo and its kindred.'
The conversation generally consisted of occasional and disjointed remarks, with long pauses between.
The war was less spoken of than the prices of tobacco, maize, rice, silk, cotton, and wheat, and other products of the land; but Jack and I could glean that they were not a little proud of the circumstance, that the little Turkish war-steamer, theMahmoudieh, and a Hadriote brig, by steering in another direction, had escaped the storm which threw our vessel on the reefs of Palegrossa.
'Each of these fellows is quite a bijou,' said Jack Belton; 'I would give the world to have them all at home and comfortably ensconced in a handsome caravan, and to become their Barnum throughout Britain.'
'What are the news from Europe?' asked the Turkish officer of Topchis, in French.
'Very unimportant,' replied Belton; 'in the west, the eyes of all men are turned to the east, and nothing is heard of, thought of, or spoken of, but this protracted siege of Sevastopol—while diplomatists seem to be splitting straws at Paris and Vienna.'
'Splitting straws?' pondered the literal Turk, 'Glory be to Allah! A strong employment for generals and viziers—have they no grooms to chop their straw?'
A sudden commotion in the street without, and the irregular tramp of men marching, attracted the attention of all the loiterers in the khan; and as several Turks left their pipes and mats, and with their hands on their weapons, hurried to the door, Belton and I sprang up to see what was the matter.
The gleam of arms and the blaze of torches lightened in the dark and muddy street, as a party of six Turkish marines, in their blue uniforms and red fez caps, with crossed belts and fixed bayonets, escorted a Greek prisoner towards the barrack of the Bombardiers. After saying a few words to his guard, the prisoner paused at the open window of the khan, which faced the street, and begged 'a draught of cold water in the name of God.'
The keeper was about to give it, but paused; for the delinquent was his countryman, and the eyes of many armed Turks were fixed with a lowering expression on both.
During this brief pause, I scrutinized the prisoner.
He was a young man, as nearly as I could judge, about five-and-twenty: his features were no less remarkable for their manly beauty than singular in their character. His long hair, which hung in heavy locks from under his little blue Greek cap, were black as night; his eyes and his smart moustache were jet; but his features were wan, sickly, and as ghastly as those of a corpse. His attire was the splendidly-embroidered blue jacket, white kilt, and bandaged hose of an Albanian officer—but all frayed, torn, and disfigured. His appearance was singularly striking, and that nothing might be wanting to complete it, and excite our sympathy, on his wrists were two massive steel fetters, which were joined by a heavy iron chain.
Again he pointed to his parched lips, and hoarsely begged a cup of water.
From the hand of a Turk who stood near us I snatched a cup of wine—that Thracian wine which Pliny commended in the happier days of Greece—and handed it to the poor Albanian. A glance of deep gratitude flashed from his dark expressive eyes, as, thirstily and joyfully, he drained the cup and returned it to me with a graceful bow. With a few words of apology, I handed it to the Turk, but that personage drew back with a scowl on his brow, and, with a hand on his poniard, tossed the cup away.
The Greek kissed both his fettered hands to me, and retired: the fixed bayonets flashed again around him, and the dark group disappeared; but his glance of thankfulness was still before me, and it sunk deep into my heart.
'Bono!' said an old Moolah, who was named Moustapha, in approval of what I had done; ''twas a good action, Frank, and thy better angel will write it ten times down in Heaven.'
'Who is this Greek?' I inquired, of the fat old Yuze Bashi Hussein, who at that moment entered the khan, shouting imperiously, 'Hola, Boba!—Here woman, coffee!'—and the speed with which his wants were supplied, almost before he had seated his amplitude upon a carpet, showed that our captain of Bombardiers was not a person to be trifled with. He hated Greeks, but his animosity was confined only to the males of that race. Though he scowled at the keeper of the khan, he leered at his wife who attended us. She was a pretty woman of Scio, who wore the grotesque costume of that island—a braided red jacket, with a short padded green skirt. On her head was a small cap, from which hung a veil on the sides of her face and gracefully down her back; a circlet of Paphian diamonds, or rock crystals, from Baffo, glittered round her pretty neck, on which the huge eyes of the Yuze Bashi gloated from time to time. But to resume—'Who is this Greek?' I asked.
'The worst of traitors: 'grumbled Hussein. 'Every one who comes into this world is touched by the devil, who attends at his birthunseen; but Inshallah! Shaitaun must have taken a rough hold of our Greek! He was an officer—a mulazim in the regiment of Albanians who garrisoned this place before we came here.'
'An officer!' I reiterated, in astonishment.
'And chained thus!' added Belton, in the same tone.
'Now, by the seventh paradise, but you astonish me!' said the Captain Hussein, opening his great oriental eyes. 'Do you forget that the man is only a Greek, and that the Greeks, like the Russian, are all beasts—as Zerdusht the Prophet was, who married his grandmother, and who will have a bridle of fire in his jaws at the last day.'
'His crime—'
'Was desertion. He was stationed at the battery near the mouth of the harbour, and fled one night in an open boat, taking with him four Albanian soldiers. They rowed across the Sea of Marmora to the isle of that name; and after lurking for a time among its marble quarries, feeding on nuts like so many squirrels, they sailed over to Natolia, where they were taken in the Sangiac of Bigah, and made prisoners. The four Albanian soldiers were shot on the instant; but he has been sent here, on board theMahmoudieh—yonder war-steamer now at anchor in the bay—and to-morrow, before the sun is at its height, he shall be shot to death in the Valley of the Little Mosque.'
'After all he has endured?'
'Poor fellow!'
'Mashallah! Human life is only a deceitful enjoyment,' replied Hussein, who was an inveterate quoter of the Koran; 'but may I never see Paradise if his story is not a strange one; I shall tell it to you—'tis a tale, like any other, and I heard it all, being one of the court-martial at Bigah which sentenced him to die.'
After draining his little coffee-cup, refilling the capacious bowl of his pipe, and taking a few prodigious whiffs, the Yuze Bashi related the following story, which—with the reader's permission—I will rehearse in my own words; and while he spoke, the noble figure, stately presence, pale beauty, and splendid eyes of the manly Albanian Greek, seemed ever and painfully to be before me.
Sixteen years ago, when the Allied Powers united to assist the Sultan in his conflict with old Mehemet Ali, then pasha of Egypt, and nominally his vassal, the insurgent garrison of Acre was successfully bombarded, as all the world knows, by the British fleet, under the flag of Commodore Sir Charles Napier, who on that occasion distinguished himself with his usual skill, bravery, and intrepidity. The fortress was taken in a few hours; but the destruction and slaughter were fearfully augmented by the explosion of a magazine of powder and live bombs, by which the venerable ramparts of St. John were reduced to a pile of blackened ruins. The roar of the exploding powder was appalling; from the low headland of Acre there ascended into the pure blue Syrian sky a mighty column of smoke and dust. The lonely Kishon was startled in its stony bed; every mosque, khan, and bazaar in the city rocked to its foundation, while the whole waters of the bay were agitated by the concussion and rolled in foamy ripples on the rocks of Cape Carmel.
In that explosion one thousand five hundred brave soldiers who had escaped the dangers and withstood the horrors of the bombardment were in a moment swept into eternity.
Of the many who perished, none was more universally regretted by the Egyptian garrison, and even by the British commander, than Demetrius Vidimo, a Greek captain, who served the Pasha, in mere hatred of the Sultan and of the Turks, who were the tyrants of his people—a hatred in which he was sustained by his wife, who was the daughter of a Sciote patriot of high rank. Demetrius had participated in all the horrors of the Greek struggle for independence, when the men of Missolonghi, after a year's siege of hardship unparalleled, and after defying all the united power of Turkey and of Egypt—after having a hundred thousand bombs and balls shot among them, buried themselves in the ruins of the city. He had seen the pyramid of Grecian skulls that rose near the grave of Bozzaris; he had seen the horrors of the massacre of Scio, when fifty thousand frantic Turks drenched the loveliest of the Ægean Isles in blood, slaying sixty thousand Sciotes in its streets, and carrying thirty thousand into hopeless slavery. He had seen the manly boys and beautiful girls of Greece sold at a dollar a-head in the streets of Smyrna. He had seen their mothers ripped open by the Turkish sabre and the handjiar, and the children torn reeking from the womb and dashed against the walls of Athens, for the wildest beasts of Africa or India were mild as tender lambs when compared to the merciless, brutal, and unglutted soldiery of Mahmoud the Second. He had seen the slave-market of Stamboul crowded with Grecian captives—brave men struggling and raving in their futile vengeance against the Osmanlies; and women—the pale virgin and the weeping mother—shrinking in the agonies of separation from all they loved, and in horror of their lewd and sensual purchasers, who bought them from the troops for the value of twelve cartridges, a pipe-stick, or a piastre, and dragged them away to slavery, and worse than slavery, in their harems, dens, and anderuns at Stamboul.
He had seen all these things, and the soul of Demetrius was fired by a thirst for undying vengeance upon the oppressors of his people.
He was an Albanian, and chief of one of the eight tribes of the Scutari mountains. Hardy, brave, reckless to a fault, and fired alike by enthusiasm and revenge, he had distinguished himself on a thousand occasions against the Turks; and at the previous storming of Acre—eight years before—when Ibrahim Pasha, at the head of forty thousand Egyptians and Arabs, besieged it for six months, the Grecian Captain Vidimo in every assault was conspicuous, both by his bravery and his picturesque Albanian costume; for wherever death was to be found or danger sought and glory won, there towered the figure of Vidimo, in his skull-cap, with his long hair flowing under it; his fleecy capote flung loosely over his shoulder; his white kilt and scarlet buskins, leading on the van of battle, and handling in rapid succession the long musket, the crooked sabre, deadly yataghan and pistols, which are the native weapons of the Albanian mountaineer.
But he perished in the explosion at Acre, and so there was an end of him, greatly to the regret of his comrades, and very much to the grief of the Yuze Bashi Hussein, who had set his whole heart upon taking the valiant Greek dead or alive, and laying his head at the feet of Mahmoud the Second, to claim the promised reward.
The Turks were furious! not even his body was to be found, though the Sultan had offered a princely sum for it; and amid all the heads hewn off after the bombardment, there was not one found that would pass muster as having belonged to Vidimo, whose face was well known by a peculiar sabre cut which he received at the defence of Missolonghi in 1826.
After the capture, Ali Pasha, and Hussein Ebn al Ajuz, with other officers of the corps of Bombardiers, enjoyed to their hearts' content the pleasure of slicing off the head of the dark Egyptians, or stuffing their pockets with tawny ears, and with something better still the various good things to be picked up in the bazaars, the great khan, the Franciscan monastery, the Greek church, the Armenian synagogue, and other places where the unbelieving dogs of Jews and Christians presumed to worship in any other fashion than that proscribed by the holy camel-driver.
During his minute researches in a certain flat-roofed mansion near the Castle of Iron, the enterprising Hussein and several of his soldiers discovered a female, of great beauty, with two children, a boy and a girl, concealed in an alcove; and while the poor little ones with terror in their wild black eyes, screamed and clung to the skirt of their pale mother, the soldiers of Hussein, with brandished weapons, and fierce Turkish imprecations, dragged them forth. The woman was too handsome to be sacrificed: so Hussein, who had a special eye to female loveliness, saved her at once, by sabring one of his Majesty's soldiers and pistolling another, to cool the ardour of the rest; but now, a dozen or more of Turkish officers, flushed alike by blood, which is enjoined by the Koran, and by wine, which is forbidden by it, crowded into the apartment.
The beauty of the captive inflamed them all, and a furious contention ensued, as to who should possess her.
She offered a thousand Xeriffs as the ransom of her honour and her children's lives; but the princely guerdon was received and rent from her, with shouts of derision.
Then Ali Pasha asserting his senior rank, seized her rudely.
'Hold!' she exclaimed, in a piercing voice and with a nobility of gesture which made evenhimdraw back; 'I am a Christian woman—the daughter of a Sciote noble, and the widow of him who died to-day, Demetrius Vidimo, and these are his children, Constantine and Iola—we shall die together!' and with these words, she took from her bosom a coral cross and tied it round the neck of her little boy, believing him to be in more imminent danger than her daughter.
Again the Turks uttered a fierce derisive shout; but stood irresolute, when confronted by this Greek woman, whose aspect awed them.
She was clad in black, as being indicative of her fallen fortune; a snow-white kerchief covered her head, and gave a Madonna-like expression to her deep, black, thoughtful eyes, and soft but marble features; for she possessed, in its greatest purity, all the classic beauty of the ancient Greek women—a clear complexion, and long thick tresses, dark as the northern night. She was lovely, feminine, and sad in her expression, for in her time she had seen those things which were more than enough to banish smiles for ever from her face; yet, unblanched by past sorrow or by present danger, her lips were—strange to say—alluringly rosy, as her teeth were dazzingly white.
Her form was tall and full, and maternity had given a charming roundness to the slenderness of figure which usually falls to the lot of Greek women.
Inflamed by the desire of possessing a captive so fair, every Turk stood by with pistol and sabre in hand, resolved to die rather than yield her to another. The stern altercation was fierce and noisy; and there amid that terrible group, pale, and, like Niobe, all in tears, with her younglings clinging to her skirts, the widowed mother stood, trembling in her soul, for she knew that such mercy as tigers accord would be the mercy given to her.
'Since all cannot possess—by everything that is holy! let us all destroy her!' cried Hussein, levelling a pistol.
'Allah—Allah! Amaum! Amaum!' cried Ali Pasha, and the crowd of Turks. A confused discharge of pistols took place, and pierced by more than twenty balls, the mother fell dead with her blood spouting over her children, and so ended the dispute; for the sun set at that moment, and they all hastened out, to kneel and say theSalât al Moghreb, or evening prayer, so Hussein was left in possession alike of the dead body, of the children, and the premises.
After rifling the corpse of its rings and jewels, he took away the orphans to make slaves of them.
Perceiving that the girl, Iola, then in her sixth year, promised to be beautiful, he kept her; the boy, Constantine, he gave to Ali Pasha, colonel of the Bombardiers, who made a soldier of him, and in time he became a lieutenant of Albanians in the service of the Sultan—but he never forgot the cause for which his father fought—vengeance for Greece, or the death which his mother died; and thus, seeking the first opportunity of leaving a service so hateful as that of Abdul Medjid, he had deserted from Heraclea; but was retaken, tried and sent back by theMahmoudiehsteam-ship, and on the morrow was to die. The cry of the exterminating angel would be heard, and an Unbeliever would perish like a withered bud, or like a palm-tree struck by lightning.
I cannot express the aversion we felt for the old Yuze Bashi, who with singular coolness related the part he had borne in this barbarous episode of the Egyptian revolt; and which, with occasional whiffs of his chibouque, he related as quietly as one might do the account of a little shooting excursion, or the result of a pic-nic party, and nothing more.
'And Iola—the daughter,' I asked; 'what became of her?'
'That I cannot tell you,' said he; 'she is never named to me now.'
'Does she know of the fate that hangs over her brother?'
'No!'
'She is dead, then?'
'To him—and to the world, at least.'
'Which means that she is—'
'Married—exactly.'
'So inquiries might only be unpleasant, if not dangerous?'
'Yes.'
'But when her brother is to die?'—began Belton.
'She shall never know of it,' replied Hussein. 'What useful end would be served by conveying the information to her. She would weep, and the tears of women are a great annoyance now, since we cannot apply the bastinado without permission from a Kadi or Moolah. Bah! this Constantine Vidimo is only a Greek, and one ball will kill him: in a moment all will be over.'
'Only a Greek!' reiterated Belton, who had been poring over theCorsairon our outward voyage; 'are not the Greeks human beings?'
'Scarcely—know you not, O Frank! that the Lord of the world hath sealed up their hearts and their hearing, and veiled their sight by a dimness.'
Tired of the Yuze Bashi and his barbarous ideas, we rose to bid him farewell and leave the khan; but he, having a wholesome terror of Ghoules, Guebres, and Genii in the dark, resolved on accompanying us to our quarters; for he too had rooms in the Coumbazadjilar-Kislaci. Thus we found the impossibility of shaking him off, and as we stumbled on, arm-in-arm with this epauletted assassin, followed step for step by Callum Dhu, through the dark, muddy, and unpaved streets of Heraclea, he told us various other pretty little episodes of himself and Ali Pasha.
The name of the latter must be familiar to the reader, as being the Turkish General of Brigade whose infamous abduction and murder of a young and beautiful Greek girl in the suburbs of Varna lately roused the indignation of the French commandant, by whose humane exertions, for the FIRST time in Oriental history, an Osmanli was tried for the murder of a Christian; and consequently Ali Pasha, the Brigadier; Lieutenant Mohammed Aga, his aide-de-camp; Hussein Aga, his steward; and Corporal Moustapha, appeared before a tribunal, which, of course, acquitted them; for every hair in the beard of a true Believer is worth all the benighted souls in Christendom.
With the melancholy story of Constantine Vidimo in my mind, the reader may imagine with what emotion I heard the Turkish drums beating in the barrack-yard for the punishment parade next morning, and our three pipers playing thegathering, for our little detachment, as a portion of the Allied troops, had to attend the painful scene.
Callum Dhu, now a smart and active soldier, appeared punctually to accoutre me with my pipe-clayed belt, sword, &c., and while the sun was yet below the sea, I issued into the shady square of the Coumbazadjilar-Kislaci, where our sergeants were calling the roll, and where the battalion of the Mir Alai Saïd, with short blue tunics, scarlet trousers, and tarbooshes, were falling in by companies, while a fewtopchis, or gunners, were being slowly and laboriously paraded and mustered by the ponderous Yuze Bashi Hussein.
The parade was soon formed, and the two commanding officers, Mir Alai Saïd and Major Catanagh, mutually complimented each other on the appearance of their men; and, in truth, this Turkish battalion, in efficiency, order, and discipline, would have done no discredit to any army in Europe. Their faces were dark and fierce, keen and Asiatic; their words of command, like their names, sounded wild and barbaric, asoursmust have been to them; but, with a few exceptions, every manoeuvre and tactic were modelled after our own.
While expressing astonishment and even merriment at the large plumed bonnets, hairy sporrans, and bare knees of our men, the Mir Alai was delighted by their athletic figures. The jewelled dirks, claw-pistols, and basket-hilted claymores of the officers excited his interest, and he vowed by the beard of the Prophet that he had never before seen weapons of such a fashion or of finer workmanship.
'Stout fellows all,' said he, in strange English, as he patted the shoulder of Callum, who was a flank file; 'their hands will soon be hardened by carrying the brass-butted musket.'
'If they do not become food for powder and the Russian worms, colonel,' replied Catanagh.
The sun rose above the sea of Marmora, and at that instant the shrill wild voice of the muezzin from the lofty minaret of an adjacent mosque pierced the silence and purity of the morning with the summons to early prayer.
Then the Turkish battalion, which had been standing at ease, with ordered arms, and formed in open columns of companies at quarter distance, bent their heads in prayer, and many produced their beads of cedar-wood, and commenced their orisons with a fervour that impressed us with no small respect for these poor Moslem soldiers; but after a time the sharp drum beat a roll, the whole battalion started to 'attention'—the bayonets were fixed—the arms 'shouldered,' and as therightwas assigned to us, the whole presented arms, with drums beating, and their single colour flying, as we marched out to the place of execution, with our pipes playing. The Osmanlies followed, with their brass band, cymbals, bells, tambourines, and triangles, performing something that was meant for a march; but its measure was more wild and barbaric than pleasing.
The morning was brilliant; on our left the sea of Marmora shone like an ocean of glass, and the rakish little Greek caiques were shooting out upon its bosom from the shady creeks and sunny inlets, where they had been anchored overnight.
Marching out by an ancient gate, which was encrusted by carving and old inscriptions, and covered by ivy and acanthus-leaves, we traversed a causeway coeval perhaps with the days of Zeuxis and the palace of Vespasian, and reached a little hollow, which was surrounded by groves of the olive, the emblem of peace—the tree which Minerva gave to Greece, and which, as the poets say, was grasped by Latona in her maternal throes.
It was a lonely place, and no sound was heard there but the coo of the wild pigeon or the flapping of a stork's wing, as he sat on a prostrate column, the rich Corinthian capital of which was almost buried among luxuriant creepers, weeds, and wild flowers. In this valley stood a little gilded mosque, having a shining dome, and two taper minarets, like gigantic candlesticks, the tops of which, to complete the resemblance, seemed to be lighted; but this was merely the sun's rays tipping with fire their bulbous-shaped roofs of polished brass. Around towered a group of solemn cypresses, which cast their shadows on the marble slabs, the green mounds, the turbaned headstones, and gilded sarcophagi that marked where many a true Believer lay.
A little apart from these, a new grave freshly dug was yawning darkly among the green grass and dewy morning flowers.
Beside it knelt the Greek officer, and near him were twelve Turkish soldiers, with their bayonets fixed.
As we halted in the valley, and formed three sides of a hollow square, a bell jangled in the mosque, and the Hafiz Moustapha, and moolah or priest, wearing long robes and a turban of green cloth, came slowly forth, bearing the Koran in his hand; and now a chill fell on all our hearts, for to us this scene and all these preparations were solemn, strange, and new.
I gazed with deep interest at the poor young Greek, who was still upon his knees, and who seemed to have given up all his soul to God in prayer and outpouring of the heart—and as I surveyed his face, so pure and cold, so noble and severe in its classic beauty, all the episodes of his dark and terrible story came before me; and at that time I felt an abhorrence of all Osmanli in general, and our bulbous-shaped Yuze Bashi in particular. Of all who were present his visage expressed the least concern, for to him the shooting of a Greek was infinitely of less moment than the shooting of a crow.
The poor Albanian!
On rising from his orisons, he looked calmly about him; but nowhere save in our own ranks did he meet with eyes of sympathy. Perhaps we had somewhat of a fellow-feeling for a bare-kneed soldier whose garb so nearly resembled our own, for the white camise of the mountaineer ofAlbaniaand the tartan kilt of the mountaineer ofAlbanyare as nearly identical as the old tradition of that mutual descent from one stock would make us, a tradition strangely corroborated by the old classic names of Hector, Æneas, Helen, and Constantine being still preserved among the Highland clans. But enough of this legendary fustian.
Constantine Vidimo was drawing nearer our ranks, when again the bell rang in the mosque; and shrinking back to the side of the newly-dug grave, he folded his arms and gazed fiercely at the Turks.
The spiritual consolation of a Greek priest of his own religion was denied him in this terrible hour, the bitterness of which the old wretch named Moolah Moustapha left nothing unsaid to enhance, for he was an ancient Mohammedan, who could remember the 'good old times' when the true Believer had the power of forcing every Christian dog, however high in rank, to sweep the muddy streets of Stamboul before him at his caprice and whim.
With his hands crossed on the Koran, which he pressed to his breast; with his long white beard spreading over it, and his long green robe falling in heavy folds from his shoulders to the grass, he faced the Turkish troops, and strung together a number of disjointed quotations from the Koran, which, as Belton whispered, were mere incentives to bloodshed and bigotry.
'Oh, true Believers! wage war against such of the Infidels as are near you—let them find no security in you, and know that God is only with those who fear him. Should the divine vengeance fall upon you either by day or by night, believe that the wicked have hastened it upon you. The Believer dieth happy, a possessor of Eden, through which flows rivers of wine and sherbet; he is adorned with bracelets of fine gold, and he is clothed in silken garments of fine green cloth; glory surrounds him; he sleeps in a couch of pearl, with his head pillowed on the soft bosom of a black-eyed girl, and his reward is to dwell for ever in the abode of delight; butthou, oh Greek! after appearing at the last day, chained to the geni who seduced thee, shall broil for ever in the dark caves of everlasting fire—a poor bubble, swept down the burning torrents of the river of Woe!'
To all this I could perceive that the Turkish soldiers listened with considerable impatience; for there is, I believe, a natural antipathy springing up between the military and the religious of the Ottoman empire. Being rough, and not ungenerous, the Turkish soldier despises the moolahs, muftis, imaums, dervishes, calanders, and fakirs, for their cunning, avarice, hypocrisy, and secret immorality; while they, in turn, rail at and preach against the soldiers for wearing tight pantaloons, relinquishing the turban for the fez, learning to drink raki, and generally for following a little too closely the customs of Europe.
'Have a righteous fear of Mohammed, oh, Believers!' resumed the Hafiz Moustapha, 'and you will die in the faith, and find the Koran the only sure cord to heaven; but,' he added, turning his face to us, for this moolah had been a soldier—a corporal of Grenadiers—in his youth, as the reader shall learn more at length; 'but may the holy Prophet, who sees all that night veils and day enlightens—who knoweth and heareth all things, bless these infidels, who have come to fight for the land of Islam!'
'Amaum! amaum!' muttered the Mir Alai Saïd, as he waved his sabre impatiently to the mulazim commanding the party of twelve soldiers, whose muskets were to despatch the prisoner, and a chaoush (sergeant) who stood on their flank, armed with a pistol, carefully examining its lock and priming.
An onboshi (corporal) approached with a handkerchief to bind up the eyes of the Greek lieutenant; but scorning alike to kneel or be blindfolded, he stood boldly confronting the firing party at the distance of thirty yards, fearlessly and firm. He drew a cross from his breast—the coral cross of Hussein's savage story—the cross his mother had tied around his neck at Acre, and after kissing it, he held it up in our view, and said in somewhat broken English—
'It is the emblem of your faith—the religion in which I die. Let not these Turkish swine defile it when I am gone. Who among you Christian men will take it from my hand, and keep it as the last gift of a wretch who never knew what it was to be happy?'
'I will!' exclaimed I, starting forward.
He grasped my hand, and his beautiful dark eyes flashed with dusky fire, as he waved his right arm with pride, and exclaimed—
'Now, dogs—I am ready for you!'
His aspect and bearing were splendid.
Stern and unyielding as the Prometheus of Æschylus, braving the fury of his tyrants, and scorning to sue for mercy or stoop his haughty head, the noble Greek stood before the levelled muskets that were to destroy him.
'Nishan ale!' (ready—present) cried the Turkish commander of the platoon.
'Atesh!' (fire)
Flame flashed from the twelve iron tubes; twelve bullets whistled shrilly past us, and the reports rang like thunder in the narrow valley, scaring the stork from the ruined column, and the wild pigeons from the olive-grove. The smoke curled upward in the pure atmosphere, and the poor Greek officer lay prone on the grass, breathing heavily, with blood pouring in streams from his throat and bosom. Three balls had pierced him, yet he was not dead.
Now something like a groan ran along our ranks, for at that moment the chaoush with the pistol approached the dying man, placed the muzzle to his ear, and coolly and deliberately blew out his brains!
So ended this scene of blood.
* * * *
Our bagpipes yelled again, and the Turkish drums and flutes rang merrily in that valley of olives, as we wheeled from hollow square into open column, and breaking into sections, marched back to the barracks; but my heart felt sick and sore, and oblivious of the martial display, I thought only of the coral cross which I had taken from the dead man's hand, and of the barbarous mode in which I had seen his mutilated and coffinless remains thrust into the grave, and hastily earthed up, by the water-carriers, or Nubian slaves, of the Mir Alai Saïd's regiment.
After this event, for some days I avoided the Yuze Bashi Hussein, for whom I had conceived a horror in consequence of the tragic story of Constantine Vidimo, whose fate made a deep impression on the whole of our little mess, but on none more than myself—for I had, as related, addressed him twice, and it was to me that his relaxing hand had slowly yielded up the coral cross, which I resolved to preserve as a souvenir of our service in the East. We ceased to invite the Yuze Bashi to mess, where his bulbous figure, preposterous and goat-like beard, diminutive scarlet fez, frogged surtout, long crooked sabre, and comically ferocious visage, were an endless source of amusement, wit, and caricature; but judge of my annoyance when I found that, in consequence of this modern Bashaw having conceived a vehement fancy or friendship for me, I was to be separated from the jovial society of my brother-officers, and to be detached—on his especial application—with one sergeant, one piper, and thirty rank and file, to the castle of Rodosdchig, his military government or commandery, which lay about thirty miles distant.
'For what purpose is this detachment detailed?' I asked rather angrily at mess, on the day I read the announcement in orders, as being the will and pleasure of our Brevet-Major commanding.
'To strengthen the stout captain's little garrison of Topchis.'
'But why?'
'They are in danger of an attack from certain armed and insurrectionary Greeks, whom the secret agency of some Russian priests are omitting no means of inflaming and exciting to discontent against the authority of the Sultan and his Pashas.'
'Why are Turks not sent—the Mir Alai has eight hundred of them here in garrison?'
'He does us the honour to believe that red-coats will more completely awe the malcontent Greeks.'
'In this service I may get a slash from a yataghan, or a ball from a brass-barrelled pistol sans credit and honour.'
'Not at all,' said Belton; 'either will be quite as honourable as a shot from the Rifle Pits, or a splinter from a Whistling Dick out of the Redan.'
'Which, by-the-by, none of us are likely to see,' grumbled Catanagh, draining a long glass of Kirklissa wine, with an angry sigh.
By this time our Major had communicated with the British military authorities at Constantinople, detailing the loss of theVestal, and that he had obtained quarters for his men in the Bombardiers' Barracks at Heraclea, orErekli, as the Turks name it; and, by a messenger, he was instructed to remain in his present cantonment until further orders, as there was every prospect now of hostilities ceasing, and our presence would not be required with Sir Colin Campbell and the Highland Brigade.
At this time, January 3rd, 1856, we had fifty-eight thousand British soldiers in the Crimea; a Council of War, composed of British and French general officers, had assembled in Paris, and Russia had accepted the Austrian propositions as a basis for the negotiation of a peace. The despatch to the Major concluded by stating, that the French had blown up Fort St. Nicolas at Sebastopol, where our miners were busy destroying the magnificent docks. With this long document going the round of the mess-table, we gulped down our disappointment and the Roumelian wine together, on the evening before I marched with this devil of a Yuze Bashi to his castle of Rodosdchig; and our enthusiastic hopes of a protracted war—a war that from the mouth of the Danube would roll like a flame over Hungary, Poland, and Italy—our hopes of rapid promotion, of French medals and crosses of the Legion of Honour, dwindled down into tame and vapid surmises as to the disbanding of second battalions, and the parsimonious reduction of additional captains, lieutenants, and ensigns.
'So we shall be here till further orders,' observed the Major, in conclusion.
'Abominable ill luck!' said Jack Belton.
'Instead of being at Sebastopol, in at the death. and the glory of the affair,' chimed the captain of our Light Bobs, 'we shall be learning to smoke opium and sit crosslegged, to relish pillau, eat hash, and pepperpot with our fingers.'
'And to rub up ourAlpha,Beta,Gamma,Delta, and so forth, to make love to the charming Haidees of Roumelia—but, waiter, see who knocks at the door!' added the Major, as a rat-tat rang on the painted door of the long room which was fitted up for our temporary mess, and the walls of which were painted in arabesques with pious quotations from the Koran.
The Highlander in his kilt, who acted as one of our mess-waiters, opened the door and ushered in our acquaintance, the fat Yuze Bashi, who, having a lively recollection of the bright, amber-coloured sherry, and full-bodied old port, which we had saved from the bulged hull of Her Majesty's steam-transportVestal, visited us as often as propriety would allow; for he was a cunning old dog, who willingly gave up his chance of the slender houris in Heaven for a cup of good wine and the plump and substantial houris of earth.
Carrying his pipe and, of course, his paunch before him, he entered with a prodigious salaam and bowed to us all; then he ogled the decanter, and sat down near Catanagh, who was too polite and too much of a soldier not to accord him a welcome.
We spoke of European politics, of which the obtuse brain of the Yuze Bashi, Hadjee Hussein Ebn al Ojuz, knew as much as he did about electricity, the longitude, the 'philosoplry of the infinite,' a good pun, or anything else, which is incomprehensible to an Oriental mind.
Belton spoke of the Greek girls, and then the old fellow became lively, and looked roguishly out at the corners of his sly black eyes.
'Inshallah!' said he; 'I do love pretty girls with all the zeal of a true Believer. Mohammed! yes—I have played some strange pranks in my time among the fair-haired Tcherkesses, and the black-eyed Cockonas of Bucharest—the City of Delights—as its name imports. Yes, and there are some pretty ones in Egypt too, who have good reason to remember the Hadjee Hussein. But my heart has long been fixed upon obtaining a Russian. They are large, those Muscovites, and plump and fair-skinned, round and white as eggs; and, please God, I shall perhaps have a couple of them yet.'
'Scarcely,' said Belton, 'for we are on the eve of a peace; so, Captain, your chances are small.'
His eyes flashed fire at the idea of a peace.
'Good can never come of it!' said he; 'we shall have all these battles to fight over again; all these fortresses to take and to defend; and the Muscovite swine may yet wallow upon the shores of the Golden Horn, if Britain and France are false to us, and we are false to ourselves! Yet Heaven, they say, was with us in this war.'
'They—who?'
'Mashallah! by "they," one means that mysterious personage on whom one fathers everything that lacks a better authority.'
'Bono!' said the major; 'well, captain—they say—'
'That at Silistria ten thousand angels, in green dresses, were visible to all the Faithful, fighting against the God-abandoned Russians. The Hafiz Moustapha counted their ten green banners with a thousand under each. Even the English newspapers repeated that.'
'I remember to have read it,' said I.
'Yes,' resumed Hussein, gathering confidence on my corroboration; 'ten thousand, like those who fought for Islamism, in the war of the Ditch, and at the battle of Bedr, against the Koreish; but instead of iron maces, which shot forth fire at every stroke, our Silistrian angels appeared as well-appointed infantry.'
'By the breeches of the Prophet!' muttered the Major, in an under tone; 'only think of ten thousand well-appointed angels, in heavy marching order—all with sixty rounds of ball-cartridge at their blessed backs!'
'But if it pleases our lord the Sultan, who is God's shadow upon earth, to make peace with these grovelling Russian curs—if he thinks that hell is sufficiently full of them—why should I, who am unworthy to kiss his slippers, dare to advise?'
'Of course—so fill your glass, Captain Hussein, and pass the bottles.'
'Abdul Medjid,' continued our fat guest, who began to wax guttural, slow, and prosy, as the fumes of the wine mounted into his oriental cranium—'Abdul Medjid, though he rejoiceth in the titles of Lord of the Black and White Seas; Master of Europe, Asia, and Africa; Lord of Bagdad, Damascus, Belgrade, and Agra; the Odour of Paradise—the Ke-ke-keeper of the Holy Cities of Jerusalem, Mecca, and Medina—is—is—'
'Is devilishly in want of the "ready," I believe,' said Belton, rather abruptly, closing a sentence the end of which Hussein had lost.
After making various ineffectual efforts to resume where he hud left off so suddenly, and to regain the thread of his subject, which Jack's abrupt interruption had somewhat entangled, Hussein dropped his bearded chin upon his breast, and after a snort or two, let his chibouque fall, as he dropped into a deep sleep, overcome by the wine, of which he had partaken too freely, and the strength of which was too potent for him.
'Now,' said Catanagh, 'here is a good specimen of the modern Turk, who has retained all the vices, and none of the virtues, of his ancestors. Selfish, sensual, ignorant, and brutal, he is a Mohammedan only in those things which minister to his luxury. But the old world is changing fast, and here the new has not much to recommend it. Ancient things are passing away, and in the slaves who crouch beneath the Turkish yoke we look in vain for the sons of those who fought at Marathon, and who died at Thermopylæ. Green be the grass and bright the flowers that there grow, say I! Omnibuses have rattled through the gate of the Ilissus; a matter-of-fact Scotsman has ploughed up the plains of Marathon, and gas-lamps have shed their light upon the Acropolis. The 'Maid of Athens' (as Stephen tells us in his book) has become plain Mrs. George Black, the wife of King Otho's Scotch superintendent of police, and the buxom mother of various little Blacks—so much for romance and for the land of Homer in the age of steam! Turks are practising the polka and,deux-temps!coals have been found in Mount Calvary, and Albert Smith has stuck 'Punch's' posters on the Pyramid; the Highland bagpipe, that fifty years ago rang in the streets of Bagdad and Grand Cairo, has now sent up its yell at the Golden Horn, and the mosque of St. Sophia has echoed to the rattle of theBritish Grenadiers. We have come to the end of all things, and may light our pipes with Æschyrus and Herodotus.
'Xerxes the great did die,And so must you and I.'
Try these cheroots, Mac Innon, and please pass the wine, Jack; we must drink to Allan—a pleasant march to Rodosdchig, and may we soon have him safe back again, to be under my illustrious command, if not quite under this auspicious mahogany!'
With a sergeant and thirty rank and file—one of whom was Callum Dhu, and with a piper playing at their head, I marched out of Heraclea, and by an old paved path of the Sultan Solyman, took the coast road to Rodosdchig. My men were in heavy marching order; their feather-bonnets cased in oilskins; their great-coats rolled; their wooden canteens, haversacks, and white gaiters on. We were accompanied by the portly Yuze Bashi; but as the day proved to be Friday, which is set apart by the Mohammedans for prayer and worship, he made it an excuse for being lazy, and instead of riding beside me on horseback, which, as a soldier, he ought to have done, he marched like a prince of Bourbon,i.e., travelled in his snug araba or Turkish carriage, where he sat, trussed up among soft cushions, and given up to dozing over his pipe and the Prophet.
Jack Belton accompanied me for three or four miles westward of the town, as far as an old Roman bridge, which crosses a river with a name that no jaws save those of a Believer were ever meant to compass; and there bidding me warmly adieu, he galloped back to breakfast and to morning parade.
We passed the head of the olive valley, where the poor Greek officer had been so barbarously executed; and all the terrible scene of that morning came fresh upon my memory. In the distance lay the sea and the grey rocks of Palegrossa, whereon was the rent and gaping hull of theVestal.
The atmosphere soon became oppressively hot—singularly so for that season of the year, and consequently I seldom saw the round visage, or heard the guttural voice of the Yuze Bashi, save when he stormed at a passing carrier, whose string of laden mules raised a dust on the highway; or when he swore at the terrified Boba of some wayside khan, who was long in supplying him with sherbet or iced water, for which supplies, by the way, he seldom seemed to pay, save in threats and maledictions.
At one of these temporary halts near a khan, a poor old Jew, wearing the blue turban and blue boots enforced on those of his religion, approached with great timidity, and with a humility which to me—the son of a free soil—was painful and oppressive, offered some cigars and tobacco for sale.
'Do not buy of him,' said Hussein, pulling sharply back the curtains of his araba; 'he is a Jew, and will cheat you—they are all cheats, believing that, at most, they shall only endure for eleven months the fires of hell—for such is their accursed creed. Oho! is this you, Isaac Ebn Abraha, who keeps the little booth in the new Frank street of Stamboul?'
'The same, at the service of my lord,' replied the old Israelite, bending his white head.
'The gold of the English and French has been rattling into your coffers like hailstones, I have been told, Isaac?'
The Jew shook his head in dissent, and bent it lower, to conceal his cunning eyes.
'Oho! I lie, then, do I?' exclaimed this Turkish bully; 'had other than you done this, I had smote him on the mouth with the heel of my slipper! Begone,' he added, spitting full in the cigar vender's face.
I remonstrated, as a fierce gleam shot from the hollow eyes of the old Jew, and he slunk away.
'Bah!' said the Yuze Bashi; 'we tolerate the existence of Jews, Armenians, and Greeks, because, if we destroyed them, what would the true Believers do for slaves?'
'We meet few of them hereabout, at all events,' said I; 'the whole country seems to become more waste and barren as we advance.'
'True,' replied the puffing Osmanli, with a fierce flashing in his dark eye, and a sardonic grin under his grey moustache; 'where the Sultan's horse has trod there grows no grass.'
And, with this fatally true Turkish proverb, he sank back among his downy cushions, and left me to march on in silence or commune with Callum Dhu.
After passing Carga on our left, and Turcmeli on our right, after crossing one or two streams, and pursuing a road from which, upon our right flank, we had bright glimpses of the blue sea of Marmora; after passing many of those green tumuli, or old warrior-graves, which stud all the land of Roumelia; after seeing only flights of vultures, cranes, and storks, or an occasional string of laden mules, progressing towards Stamboul, a march of twenty miles found us in a beautiful little valley, watered by a stream which flowed from a fountain in the basement of a gilded mosque, and surrounded by beautiful groves of pale green olive-trees, the orange, and the mimosa, with the crisped foliage of the dwarf oak, the broad and luxuriant leaves of the wild vine, and the graceful acacia, which Mohammed—in his 56th chapter—promises shall bloom again in Paradise.
This was not far from Karacalderin, a small town on the right flank of the coast road.
The grass was green and soft as velvet; a thousand wild flowers studded its verdure, and loaded with perfume the southern breeze that breathed up the valley from the sea of Marmora, and proved to us all delightful as a cold bath after our hot day's march.
Evening was approaching now; the giant poplars and cypresses that surrounded the little mosque, which marked where some dead Santon lay, were throwing their lengthening shadows far across the valley; and on my announcing that I would halt here for the night, my soldiers gladly threw off their knapsacks and piled their arms; Callum lighted a large fire, with all the adroitness of a Highland huntsman, and with some jest about there 'being little chance of firing the heatherhere,' heaped on the branches of the dwarf oaks, which we hewed remorselessly down by our bill-hooks.
The Yuze Bashi, though he grumbled savagely under his beard at the annoyance of having to halt (as he feared to proceed alone through a district full of armed and unscrupulous Greek peasantry), was compelled to make the best of our delightful little bivouac, and while my men made a meal of the cold meat which had been brought in their haversacks, he shared with me a cold pillaff of fowl and rice, and a jolly magnum bonum of Kirklissa wine.
Discovering another in the recesses of the araba, I abstracted itsans ceremonie, and despite all Hussein's angry remonstrances, handed it to my soldiers, and as it proved to be well dashed with brandy, they passed it from man to man until each had his share, and then they all began to talk, sing, and be merry.
'Bless their hearts!' says Charles Lever, 'a little fun goes a long way in the army;' and any man who has ever spent an hour in the company of soldiers will find it so.
They were all happy as crickets round that bivouac fire, for actual service softens cold etiquette, and relaxes the iron band of discipline without impairing it, especially among Scots and Irishmen; and while the blaze of the ruddy flame shot upward, and tipped the olive-trees with light as fresh fuel was heaped upon it, while the orient sunset died away and deepened into azure night, on the calm Grecian sea and lovely classic shore, we sat in that romantic valley clad in the same martial garb our hardy sires had worn in the days of Remus and Romulus, telling old stories of our native land, or singing those songs, which, when we were so far away from it, made the hearts within us melt to tenderness, or swell with pride and fire.
While the old, gross, and sensual Yuze Bashi lay half hidden among the down cushions of his araba and dozed away over his narguillah of rose-water, I sang a mess-room stave or two to amuse my men; and by doing so won their hearts still more, I am assured, than even my previous and studied kindness to them had done. Then I called on Callum Dhu for his quota of amusement, and at once his fine bold manly voice made the valley ring, as he gave us that fiery song in which his warlike ancestor, Ian Lom Mac Donel, the Bard of Keppoch, has embalmed the victory of the great Montrose at Inverlochy.
He sang it in his native Gaelic, and as he poured it forth his swarthy cheek was seen to glow and his eyes to flash—ay, even the muscles of his bare legs, on which fell the glow of the wavering watch-fire, seemed to quiver and be strung anew with energy as all the fire of Ian Lom filled the heart of his descendant—for through (my nurse) his mother, Callum came of Ian's race.
The song cannot be known to my English readers; but as it is in that bold ballad style they love so well, I may be pardoned in quoting two verses of it from a little historical work that may never cross the Tweed;[*] and as he sang, the voices of his thirty comrades united with singular force and harmony in the chorus:—
'Heard ye not! heard ye not!How that whirlwind the Gael,—Through Lochaber swept downFrom Lochness to Loch Eil?—And the Campbells to meet themIn battle array,Came on like the billow—And broke like its spray!Long, long shall our war song exult in that day!
'Through the Braes of LochaberA desert were made,And Glen Roy should be lostTo the plough and the spade;Though the bones of my kindred,Unhonoured, unurned,Marked the desolate pathWhere the Campbells have burned.—Be it so! from that foray they never returned!' &c.
[*] See Turner's Collection.
So intent were we on the song—so much had it absorbed our faculties and fixed our hearts and eyes, that we had not heard the challenge of Donald Roy, who was stationed as a sentinel near the road; nor until its conclusion did we perceive that a stranger had joined us, and was standing propped upon a long and knotty staff, surveying us with eyes of wonder, and with an interest that was not unfriendly, for a smile lighted all his features as I rose to greet him. on recognising the wandering Moolah Moustapha, whom I had met at the Khan in Heraclea, and who had officiated on the morning when the Greek Lieutenant, Constantine Vidimo, was shot.
He accorded to us the usual greeting, and contrary to the use and wont of ignorant Dervishes and Moolahs, who dislike soldiers in general and infidels in particular, he seated himself by our fire and partook at once of some bread and meat which were offered him by Callum, but shook his averted head when the leathern flasks of wine and potent raki were held towards him by Sergeant Mac Ildhui.
'Nay, nay,' said he, 'wine and gaming are alike forbidden by the Koran—yet there was a time when I was daily and nightly addicted to both.'
'And when did you reform, reverend Moolah?' I asked.
'When I ceased to be a soldier,' he answered with a quiet smile.
'A soldier!' I reiterated; 'haveyouthen been one of ourselves?'
'Yes, Aga, and one who could handlethiswith the best man among you,' he replied, snatching up a musket and fixing and unfixing the bayonet with an adroitness that none but a practised soldier can achieve. This old man was spare and brawny, quick of speech and sharp in eye. 'Yes—I was a soldier of Scherif Bey's regiment, and fought at the battles of Ilonis, of Athens, and of Koniah.'
'Yes, by the beard of the Prophet,' exclaimed the Yuze Bashi, waking up suddenly; 'and you it was, O most worthy Moustapha! who assisted me to save the colours of the Scherif, by stuffing them into my regimental breeches. Mashallah! 'twas well, it was not the standard of Islam, for where were the mortal breeches which would have heldthat?'
'True, O gallant Yuze Bashi; and the same battle of Koniah which made thy fortune on earth, while it marred mine here, made it, I trust, in Paradise.'
'You were left on the field?' said Hussein.
'Pierced by a ball.'
'May dogs defile the grave of him who shot it!'
'Nay, nay, Hadjee Hussein, that bullet brought light and repentance to me; for until that day so fatal to the fortune of our lord the Sultan in Egypt, I was a very wretch—an apostate—a scoffer—an unbeliever in the prophet—yea, a veritable Janissary!'
'But a brave soldier, Hafiz Moustapha.'
'My lord is pleased to be merry.'
'By the night and all that it enfolds in its shades, I amnot, Moustapha! I speak but the truth of you, Hafiz. You were ever a brave soldier as any in the ranks of Islam—as any in the army of Mahmoud II., though somewhat of a visionary.'
The old Moolah crossed his hands upon his breast, and bowed down his bearded face in reply.
'And did you see much of war and battles in those days, reverend Moolah?' I asked.
'Enough and to spare.'
'Mashallah!' exclaimed Hussein, 'I have seen him carrying six Egyptian heads at once by the top knot, a handful of them all grasped like a cluster of gourds, and I have seen him with four-and-twenty ears all strung like herrings on his ramrod, when Egyptian ears sold as high as ten paras each. Beard of Khalid! I have sent a bushel of them more than once to the tent of Reschid Pasha. Moustapha went hand in hand with the wild Koords in roasting and impaling our prisoners—for what are Egyptians but curs like the Greeks?'
'Curs of a darker hue.'
'True, oh reverend Moolah—though it is said, if thou wishest to please the eye, take a Circassian maid; but if for pleasure and voluptuousness, try an Egyptian one.'
'And did you tire of slaughter or of soldiering?' I asked, not being naturalist enough to ponder long over the last remark—a proverbial one in the East.
'Of neither, though I saw enough of both while under Scherif Bey; but in my youth I was good and pious, and knowing all the Koran and Bible by heart, was styledHafiz, which meanethBible-reader. I became a soldier, and fell into evil ways. I had a vision—a vision, O Frank! such as seldom opens up to mortal eyes,' he continued, pointing upward, while his eyes flashed with a red unearthly glare, and his whole face flushed from his brow to his long white beard; 'and from that hour I was a changed man. I ceased to regard the things of this life, or be solicitous of aught on earth—where I should find food in the morning or rest at night—looking forward only to death as the gate through which I should pass to Paradise. I was once avaricious as a Jew, but now my heart is expanded; all that the sun enlightens would I give in charity, had it been mine. I, who had been often red to the elbows in the blood of slaughtered Greeks and dark Egyptians, now shrank from blood as from a flaming fire; I who had no more conscience than a Bedouin of the desert, and less remorse than an African savage, now see my sins of omission and commission—all my deeds of sorrow and cruelty, performed in the days of my ignorance and trouble, rising like a stupendous column in the very path that leads direct to the place of our abode—to the garden of pleasure—the paradise of the blessed. After the battle of Koniah I was a changed man, yea changed as ifthe black drop of original sin had been wrung out of my heart.'
'Tell the Frankish officer the story, O Hafiz—my old brother soldier; for though you were but an onbashi and I a captain, I look back with pride to the days when we unsheathed our swords in the same field beneath the green banner of Beschid Pasha,' said Hussein.
'The Frank may but mock me as the Ingleez do all strangers,' said the old Moolah, with a species of growl in his tone, as he glanced uneasily at my soldiers, most of whom had already dropped asleep.
I laid a hand on my breast, and expressed a hope that he would not think so meanly of me.
'No, no, I shall answer for him,' said the Yuze Bashi; 'it ill becometh a young soldier to mock the white beard of an old one. Moreover, what sayeth the Koran? "O Unbelievers, I will not worship that which ye worship, nor will ye worship that which I worship. Ye have your religion, and I have my religion," and there is an end of it, say I, Hadjee Hussein. 'Tis a story as well as another, and I delight in stories—they always set me to sleep.'
'I will tell you in a few words,' replied the old Moolah, adjusting his high conical cap of grey felt, and disposing his mighty beard over the breast of his robe; 'but I presume that you, O valiant Yuze Bashi, have heard it before?'
'By the spout of the holy Kaaba, most reverend Hafiz; and by the holy camel's blessed hump I never did!' said the irritable Yuze Bashi, giving the coils of his arguillah a kick, and smoking away at the amber mouth-piece.
'It made noise enough in the camp of the Sultan's troops.'
'Then I hope it may make a noise here too, for the place is quiet enough,' retorted Hussein, who was in a furious pet at all this unnecessary delay.
'You must know, O Frank!' began the Moolah, 'that I was a corporal in the third Orta or battalion of Scherif Bey's regiment, in the army of the Grand Vizier, Reschid Pasha, and warred against the revolted Egyptians of Mehemet Ali; and was wounded by a bayonet at Homs in the Pashalick of Damascus, where we fought a desperate battle on the right bank of the Orontes; I lost the tip of my right ear at the battle of Athens when fighting against the Greeks, and had a mouthful of teeth driven down my throat by a half-spent Russian bullet at Navarino; but all these wounds were as nothing when compared to one I received at the fatal defeat of Koniah in Asia Minor, where in the winter of 1247, by the reckoning of the Hejira, Ibrahim Pasha, defeated Reschid and cast everlasting disgrace on the banners of the Sultan.
'All his reverses in the Russian wars had failed to teach generalship to Reschid Pasha, who, with the fugitives of Homs, had halted at the thrice-blessed city of Koniah, where a snow-covered plain of sixty miles in extent gave ample room for the Osmanlies, forty-five thousand in number, to fight the fifteen thousand Egyptian curs at Ibrahim. Brave to a fault—for he was the son of a Koordish chief and a Georgian slave—old Reschid led the charge of Horse, which, by its failure, lost the battle. Vain was the fury of the Koordish Cavalry, and vain the fiery valour of the bare-kneed Albanian Guard! The battle was lost by us, and the banner of the Sultan was trod to the dust by the steeds of the desert. All our cannon were taken. O day of calamities!—and all our standards!'
'Exceptone,' urged Hussein, parenthetically.
'Yes, most valiant Yuze Bashi—except one, after assisting you to save which, a musket-shot pierced my breast, and, half-choked in my blood, I sank powerless on the field; and on becoming faint, remember no more of that unfortunate battle, though its roar was so great that one might have supposed all hell was being dragged by chains to judgment, as the Prophet says, it shall be, on the great and inevitable day.
'When consciousness returned, the sun was setting beyond the snow-covered mountains, and faint and blue their spotless cones rose like the waves of a frozen sea around the distant walls of Koniah. On the gilded domes of its twelve great mosques, and the hundred minars of its lesser shrines, fell the last rays of that sinking sun; and full of thoughts of awe and death, I turned me, in penitence and grief, from the horrors of that lost battle-field, and bent my head in prayer as the shrill cries of the muezzins reached me from the tall steeples of the Sultan Selim and of Sheik Ibrahim; and as I prayed, the dying sunset faded on the snow-capped hills and gilded domes; the minarets grew dark and cold, and ghastly mountain-piles turned to purple tints as the night set in, deep, calm, and beautiful. The stars were sparkling above the silent city and that dreadful battle-plain. A painful and burning thirst oppressed me; and while crawling towards a spring that bubbled near me in the moonlight, I again became unconscious.
'Glory be to Allah and to his Prophet! Amid that unconsciousness or stupor which oppressed me there came at times a sense of pain in my smarting wound, and of thirst in my parched throat, while the gurgle of the fresh, cool fountain sung drowsily in my ear, like the murmur of a distant multitude.
'Recollection came again, and I saw the fountain sparkling in the moonlight, which tipped with silver the blue and white water-lilies, and every floweret, leaf, and shrub, for all was bright and clear as in the brightest and clearest noon.
'While gazing at the glittering water with longing eyes, lo! I suddenly beheld before me the beautiful figure of a woman—a nymph lovely beyond all earthly loveliness. Dazzling as Ayesha, the best-beloved wife of Mohammed, and fair as the rose of Cashmere, her exquisite form, was discernible through the only garment she wore, a slight cymar of green—the colour sacred to the Prophet—and her smooth round limbs were white as the driven snow. Her slender neck, her curved shoulders, and tapered arms, were modelled in the most charming symmetry; a faint blush was on her soft cheek, and the expression of her large dark eyes was such as I dare not trust myself to describe, for they possessed a lustre and a winning sweetness which confused, fascinated, and bewildered me. Long and black as winter night, her glossy tresses fell upon her white shoulders, and half shrouded her swelling bosom.
'The air around her was filled with delicious perfume. She spoke to me; but for a time I knew not what she said; for with her voice there seemed to come a stream of gentle music from a distance; and by its melody I was filled with a rapture such as never fired my soul, or swept my nerves before.
'Her sparkling eyes were full of conscious power; her radiant smile was full of conscious loveliness, tempered by all the pride of purity and innocence; for know, O Frank! that she who stood before me was one of the Hûr al Oyn—the black-eyed girls of Paradise—the ever-blooming brides of the faithful, though I knew it not then; but imagined—sinner that I was!—that some Naide of old, or some lascivious goddess of the lying Greeks had come to earth again.
'"Moustapha," said the maiden, "thou shalt not be one of those who will perish in this world and pass away with it on that day when the mighty hills shall roll like smoke before the dreadful wind, that is to blow from the east."
'"How, O beautiful one?" I asked, while trembling with a more than mortal joy.
'"Because, know, Hafiz Moustapha, that the blessed finger of the Prophet is on thee."
'"Upon me—a mite—an atom!"
'"He remembereth the leaves of the forest, O Hafiz! and the grains of sand on the sea-shore. He is the father of all wisdom."