THE PEN OF MAHMOUD
When, during the reign of Mahmoud II., the caravan of Meccan pilgrims
was plundered by the Vechabites, lying in ambush, the Sultan ordered
the rulers of Mecca and Medina to immediately send to the lair of the
Vechabites and buy back the dervishes with ready money.
The Vechabites gave up the captives in exchange for the ransom sent
them, but they adhered so rigidly to the terms of the bargain whereby
they were to surrender the captives only, that they even kept for
themselves the garments that happened to be on the captives, and let
nothing go but their bare bodies, on which account Mahmoud was obliged
to give his rescued subjects raiment as well as freedom.
Amongst those who were so liberated was a dervish of the Nimetullahita
order, who, after this incident was over, arose, sought out the Sultan
and said to him, "Thou art a poor potentate. Thou art the most sorry
of all the caliphs. Thou art the greatest son of suffering[10] among
all the sultans who have gone before thee, or shall come after thee. I
thank thee for delivering me from the hands of the Vechabites,[11]
and as a reward, therefore, I bring thee a gift which, even when they
left me without any raiment, I was still able to conceal from them."
[Footnote 10: _I.e._, patient of insult.]
[Footnote 11: The Vechabites are accounted heretics by the orthodox
Mussulmans.]
And with that he produced a writing-reed and gave it to the Sultan,
and when Mahmoud asked him in what way he had concealed it from the
eyes of the robbers, he explained how he had cunningly thrust it into
his thick black beard, where nobody had perceived it.
Mahmoud accepted the gift of the dervish, and put it where he put his
other curiosities; but he did not think of it for very long, and
gradually it escaped his memory altogether.
One day, however, when one of his favorite damsels, moved by
curiosity, had induced him to show her the treasures of his palace,
and they came to the spot where lay the pen of the dervish, the damsel
suddenly cried out, and said that she had seen the pen move.
The Sultan looked in that direction, and, observing nothing, treated
the whole affair as a joke, and went on showing the damsel the
accumulated relics and curiosities of centuries which thirteen
successive Sultans had stored up in the khazné or treasury, and then
gave the damsel permission to choose for herself whichever of these
treasures might please her most.
Many costly things were there covered with gems, and worth, each one
of them, half a kingdom; there were also rare and precious relics, and
antiquities rich in historical associations. But the Sultan's pet
damsel chose for herself none of these things; to the amazement of the
Padishah, she only asked for this simple black pen.
Mahmoud was astonished, but he granted the damsel her wish, and making
light of it, he gave her the writing-reed which was fashioned out of a
simple bamboo cane, and was nothing very remarkable even at that.
The odalisk took the pen away with her to her room, and waited from
morning to night to see it move. But the pen calmly rested where she
had placed it all day long and all night too, and the odalisk began to
be sorry that she had not rather selected for herself some other more
precious thing instead of the object of her curiosity; but one
evening, when the Sultan was visiting her in her flowery chamber, and
they were holding sweet converse together, they suddenly heard in the
room, where nobody was present but themselves, a faint sound as if
some one were writing in great haste, the scratching of a pen on the
extended parchment was distinctly audible.
They both looked in the direction of the sound, and words failed them
in their astonishment, for behold! the writing-reed was half raised in
the air, just as when one is holding it in his hand, and it seemed to
be writing of its own accord on the parchment extended beneath it.
The damsel trembled for terror, while the Sultan, who was a stranger
alike to fear or superstition, imagining that perhaps a spider had got
into the upper part of the reed, and consequently made it move up and
down, and anxious to convince his favorite thereof, approached the
table, and took up the pen in order to shake the spider out of it.
But there was nothing at all there, and the pen went on writing of its
own accord.
The Sultan himself began to be astonished at this phenomenon. What the
pen seemed to be so diligently writing remained a hidden script,
however, for its point had not been dipped in ink. Wishing, therefore,
to put it to the test, the Sultan dipped the point of the reed in a
little box full of that red balsamic salve with which Turkish girls
are wont to paint their lips, and then placed it on a smooth, clean
sheet of parchment, whereupon it again arose, and wrote in bright,
plainly intelligible letters these words, "Mahmoud! Mahmoud!"
The Sultan's own heart began to beat when he saw his own name written
before his eyes, and he inquired with something like consternation,
"What dost thou want of me?"
The pen immediately wrote down again these two words, "Mahmoud!
Mahmoud!" and then lay still.
"That is my name," said the Sultan; "but who then art thou. O
invisible spirit?"
The pen again arose and wrote beneath the name of Mahmoud this name
also, "Halil Patrona!"
Mahmoud trembled at this name. It was the name of a man who had been
murdered by one of his ancestors, and if the apparition of a spirit be
terrible in itself, how much more the spirit of a murdered man!
"What dost thou want here?" exclaimed the terrified Sultan.
The pen answered, "To warn thee!"
"Perchance a danger threatens me, eh?" inquired the Sultan.
"'Tis near thee!" wrote the pen.
"Whence comes this danger?"
And now the pen wrote a long row of letters, and this was the purport
thereof, "A great danger from the East, a greater from the West, a
greater still from the North, and here at home the greatest of all."
"Where will the Faithful fight?" asked the Sultan.
"In the whole realm!" was the reply.
"Near which towns?"
"Near every town and within every town."
"How long will the war last?"
"Nine years."
It was now the year eighteen hundred and twenty, and there was not a
sign of danger at any point of the vast boundaries of the Turkish
empire.
The Sultan permitted himself one more question: "Tell me, shall I
triumph in these wars?"
The pen replied, "Thou wilt not."
"Who will be my enemies?"
There the pen stopped short, as if it were reflecting on something; at
last it wrote down, "Another time."
The Sultan did not understand this answer, so he repeated his
question, and now the pen wrote, "Ask in another place!"
"Where?"
"Alone."
Evidently it would not answer the question in the presence of the
Sultan's favorite. It did not trust her.
The Sultan almost believed that he was dreaming, but now his favorite
damsel also drew near and, leaning on Mahmoud's shoulder, stammered
forth, "Prithee, mighty spirit, wilt thou answer me?"
And the pen replied, "I will."
The woman asked, "Tell me, will Mahmoud love me to the death?"
The Sultan was somewhat offended. "By the prophet!" cried he, "that
thou shouldst put such a question!"
But what is not a living woman capable of asking?
The pen quivered gently as it wrote down the words, "He will love thee
till thou diest."
"And when _shall_ I die?"
To this the pen gave no answer.
In vain the favorite pressed her question. How many years, how many
months, how many days had she to live? The spirit answered nothing.
"And how shall I die?" asked the woman.
The Sultan shivered at this senseless question, and would have made
the girl withdraw; but, in an instant, the pen had written out the
answer, "Thou shalt be killed."
The woman grew as pale as a wax figure, and stammered, "Who will kill
me?"
Both of them awaited in terror and with baited breath what the pen
would answer, and the pen, taking good care not to form a single
illegible letter, wrote on the parchment, "Mahmoud!"
The favorite fell unconscious into the arms of the Sultan, who,
carrying her away, laid her on the divan, watching over her till she
came to herself again, and then comforting her with wise saws.
An evil, mocking spirit dwelt in the reed, he said, consolingly, who
only uttered its forebodings to agitate their hearts. "Did it not say
also that I should love thee to the death? How then could I slay thee?
A lying spirit dwelleth in that reed!"
And yet the Sultan himself was trembling all the time.
That night no sleep visited his eyes, and early in the morning he took
the reed from his favorite by force, telling her that he was going to
throw it into the fire.
But he did _not_ throw it into the fire. On the contrary, the Sultan
frequently produced it, and, inasmuch as he sometimes convicted the
spirit of a false prophecy, he began to regard the whole thing as a
sort of magic hocus-pocus, invented by the kindly Fates to amuse
mankind by its oddity, and he frequently made it serve as a plaything
for the whole harem, gathering the odalisks together and compelling
the enchanted pen to answer all sorts of petty questions, as, for
instance, "How old is the old kadun-keit-khuda?" "How many sequins are
in the purse of the Kizlar-Agasi?" "At what o'clock did the Sultan
awake?" "When will the Sultan's tulips arrive?" "How many heads were
thrown to-day into the sea?" "Is Sadi, the poet, still alive?" etc.,
etc. Or they forced the pen to translate the verses of Victor Hugo
into Turkish, Arabic, and Persian. And the pen patiently accomplished
everything. At last it became quite a pet plaything with the odalisks,
and the favorite Sultana altogether forgot the evil prophecy which it
had written down for her.
Now it chanced one day that the famous filibusterer Microconchalys,
who had for a long time disturbed the archipelago with his cruisers,
and defied the whole fleet of the Sultan, encountered in the open sea,
off Candia, a British man-of-war, which he was mad enough to attack
with three galleys. In less than an hour all three galleys were blown
to the bottom of the sea, nothing of them remaining on the surface of
the water but their well-known flags, which Morrison, the victorious
English captain, conveyed to Stambul, and there presented them to the
Divan.
Boundless was the joy of the Sultan at the death of the vexatious
filibusterer, and there was joy in the harem also, for a feast of
lamps was to be held there the same night, and Morrison was to be
presented to the Divan on the following day to be loaded with gifts
and favors.
At night, therefore, there was great mirth among the odalisks. The
Sultan himself was drunk with joy, wine, and love, and the hilarious
Sultana brought forth the magic pen to make them mirth, and compelled
it to answer the drollest questions, as, for instance, "How many hairs
are there in Mahmoud's head?" "How many horses are there in the
stable?" and "How many soldiers are there on the sea?" And, finally,
laughing aloud, she commanded it to tell her how many hours she had to
live.
Ah, surely a life full of joy lay before her! But the Sultan shook his
head; one ought not to tempt God with such questions.
The pen would not write.
Then the favorite cried angrily, "Answer! or I will compel thee to
count all the drops of water in the Black Sea, from here to Jenikale
in the Crimea!"
At these words the pen, with a quivering movement, arose, and
scratching the paper with a shrill sound, as if it would weep and
moan, wrote down some utterly unintelligible characters, with the
number "8" beneath them, and surrounded the whole writing with a
circle to signify that there was nothing more to come.
Everybody laughed. It was plain that the spirit also loved its little
joke, and was angry with the Sultana for torturing it with so many
silly questions.
It was then the third hour after midnight, all the clocks in the room
had at that moment struck the hour. After that the odalisks fell
a-dancing again, and the eunuch-buffoons exhibited a puppet show on a
curtained stage, which greatly diverted the ladies of the harem. But
the number "8" would not go out of the head of the favorite, and as
all the clocks in the room, one after the other, struck four, she took
out the pen, and with an incredulous, mocking smile on her face, but
with horror in her heart, she asked, "Come, tell me again, if thou
hast not forgotten, how many hours have I got to live?"
The pen wrote down the number "7."
Those who stood around now began to tremble. But Mahmoud treated the
whole affair as a joke, and assured them that the pen was only making
them sport. And again they went on diverting themselves.
An hour later the clocks, in the usual sequence, struck the hour of
five. And now the favorite stole aside, and placing the reed on a
table repeated her former question. And the pen wrote down the number
"6."
Thus, with each hour, the number indicated was lesser by one than the
previous number. The Sultan observed the gloom of his favorite, and to
drive away her sad thoughts, compelled her to retire to her
bedchamber, where she enjoyed two hours of sweet repose, leaning on
the Sultan's breast; whereupon the Sultan arose and went into his
dressing-room, for he had to hold a divan, or council.
The first thing the favorite did on awaking was to look at the time,
and she perceived that it was now seven o'clock. She immediately
hastened to interrogate the pen, and asked the question of it with
fear and trembling; and now the pen wrote down the number "4."
* * * * *
The Sultan himself sent for Morrison.
The English sailor was proudly conscious of owning no master but the
sea. During his long roamings in the East and South he had always made
it a point of visiting all the barbarous chiefs and princes who came
in his way. He regarded them simply as freaks of nature, whose absurd
rites and customs he meant to thoroughly investigate in order that he
might make a note of them in his diary, and he even went the length of
adopting for a time their manners and customs, if he could not get
what he wanted in any other way.
A summons to appear before the divan was scarcely of more importance
in his eyes than an invitation to a wild elephant hunt, or initiation
into the mysteries of Mumbo Jumbo, or an ascent in the perilous aerial
ship of Montgolfier. He donned a dark-blue-colored garment and a
plumed three-cornered hat, and condescended to allow himself to be
conducted by the ichoglanler specially told off to do him honor to the
splendid canopied, six-oared pinnace, which was to take him to the
palace.
They escorted him first to the Gate of Fountains, and left him waiting
for a few moments in the Chamber of Lions, allowing him in the
meanwhile to draw a pocket-book from his breast-pocket and make a
rapid sketch of all the objects around him. They then relieved him of
his short sword, as none may approach the Sultan with arms, and threw
across his shoulders an ample caftan trimmed with ermine. He did not
reflect for the moment what a distinction this was. His only feeling
was a slight surprise that he should be dressed in green down to his
very heels, as, with the dragoman on his left hand, he was conducted
into the Hall of the Seven Viziers, where the Sultan sat in the midst
of his grandees.
Morrison greeted the Padishah very handsomely, just as he would have
greeted King George IV. or King Charles X., perhaps.
"Bow to the ground--right down to the ground, milord!" whispered the
dragoman in his ears.
"I'll be damned if I do!" replied Morrison. "It is not my habit to go
down on my knees in uniform!"
"But that was why they put the caftan on you," whispered the dragoman,
half in joke. "'Tis the custom here."
"And a deuced bad custom, too," growled Morrison; and, after
reflecting for a moment or two, he hit upon the idea of letting his
hat fall to the ground, and then bent down as if to pick it up again.
But, by way of compensation, immediately after righting himself he
stood as stiff and straight as if he were determined never to bend his
head again, though the roof were to fall upon him in consequence.
The Sultan addressed a couple of brief words to the sailor,
metamorphosed by the dragoman into a floridly adulatory rigmarole,
which he represented to be a faithful version of the Sultan's
ineffable salutation. In effect he told the sailor that he was a
terrible hippopotamus, an oceanic elephant, who had ground to death
countless crocodiles with his glorious grinders, trampled them to
pieces with his mighty hoofs, and torn them limb from limb with his
trunk, and had therefore merited that the sublime Sultan should cover
him with the wings of his mantle. Let him, therefore, ask as a reward
whatever he chose, even to the half of the Padishah's kingdom. I may
add that if any one had in those days actually asked for half of the
Sultan's kingdom, he would probably have got that part of it which
lies underground.
Morrison thanked the Sultan for his liberal offer, and asked that he
might see the favorite wife of the Grand Signior.
At these words the dragoman turned pale, but the Sultan turned still
paler. The convulsive twitching of the muscles of his face betrayed
his strong revulsion of feeling, and, lowering his heavy, shaggy
eyebrows, he dashed at the sailor a look of deadly rage, while a heavy
sigh escaped from his deep chest.
The Englishman only regretted that he could not acquit himself as
creditably in this play of eyebrows. His own were small, of a bright
blonde color, and somewhat pointed.
The dragoman, however, could read an ominous meaning in this deep
silence.
"O glorious giaour, rosebud of thy nation!" whispered he, "fleet
water-spider of the ocean, ask not so senseless a thing from the Grand
Signior! Behold his wrathful eyes, and ask for something else; ask for
his most precious treasure; ask for all his damsels, if thou wilt, but
ask not to see the face of his favorite. Thou knowest not the meaning
thereof."
Morrison shrugged his shoulders. "I want neither his treasure nor his
damsels. I only want to see his favorite wife."
Mahmoud trembled, but not a word did he speak. Two tear-drops twinkled
in his dark eyes and ran down his handsome, manly face.
At this the Viziers leaped to their feet, and it was evident from
their agitated cries that they expected the Sultan to order the
presumptuous infidel to be cut down there and then.
The dragoman, in despair, flung himself at the seaman's feet.
"O prince of all whales!" he cried. "O unbelieving dog! Thou seest me,
a true believer, lying at thy feet. O wine-drinking giaour! Why wilt
thou entangle me with the words which the Sultan said to thee through
me? Art thou not ashamed to place thy foot on the neck of the lord of
princes? Ask some other thing!"
In vain. The sailor changed not a muscle of his face. He simply
repeated, with imperturbable _sang-froid_, the words:
"I want to see his favorite wife."
The Viziers rushed at him with a howl of fury, but Morrison merely
threw back the caftan which had been folded across his breast,
revealing his dreaded uniform and the decorations appended
thereto--memorials of his services at Alexandria and Trafalgar. That,
he thought, would quite suffice to preserve him from any violence.
But the Sultan leaped down from his throne, beckoned with his hand to
the Viziers, and whispered some words in the ear of the Kislar-Agasi,
who thereupon withdrew. This whispered word went the round of the
Viziers, who straightway did obeisance and disappeared in three
different directions through the three doors of the room, their places
being taken by two black slaves in red fezes and white robes, with
broad-bladed, crooked swords in their hands. Only the Sultan remained
behind there with the sailor.
* * * * *
The clocks in the rooms of the Seraglio struck a quarter to ten. The
pen of the dervish in reply to the question of the favorite as to how
many hours she had to live now wrote down "¼."
At that moment the Kislar-Agasi entered. The favorite went to meet
him, trembling like a lost lamb coming face to face with a wolf.
The Kislar-Agasi bowed deeply, and beckoned to the serving-women of
the Seraglio standing behind him to come forward.
"Has the Sultana accomplished the prescribed ablutions?" said he.
"Yes, my lord!"
"Gird her round the body with a triple row of pearls; fasten on her
turban the bird of paradise with the diamond clasp. Put on her gold
embroidered caftan."
The favorite let them do what they would with her without saying a
word.
The waiting-woman, covering the favorite's face with a light fan,
thickly sewn with tiny gold stars, conducted her to the door which led
to the Porcelain Chamber, and there the Kislar-Agasi left her, after
indicating whither they had to go next.
Guards stood in couples before each one of the doors; the last door
they came to was only protected by a curtain. This was the door of the
cupola chamber where the Sultan had received the sailor.
The favorite could not see the sailor because of the lofty projecting
wings of the throne; she only saw the Sultan sitting on a divan. She
hastened up to him, and when she stood before him she suddenly caught
sight of the stranger regarding her with coldly curious eyes.
Shrinking away with terror, she screamed out "Giaour!" and, wrapping
her veil more closely around her, turned to the Sultan for protection.
Then Mahmoud seized the damsel's trembling hand with one of his, and
with the other raised the veil from the face of his dearest wife in
the presence of the stranger.
The girl shrieked as if her face had been bitten by a serpent; then
she fell at the knees of the Sultan, and looked at the face of the
Grand Signior with an appealing glance for mercy. In the eyes of the
caliph of caliphs the moisture of human compassion sparkled. Poor
Sultana! who would not have pitied her?
Morrison made a courtly bow, and the dragoman not being present, he
expressed his thanks by using the well-known Turkish salutation,
"Salám aláküm!" The extraordinary charms of the damsel made no more
impression upon him than the sight of any ordinarily pretty lady at a
court presentation at home would have done.
The damsel meanwhile writhed in torments at the feet of the Sultan,
who, having had enough of it himself, covered her with her veil, and
beckoned to the Kislar-Agasi. He raised the damsel, and carried her
behind the curtains that surrounded the throne; the same instant the
two eunuch guards standing beside the throne also disappeared.
The Sultan listened and covered his eyes.
After a few moments of deep silence, it seemed to the sailor as if he
heard a long sigh behind the curtains. The Sultan shivered in every
limb, and immediately afterwards the clocks in the Seraglio began to
strike; they struck eleven.
Then the Sultan arose from his place and said, with a deep sigh:
"'Twas the will of Allah!" Then he descended from the divan and said
to Morrison in the purest Italian, "Thou didst see her; was she not
beautiful?"
Morrison, astonished to hear Italian spoken by the Sultan, who, as a
rule, never spoke a word save through an interpreter, in his amazement
could not find an answer to this question quick enough.
"Come now and see her once more," continued the Grand Signior, and
with these words he went towards the curtains.
Morrison fell back confounded. The rosy-red damsel of a few moments
before lay there pale, lifeless, at full length, her lips and eyes
closed, her bosom motionless. A thin red line was visible round her
beautiful white neck--the mark of the silken cord!
"But this is brutal!" exclaimed the sailor, beside himself with
indignation.
The Sultan coldly replied, "Whenever a Christian man beholds the face
of one of our women, that woman must die." He then signified to the
sailor that he was dismissed.
Morrison hastened from the room, immediately hoisted his anchor, and
the same night sailed out of the Golden Horn, everywhere pursued by
the memory of the beautiful Sultana, whom he had killed with a glance
of his eyes.
* * * * *
"Behold, behold!" cried the Sultan, pressing the cold, murdered limbs
to his bosom; "the _dzhin_ told the truth. Mahmoud loved thee to the
death, and yet Mahmoud slew thee!"
These words he repeated two or three times to the dead woman, and
then, descending the steps of the throne, rent his garments across his
breast, and looking up to heaven with tearful eyes, exclaimed:
"And now let the rest come too!"
And the rest did come. It came from the east and from the west, from
the north and from the south--four empire-subverting tempests, which
shook the strong trunk of Osman to its very roots, and scattered its
leaves afar.
Ali Pasha of Janina was the first to kindle the blood-red flames of
war in the west, and soon they spread from the Morea to Smyrna. In the
north the crusading banners of Yprilanti raised up a fresh foe
against Mahmoud, and the cries of "the sacred army" re-echoed from the
walls of Athens and the banks of the Danube and the summits of
Olympus. In Stambul the unbridled hosts of the Janissaries shed
torrents of blood among the Greeks of the city on the tidings of every
defeat from outside. And when the peril from every quarter had reached
its height, the Shah of Persia fell upon the crumbling realm from the
east, and captured the rich city of Bagdad.
And still Mahmoud had the desire to live--to live and rule. A pettier
spirit would have fled from the Imperial palace and taken refuge among
the palm-trees of Arabia Felix when it recognized that an endless war
encompassed it on every side, that to conquer was impossible, and that
the nearest enemy was the most dangerous. A mine of gunpowder had been
dug beneath the throne, and around the throne a mob of madmen were
hurrying aimlessly to and fro with lighted torches. And yet it was
Mahmoud's pleasure to remain sitting on that throne.
Frequently he would steal furtively at night from his harem. Alone,
unattended, he would contemplate the flight of the stars from the roof
of the Seraglio, and would listen to the nocturnal massacres and the
shrieks of the dying in the streets of Stambul. He would watch how the
conflagrations burned forth in two or three places at once, both in
Pera and Galata their lordships the Janissaries were working their
will. And he felt that cruelly cold piercing wind which began to blow
from the north, so that in the rooms of the Seraglio the shivering
odalisks began to draw rugs and other warm coverings over their
tender limbs. Never had any one in Stambul felt that cold wind before.
Whence came it, and what did it signify?
Mahmoud knew whence it came and what it signified, and he had the
courage to look steadily in the face of the future, in which he
discerned not a single ray of hope.