CHAPTER XXXII.

THE YUZE BASHI.

Leaving a small party under Lieutenant Logan, of ours, to protect the

landing of the baggage and stores, accompanied by our three Turkish

acquaintances, we forded a stream, with pipes playing and bayonets

fixed, and crossing the promontory, marched towards Heraclea, which

lies at the bottom of a little bay, and on the land side is defended

by walls, though somewhat old and rent; and in a short time we

marched in, making its streets of old dilapidated and worm-eaten

timber houses; its domed mosques, and tall white-painted minars; its

ruined palace of Vespasian; its Greek café; its Jewish bazaar; its

whirling windmills; its stony and slippery thoroughfares and old

ruins of the Grecian days, ring to the sharp rat-tat of the British

brass drum and to the skirl of three great Scottish war-pipes, from

the chanters and nine deep drones of which our pipers poured the

stirring 'Haughs of Cromdale,' with such effect, that the

big-breeched, long-bearded, stupid-looking old Turks, who sat smoking

on carpets and platforms at the doors and in the street, with

yataghans and pistols in their red-shawl girdles; the lively Greeks,

in tarboosh, short jacket, and blue inexpressibles; the sharp-visaged

Jews and solemn Armenians, all opened their round black eyes, and

threw up their hands in wonder, as we wheeled up towards the fortress

in sections of threes, with arms sloped, our tartans waving, and

black feathers flaunting in the wind.

A fry of little Osmanli gamins, barelegged, though wearing short wide

breeches and the red fez with its long tassel, scampered about us,

gamboling, uttering shrill cries of wonder, and styling us

Janissaries, Arnaouts, Albanians, Giaours, and anything but Britons;

and thus escorted, we reached the spacious Coumbazadjilar-Kislaci, or

barrack of the Bombardiers, where a battalion of Turkish infantry was

under arms to receive us; and with ranks open, presented arms in a

manner which would have done no discredit to any other European

troops, their drums beating, and the officers saluting with the edge

of their Damascus sabres outwards--as it is turned inward to none but

the Sultan himself.

The officers of this battalion had done their best to provide us with

a handsome collation--so handsome and luxurious indeed that, after

our recent hardship, the very memory of it is enough to make one

whistle; and apart from certain peculiarities, we found them very

pleasant, quaint, and conversible fellows, though very few of them

could boast of education sufficient to entitle them to add the envied

appendage of _effendi_ to their names. Their language, like that of

the better class of Osmanli, was a mixture of Persian and Turkish,

while that of their soldiers, like the jargon of the peasantry and

boatmen of the Bosphorus, was Turkish alone: but in this these

Orientals resemble ourselves; for in Britain the language of the

educated people is alike distinct from the Scottish tongue and the

dialects of the old Saxon.

'Mac Innon, here is to our noble selves!' said Catanagh, in Gaelic.

'How do you like the Roumelian wine?'

'It seems thin and poor.'

'Dioul! but it is more pleasant for you to be drinking it here, than

be imbibing sherry-cobblers and cocktail among the Yankees.'

'True,' said I with a sigh, as I thought of the evicted men of Glen

Ora.

At this entertainment, the sulky old Yuze Bashi, warmed by the

forbidden juice of the grape (of which being animated by our example

he partook rather freely, notwithstanding the anathemas of him whose

sabre cleft the moon in twain--Mohammed 'the Holy Camel Driver'),

seemed to conceive a sudden favour for me, and in his strange jargon

of French and Arabic, with a few hiccups between, gave me an account

of himself and of the Sultan's service.

He was named, it would appear, Hadjee Hussein Ebn al Ajuz (or the son

of the old woman), as his mother had been a cast-off slave of Mehemet

Ali, the Viceroy of Egypt; and his paternal parent was supposed to be

a certain enterprising corporal of Mamelukes, who died with a

bowstring about his neck for borrowing the silver lamps of a mosque

at Suez. Little Hussein became a soldier, and fought at the battles

of Koniah and Homs, in the war against Mehemet Ali; and in these

affairs had cut off various heads, and stowed away innumerable

Egyptian ears in the mysterious depths of his red Oriental breeches,

all to his own great satisfaction and contentment--as a head was

worth a piastre, and a pair of ears sold before Reschid Pasha's tent

for ten paras.

At the rout of Koniah he had saved the _only_ pair of Turkish colours

which escaped the furious advance of the Egyptian infantry--viz.,

those of Scherif Bey's regiment--by stuffing them into his voluminous

regimental breeches, wherein various bullets lodged harmlessly

thereafter during the retreat; for this and other acts of devotion,

he was rewarded by the government of Rodosdchig, a little fortress a

few miles from Heraclea; and after making the pilgrimage, partly by

steamer, to Mecca; after drinking of the Zemzem well, and of that

which flows at Midian where Moussa watered the flocks at Jethro, and

rolled from its mouth a stone which the united strength of Jethro's

seven shepherds failed to move; after kissing the holy Kaaba, and

flinging a few stones at an imaginary devil, he returned in a mingled

state of beer and beatitude to his fortress. There, since 1842, he

had spread his carpet, reposed in the lap of a charming odalisque,

and smoked his chibouque in contentment and peace; and

there--nathless his being a Hadjeè, and the builder of a little gilt

mosque--he drank and swore like any enlightened Christian of the

western world.

Fat, cunning as Lucifer, sensual as a sybarite, and intensely

illiberal, he was a fair specimen of the old Turk of the worst kind;

and if the curve be the line of beauty, then the shins of Hussein,

like those of most Osmanlies, were perfection. His ears were set

high on his head; his forehead was low and narrow; his eyebrows

nearly met, and thus betokened a cruel and revengeful nature. He

gave me, however, a little insight into the economy of military life

in the sultan's service.

'Our regiments,' said he, 'all consist of four battalions, and each

battalion is commanded by a cole agassi (major), and has one

standard. A colonel or lieutenant-colonel commands the whole, with

one great standard--the banner of the prophet--upon whose name be

glory! Each battalion has its squad of slaves, who carry water on

the march and bear the wounded from the field of battle. So strict

is the etiquette maintained in our service by officers, that they

never dine with subordinates in rank; hence the jovial messes of

Frangistan excite only our wonder; and to see a great Mir Alai, who

commands four thousand bayonets, drinking wine with a poor little

devil of an ensign, would astound the whole Turkish army. Even in

the street a superior officer always walks half a pace before an

inferior; thus I have seen five officers all walking along a street

at once in _echelon_, and maintaining a conversation at the same

time. None among us wear beards under the rank of general--with a

few exceptions. A junior officer always rises and salutes a senior

on the latter entering a room, and cannot seat himself again without

his permission, or appear before him without his fez, belt, and

sabre. Our Turkish privates receive about four shillings _Ingleez_

per month; but our lord the Sultan provides for their food and

clothing over and above their pay.'

I thanked the old fellow for this information, which did not impress

me highly with the position of an officer under his Majesty

Abdul-Medjid; and after a time Jack Belton and I, tired of the

entertainment, and of hearing lamentations for the fall of Kars, and

description of a palace of silver--solid silver--which the Sultan was

to build in London when he visited the Queen of the Ingleez; so,

carefully loading our revolvers, and placing them in our belts, we

took our regimental swords and dirks, and set forth for a ramble in

the dusk, regardless of the warnings of Catanagh and the Mir Alai

Saïd, who told us that strangers were never safe from assassination

and robbery after sunset. However, we took with us Callum Dhu, who,

in addition to his bayonet, carried a heavy cudgel cut in the wood of

_Coilchro_; and a regular adventure of some kind--no matter what--was

the very thing we required to enliven us a little, after our long

sea-voyage, and our recent bibulous _déjeûné_ with the Turkish

officers.

When off duty, honest Callum was seldom a moment from my side. The

Gael have a proverb, which says, 'affectionate to a man is his

friend, but a foster-brother is the life-blood of his heart;' and

faithful as one of my own blood could have been, was the gallant Mac

Ian to me!

As we stumbled along the narrow and muddy streets, we soon remarked

the total absence of everything that resembled a petticoat, for the

Turkish females in their hideous wide pantaloons and ghostly

yashmacks were unlike aught that was human, as they flitted among the

few shops which the town contained. The sun had long since set, and

the night was dark. There is no twilight in Turkey, where the

sunshine and darkness succeed each other suddenly at certain seasons.

'I miss nothing so much here as the petticoat, God bless it!' said

Belton, 'for you must allow, Allan, that it is a very interesting and

somewhat mysterious garment.'

'Charmingly so! and the more its amplitude, the more its mystery,'

said I.

'I don't half like those abominable Turkish trousers on the women;

but it is the very devil never to see their faces! We will get over

that difficulty somehow--for to be sad about trifles----'

'Hush, for heaven's sake, don't sing here like a wandering Arab,'

said I, interrupting the invariable song (that Jack gave us nightly

with the third allowance of wine) as we found ourselves before an

illuminated Khan.

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE KHAN.

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 of _Topchis_ were all organised _à la Franque_ by 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 on _backsish_, 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, the _Mahmoudieh_, 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 birth

_unseen_; 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 the _Mahmoudieh_--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.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

STORY OF THE GREEK LIEUTENANT.

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 even _him_ draw 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 the _Salât 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 the _Mahmoudieh_ steam-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 the

_Corsair_ on 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.

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE EXECUTION.

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 the _gathering_, 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 few _topchis_, 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, as _ours_ must 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 the _right_ was 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

of _Albania_ and the tartan kilt of the mountaineer of _Albany_ are

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; but _thou_, 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.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

IN 'ORDERS,' FOR DUTY.

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 the _Vestal_,

and that he had obtained quarters for his men in the Bombardiers'

Barracks at Heraclea, or _Erekli_, 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 our _Alpha_, _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-transport _Vestal_, 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 the _British 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!'

CHAPTER XXXVII.

I MARCH TO RODOSDCHIG.

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

the _Vestal_.

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 heather _here_,' 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 it

_sans 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 down

From Lochness to Loch Eil?--

And the Campbells to meet them

In 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 Lochaber

A desert were made,

And Glen Roy should be lost

To the plough and the spade;

Though the bones of my kindred,

Unhonoured, unurned,

Marked the desolate path

Where 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.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE VISION OF CORPORAL MOUSTAPHA.

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; 'have _you_ then been one of ourselves?'

'Yes, Aga, and one who could handle _this_ with 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 held

_that_?'

'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 am _not_,

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 styled _Hafiz_, which meaneth _Bible-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 if _the 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!'

'Except _one_,' 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."

'"I am but a poor corporal of foot," said I, remembering the rattan

of our adjutant, which I had felt more often than the finger of the

Prophet.

'"A weak mortal, assuredly--but a true Believer."

'"Bechesm! Upon thy beautiful eyes be it, that I am."

'A fire seemed to rage within me, and I strove to reach and embrace

her; but in vain, for lo! there suddenly rose around her a hedge of

thorns and brambles--the fuel of hell--that pricked and tore my

heated flesh.

'The maiden smiled with all her alluring sweetness of lips and eyes,

and almost laughed as she held up a beautiful hand to deprecate my

folly; while the wound in my breast caused me almost to swoon with a

sudden pang of agony.

'"What is your name?" I asked.

'"Noura."

'"Which meaneth--"

'"Light."

'"And why without garments?"

'"Because garments are a sign of the disobedience of our first

parents, and in our blessed abode that disobedience is forgotten. Al

Araf separates us from those by whom it is remembered with sorrow,

and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. Think, O Hafiz Maustapha, think

of what is before thee! Thou hast neglected alms, and scoffed at

prayer; blinded by vice, thou hast forgotten all about punishment

hereafter; and intoxicated by the grosser pleasures of earth, thou

hast dared to doubt those which were to come, yet vaunted thyself a

true Mussulman--being a liar and a hypocrite, even as Abdallah Elen

Obba was a liar and a hypocrite before thee."

'At these words a deadly terror fell upon my soul, for the eyes of

the maiden gleamed with a lurid light as she spoke. I wept and said--

'"What shall I do, O lovely one, to merit Paradise?"

'"Fear the Holy Prophet--keep his laws--and love me."

'"Love _you_!" I said, and stretched my arms in ecstasy towards her;

but, with a cry of astonishment and despair, as her figure melted

away and I saw only the cold fountain plashing in the pale moonlight.

Then there descended upon me a darkness and a horror, amid which I

felt a soft hand grasping mine with a touch that thrilled me, and the

voice of Noura whispered in my ear--

'"Come, Moustapha, come! Ascend to Paradise, where two-and-seventy

such as I await thee with smiles and with impatience."

'Now by all the devils that shaved the Queen of Saba!' shouted the

irreverend Yuze Bashi; 'think of that! two-and-seventy wives all to

be had for mere belief, which costs nothing, when I have paid a

thousand xerifs, and not an asper less, for one Circassian, in my

lifetime.'

'Peace!' exclaimed the moolah, with a brow and tone of severity;

'peace, Hussein Ebn al Ajuz; or, by the souls of the seven lawgivers,

I shall cease. Allah is indeed most merciful that he does not smite

thee deaf, and dumb, and blind.

'In a moment, grief, pain, and darkness passed away--and light,

music, and perfume, with a myriad brilliant figures and objects, all

beaming with a celestial glory, were around me. Then a holy joy

filled all my soul, for I knew that I had left the earth, with its

petty cares and wretched vanities, far, far away below the seven

heavens and the mansions of the moon; and that now the Garden of the

Blessed--the Eden of old--the Januat al Ferdaws of the Faithful--was

before me.

'O Mahmoud resoul Allah! May the angels of victory sweep away the

dust from beneath thy feet, and may their wings shield all who

believe in thee! O strange it is that I should have seen these

things, and yet live to speak of them on earth!

'I was in that wondrous Garden of Paradise from which our first

parents were expelled, when Adam, was hurled downward on the Isle of

Serendib,[*] where his footmark yet remains upon a mountain-top; and

when Eve fell near Mecca, where the marks of her two knees, as she

knelt, are yet to be seen, sixty musket-shot apart, for their stature

was gigantic. After that prodigious fall, they were separated two

hundred years, for the vast earth was all a silent desert then. But

to resume:

[*] Ceylon.

'Had it not been promised that he who looks on Paradise becomes

endued with the strength of a hundred of the strongest men, I must

have sunk under the scenes of more than mortal splendour, pleasure,

and delight that passed before my bewildered senses; for, as the

Koran sayeth, they were such things _as eye hath not seen, ear hath

not heard, nor the heart of man conceived_.

'I was in an ecstasy! A blessed ardour--a glorious joy swelled all

my heart with love, religion, and purity. A brilliant halo was

around me--a light without cloud--as in Khorassan, the land of the

Sun, and nothing that is there has a shadow, for light is everywhere.

'After passing a lake of brilliant water, that was whiter than milk,

a month's journey in compass, and surrounded by as many goblets as

there are stars in the firmament--each goblet formed of a single

emerald, and containing a liquid so precious that he who drinks

thereof shall never thirst more, I was ushered by two shining angels

through seven lofty gates, in seven walls that were built of

sparkling diamonds and gleaming rubies, into the Jannat al Ferdaws,

or abode of the blessed. At the seventh I was clothed in the richest

robes of silk and brocade, chiefly of a green colour; and these

robes, like the bracelets of gold and silver, and the crown of mighty

pearls with which they encompassed my brows, were taken from the

full-bursting flowers of Paradise that grew on each side of the way

by which we journeyed. Before me went a long train of shadowy

slaves, bearing silken carpets, litters, soft couches, downy pillows,

and other furniture--each article being embroidered with more

precious stones than all Asia could furnish in a thousand years.

'After a feast such as Mohammed alone could conceive, for the _lobe_

of a single fish on that wondrous table would dine seventy thousand

hungry Ingleez, I was conducted along garden-walks of musk and amber;

the earth of the parterre seemed like the finest wheaten flour, and

therein grew all the flowers of Paradise--each parterre being

lovelier than all Suristan, the Land of Roses; for the leaves were of

emeralds, the buds and petals of rubies, the stalks of burnished

gold, and the slender twigs of polished silver, all gleaming and

glittering under a stupendous blaze of sunlight.

'Passing kiosks of golden wire entwined with roses, wherein were

youths and damsels in amorous dalliance; passing the mighty

Toaba--the tree of happiness, which bears all the fruits, and meats,

and food the world ever knew, with a myriad others all of tastes

unknown to mortals, and every leaf of which is a melodious tongue,

and the stem of which would take the swiftest Barbary steed a

thousand years to compass; passing fountains of water, milk, honey,

and wine, all flowing on pebbles of ruby and pearl, through beds of

camphire, saffron, and amber---I was led on--on--through shrubberies

of precious stones and golden-bodied trees, on every branch of which

hung a thousand little bells, and there sat a thousand singing-birds,

which united with the leaves of the Toaba in filling the air with

divine praises and bewildering harmony--on--on--until we reached a

pavilion hollowed and fashioned of a single pearl, no less than four

parasangs broad, and nearly sixty Turkish miles in length--every part

of it, without and within, gleaming with sentences from the Koran,

written in rubies and jacinths.

'Here stood eighty thousand slaves, all clad in shining garments, and

three hundred beautiful damsels, each bearing three hundred golden

and porcelain dishes, each dish containing three hundred kinds of

food, awaited me on bended knees, with their charming faces bowed to

the silken carpets; three hundred others bore precious vessels filled

with fragrant wine; and in what language, O Frank, shall I refer to

the two-and-seventy wives, the Houris, who awaited me there, each

reclining in her couch, hollowed of a single pearl--the Hûr al Oyn,

the black-eyed, high-bosomed girls of Paradise, who are created not

of clay, like mortal women, but of the purest musk, and are without

blemish--maidens on whose faces of celestial beauty none may look and

live without a miracle; for I seemed to see all at a glance, though

the Prophet says, these things would take the most faithful of men a

thousand years' journey to behold.[*]

[*] See Sale's 'Koran.'

'Each coach whereon a maiden lay was a throne glorious as that of

Solomon, the Star of the Genii; and each Houri had no other veil to

her naked loveliness than the flowing tresses of her perfumed and

shining hair.

'As my dazzled eyes swept round this vast apartment, they lighted on

a familiar form; it was that of Noura, the nymph of the fountain; and

as I recognised her, she stretched her snowy arms towards me, with

her soft alluring smile, as the fire of love and conscious beauty lit

up her large black eyes. Her light etherial blood coursed through

her veins; I hung in rapture over her, and half faint with joy and

agitation, clasped her to my breast.

'Then the curtains of the pavilion fell around us, drawn by unseen

hands, and the voices of the singing-trees, the golden birds, and

fairy bells without, became hushed or died away, as I sank entranced

upon the tender bosom that panted under mine; and when impressing

upon her warm lip the first kiss that man had ever printed there, lo!

a sleep fell upon me--a deep and dreamless sleep--O Mahmoud resoul

Allah! that I should ever have awakened from it!'

The moolah paused in great excitement; the perspiration stood upon

his wrinkled forehead, and rolled over the glistening hairs of his

snowy beard; his dark eyes glared with a hollow gleam, and his breath

came thick and fast.

'Proceed, moolah,' said Hussein, quietly, amid a puff of smoke; 'and

you awakened, where?'

'On the verge of the snow-covered battle-field of Koniah, and close

beside the fountain where I had fallen into a swoon; the chill dews

of night were upon me, the bright clear moon rode through its

loftiest mansions; the pale fountain was murmuring and plashing on

its pebbled bed beside me; the lotus was drooping on its stalk; I was

still accoutred as a soldier--a poor corporal of Scherif Bey, and my

hand rested on the cold, hard barrel of my musket.

'Paradise and all its glories had vanished with the sleep that sealed

my eyes!

'Again I was a poor soldier, lying bruised on that lost and moonlit

battle-field, with the dew and the cold hoar frost whitening upon me.

'Bismillah!

'Slowly I staggered up, and felt for the wound in my breast--and O,

wonder of wonders! Though my blue uniform was still perforated by

the passage of the ball, the blood had disappeared, and the wound had

closed; it was well and whole--and of all that bloody gash, a little

scar alone remained!

'I threw myself upon the earth towards the Keblah--the Holy City of

Mecca; and I vowed seven times--by the seven gates of Paradise--by

the souls of the seven lawgivers--and by all the lights of the

faithful--to become a good, a pious, and a new man; and from that

hour I ceased to be a soldier, a reveller, a dicer, and a gamester; I

became a moolah, and went through all Greece and Asia Minor,

preaching the faith of the Koran and of the only Prophet--Mahmoud

resoul Allah--for there is no God but God, and the Camel Driver is

his Prophet!'

Such was the vision of the old corporal Moustapha!

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE TURKISH VEIL.

With this strange story hovering in my mind, and the Yuze Bashi

asleep in the cushioned recess of his araba, I paraded and marched

off my detachment from the valley at the first peep of early dawn

next day. I bade farewell to the old moolah Moustapha--the

ex-corporal of Scherif Bey--and gave him one of the small Turkish

notes (which are printed on thin yellow paper, and are worth about

ten shillings sterling) for the benefit of his mosque; and feared

that if he was not slightly defective in brain, he had at least but a

slight acquaintance with the goddess whose billet is popularly said

to be at the bottom of a well.

Along a road bordered by rare plants and gorgeous flowers; between

groves of orange, lemon, and fig trees, all growing in wild

luxuriance, and among myrtle-scented fields, we continued our march

by the shore of the sea of Marmora, the voices of my thirty soldiers

all uniting at times in one merry chorus, as they trod the old paved

causeway of the great Sultan Solymon, many of whose works are, by the

ignorant, ascribed to the Genii--just as our Scottish peasantry aver

their old ruins to be the work of Picts or of the fairies--and before

mid-day, we saw the little town of Rodosdchig rise before us, with

the blue sea washing its old grey walls; with its dark cypresses and

white minarets; its harbour full of quaint caiques; and its old

castle of the Greeks, on which was the red Turkish standard, with an

oval centre, bearing the three crescents of the Prophet.

As we marched in, the drum beat at the guard-house, and a guard of

lubberly Turkish militiamen scrambled from around a logwood fire,

where they had been toasting kabobs and dough-balls; they stood to

their arms, and gave us a military salute. The officer at their head

still retained at his neck the ancient gilt gorget, now long disused

in our service.

We were immediately beset by Greek kabob-roasters, and

sherbet-venders, from the arched gates of the bazaars, and a crowd of

wondering Osmanlies, whom the strange sound of the Highland warpipe

brought forth from every door, where they had been squatted on

carpets, dozing over opium, coffee, and chibouques; yet though

louder, more martial, and more shrill, our pipe is almost similar to

the instrument now used by the kilted mountaineers of Albania.

Not a woman was visible, though at times a veiled head and two

brilliant eyes appeared at the wire lattices which opened to the

unpaved and unlighted streets.

We marched into the old castle, of which the Yuze Bashi was

commandant, governor, or suzerain, and as such was the terror of all

Rodosdchig. He was the only officer there at present, though the

quaint old Greek towers of the last emperor were garrisoned by his

company of Bombardiers, and were mounted by ten iron twenty-four

pounders and two ten-inch mortars. On the walls towards the sea were

several old and useless, but enormous, brass guns, covered with

Turkish letters and pious sentences, with piles of moss-grown marble

shot between them. The stockades in many places had disappeared, for

our thrifty commandant had sold them when his piastres became scarce,

to the kabob-roasters, for firewood.

On resuming his command, the first act of Hussein was to

cudgel--almost to death--the chaoush of the main-guard, for some real

or imaginary fault; an act which gave us an odd idea of Turkish

discipline.

'What think you of this, Callum?' said I, with smile; 'suppose an

officer were to cudgel you?'

'I would drive my skene into his heart with as little remorse as I

would gralloch a dead deer,' was the reply of my henchman, frowning

at the idea.

My men occupied a portion of the miserable Turkish barrack, and I had

rooms assigned to me in a tower, the windows of which faced the sea;

and as the furniture was furnished by the government of His Majesty

the Sultan, it could scarcely be expected to be much more luxurious

than the birch-table, two Windsor-chairs, the iron coal-box and

elegant pair of bellows usually issued from the stores of Her

Brittanic Majesty to an officer in garrison.

That evening I dined--or supped--which you please (for the hour

rendered the meal dubious)--with the Yuze Bashi, whose portion of the

castle was magnificently fitted up. His servants were black slave

girls. We had neither forks, chairs, nor a table. We sat on

cushions, and ate pillaff and paties of Gallipoli oysters with our

fingers, from platters placed on little stools; we tore the fragrant

kabobs from their wooden skewers with our teeth--rent the fowls

asunder by the simple process of inserting the finger and thumb;

drank sherbet of sugar and musk dashed with French brandy; then came

iced Grecian wine, and, lighting our pipes, we gave thanks to the

Prophet for the good things of this land, and subsided among the

silken cushions with a sigh of satisfaction.

By the inquiring Callum Dhu I was given to understand that my friend

the Yuze Bashi had a wife; but, as it would have been discourteous to

have asked for her, as he studiously avoided ever recurring to the

circumstance of her existence; and, moreover, as a Turk can never

introduce his wife to any man save a most intimate friend, and then

only on receiving his solemn word of honour never to mention so

singular a departure from the established Mohammedan custom, I had no

hope of being blessed by seeing even the slipper of the commandant's

earthly helpmate; and so I thought no more about it--besides, wives

are most brittle and perilous ware to meddle with in Turkey.

Several weeks passed away monotonously at the castle of Rodosdchig.

I soon knew every street, bazaar, mosque, bezestien, coffee-house,

khan, and kabobki in the place as well as if they were my own

property; the old Greek ruins in the neighbourhood; the dumpy Doric

columns of what had been a temple, when beauty was worshipped in

Thessaly and Thrace, lying among a wilderness of luxurious weeds and

plants, with the snakes crawling over them, had all been, again and

again, delineated in my sketchbook; the round towers of the old

castle that overhung the sea; the sea itself, with its Greek caiques,

Turkish xebeques, and quaint fisherboats, soon became as familiar to

me as the murmur of its waves on the lucks below my barrack-room

window.

To divert my ennui, fortunately for myself, as my after-adventures

proved, I applied all my energies to the study of the monotonous and

crack-jaw gibberish of the Turks; and, with the assistance of

'Madden's Grammar,' &c., was able to master the sonnets of the old

Pasha, or General, Sermet Effendi; and of Partiff, whose rhymes in

honour of the Sultan and of Omar Pasha are to be seen gilded above

the gates of all the edifices erected by the Government; Jachiened,

the _Gulistan_, or 'Rose Garden of Sadi of Shiraz,' and the 'Pleasing

Tales of Khoja (Master) Nazir-il-adeen Efendi;' and I still remember

one charming old Persian story of the Garden of Paradise, which was

described as being _still extant_ in Asia, but concealed among remote

and inaccessible mountains, and to be reached only through long

caverns and by a subterranean river; and therein were ever summer

bloom and floral beauty, and all the animals were tame and loving, as

before the fall of our first parents--the lamb lying down beside the

lion, and the panther beside the goat, as some old dervish, who--like

my friend the corporal--had been there, called upon every hair in his

silver beard to testify.

The morning and evening parades of my little party followed each

other in unvarying succession; but the riotous, bloodthirsty, and

insurrectionary Greeks, of whom the Yuze Bashi had spoken so much at

our mess in Heraclea, were as quiet as the plodding denizens of the

most rural district in England.

The bluff Yuze Bashi Hussein (may his shadow never be less!) was now

my crowning bore, and I soon saw enough of him to make me avoid his

friendship, and to inspire me with a dislike for him, still stronger

than even the story of the Greek Lieutenant Vidimo had done.

Though the rent of his government, exclusive of his pay, was one

hundred and twenty purses, or about 600_l._ per annum, Hussein had a

large garden, which he forced the soldiers of the Sultan to

cultivate, and the produce of which he sold to the inhabitants _at

his own prices_, which were always rising and never falling. By this

means he nearly doubled his pay; while, by selling the powder and

shot of the batteries to Levant coasters and Greek pirates, he nearly

trebled it; and then, to make up the deficiency at head quarters, the

returns of his garrison for 'ball-practice' were enormous.

Then he had secured a handsome sum for the head of his younger

brother, which, like a good and loyal servant of the Prophet's

earthly shadow, he had transmitted to the Seraglio gate in a jar of

salt; for this unlucky brother, having fled from Stamboul, where he

had been engaged in an intrigue with a lady of the Household, and

having wounded the Kislar Aga with his handjiar, became well worth a

thousand piastres, dead or alive.

Such was Hussein Ebn al Ajuz. He was a man utterly devoid of scruple

or principle.

'A Greek,' said he, 'once dared to dispute with me on religion--but I

soon silenced him.'

'How?' I asked.

'By running my handjiar into his heart.'

'The devil!--that was a convincing argument.'

'A _sharp_ one, at all events,' was the cool reply.

He made his hatred of the Greeks a never-failing source of revenue.

If a merchant of that humbled race gave an entertainment, and our

commandant was not invited, he would send an onbashi and three

soldiers, with fixed bayonets, to extinguish the lights, disperse the

guests, and bring before him the master of the house, who was

therefore ordered to pay down so many piastres, as a fine, for

disturbing the neighbourhood--for the ponderous Turk is lord of the

soil, while the lively and more intelligent Greek is but its serf and

villein--being what the Englishman was to the Norman knight eight

hundred years ago.

I avoided the Yuze Bashi, no difficult matter, as he spent half the

day, seated on a carpet in a corner, smoking his bubbling narguillah

and drinking brandy-and-water; and now having no resource but my own

thoughts, or Callum Dhu, whose conversation was generally of old and

regretful memories, my spirits began to sink, for I had no longer the

daily good fellowship of our merry little mess, or the frank

joviality of Jack Belton to bear me up. Left thus entirely to myself

in that gloomy old castle of the Greeks, my mind reverted to other

days and other scenes, and the face of Laura--lost to me for

ever!--came frequently before me with a distinctness that made my

heart ache, though I sought--but in vain--to thrust the painful

thought and winning image from me.

One evening, according to my usual wont since I had become wayward

and moody, alone (as Callum was on guard), but accoutred with my

claymore, dirk, and loaded revolver (for in this district nobody

ventures abroad unarmed), I wandered beyond the walls of Rodosdchig,

to a grove of cypresses, where the wild grapes grew in luxuriance,

and where I could pluck them with the dew of evening on their purple

clusters. A little farther on lay one of those quiet Mohammedan

cemeteries which are so poetically named by the Orientals the Cities

of the Silent. There the ghost of each true Believer is supposed by

the superstitious to sit invisibly at the head of its own grave.

Near this burial-place were the ruins of what had been an old Greek

hermitage, in the days when poor anchorites 'sought to merit heaven'

by drinking cold water and chewing dry peas.

On this evening the City of the Silent rang with the merry voices of

a group of Turkish ladies. Clad in bright-coloured dresses, they

were sitting on carpets, among the green resting places, drinking

sherbet, eating _bon-bons_, and smoking pretty little chibouques,

while a few slaves and sullen eunuchs hovered near them in

attendance. As I passed these veiled fair ones, I heard a few shrill

exclamations of wonder, while their dark rolling eyes seemed to

sparkle with peculiar lustre through the holes in their snow-white

yashmacks.

On the verge of this cemetery, and apart from the group, I passed a

solitary lady, who was culling a bouquet of flowers from among the

turbanned headstones; and who, in pursuit of this innocent object,

had wandered to some distance from her companions. Attracted by the

singular grace which pervaded all her actions, I hovered near her,

and affected to read the epitaphs gilded on the marble tombs; but

perceiving that her bracelet--which was composed of those magnificent

opals which dart fire, and by the Orientals are believed to be found

only where thunder has fallen--was lying on the grass, I hastened to

restore it, and to clasp it on her wrist. With a hurried bow, and a

sweet smile sparkling in her eyes, she permitted me to perform this

little act; and while doing so, I was charmed by the delicate beauty

of her arm and gloveless hand.

The bracelet was clasped, and I was on the point of touching my cap

and retiring, when, either by accident or design--from all I knew of

Turkish wives, I half suspected _the latter_--her bouquet fell from

her hand, and the flowers were scattered about her.

'Mashallah!' she exclaimed, and laughed.

Though I knew well that if seen near her, or with her, a dose of

bamboo-canes or a bullet, perhaps, might repay my temerity, I

deliberately gathered up the flowers, and tieing them with a ribbon,

presented them to her, with a few Turkish compliments, and begged

permission to retain a rose, as a gift from her.

She at once accorded it, giving me, at the same time, a full, deep,

and piercing glance through the square opening of her yashmack.

Oh, those speaking eyes! How well this woman knew their dangerous

power!

I see them yet in imagination, for heaven never created aught more

beautiful than the eyes of this Turkish damsel. She touched my hand

slightly, and said, while casting a hurried glance about her,

'Where shall we meet again?'

The '_we_' made my heart leap!

'Meet again?--at this hour to-morrow evening--among these ruins,'

said I, entering recklessly into what might prove a dangerous

rendezvous; and then, waving a kiss to me, my beautiful Unknown

hurried through the cypress-grove and rejoined her gay companions.

It was all arranged and over in a moment!

CHAPTER XL.

A LOVE ADVENTURE.

The next day passed slowly, and I thought of my love affair--(for a

love affair I had determined to consider it)--with some anxiety: the

path to Cupid in the East being strewn with more daggers than roses;

for a panther in its hungry wrath is a lamb when contrasted to a Turk

animated by a fit of jealousy; and that my unknown was the

better-half of some dreamy Osmanli I had not the least doubt. I

carefully loaded my revolver--placed all my money in my purse, to be

ready for any emergency, and buckled on my dirk and claymore, as if I

had been about to escalade the Malakoff or make a dash at the Redan,

instead of merely meeting a pretty girl. I then set forth to keep my

appointment, just as the Yuze Bashi was dropping off into his usual

evening doze, and just as the long shadows of the towers and

cypresses were falling to the eastward; and the muezzins on the upper

galleries of the minarets were watching for the first dip of the

sun's flaming disc, to shout the shrill summons to evening prayer.

Had I forgotten Laura?

Alas for the weakness of the human heart! I fear that after I saw my

beautiful Oriental I had no memory for aught beyond that epoch in my

history--for a time at least.

Though the evening was delightful, few persons were abroad; and after

leaving the town, an old, white-bearded Grecian monk, wending his way

staff in hand and wallet on back, was the only person I met; as with

a beating heart I sought the sequestered ruins of the ancient

Christian chapel and hermitage.

Once or twice a fear that I might have been lured here for some

deadly purpose, and that her rendezvous was but a wicked snare,

flashed upon me.

The scene was beautiful. On one hand lay the cemetery with its grove

of tall and solemn cypresses; on the other rose a marble rock

surrounded by an old rampart, having ruined towers, from which the

cannon of the Greeks had poured their stone-shot upon the fierce

Timariots of the Sultan Mohammed the Second, the founder of the new

Empire. Amid these old ramparts the antique outline of a gilt dome

and the white minar of a little mosque cut the evening sky. At the

base of the rock a stream flowed from a ruined arch into a marble

basin, over which flourished the beautiful leaves of the acanthus,

under the shade of the graceful and delicate olive-tree.

The sun was setting with gorgeous brilliance; the western sky was all

a lurid red, as if the whole horizon was in flames, and the shadows

of three gigantic Grecian Doric columns of white marble--ascribed to

the Genii in the times of old--were thrown far across the landscape.

From the shattered cornice and four triglyphs which still surmounted

them, some long and pendant creeping plants swung like garlands on

the evening wind, that came from the deep and blue Propontis.