Our craft had been for some time in motion before I became aware that a large lateen sail was hoisted on it, and was filled to the extremity of its long and tapering yard; and that our course was directed, not to Rodosdchig, but up the sea of Marmora, towards the north-east.
I demanded of the Moolah Moustapha whither he was conveying us, but received no answer. Again and again I made the same request, each time with growing anger and vehemence, and each time adding threats of what our Government would say, or do, or require, curiously oblivious that I had, in my own person, outraged the civil and religious laws of Turkey, such as they are; but still the Moolah disdained to accord me the slightest answer or recognition, and sat, with his hands folded in his green robe and crossed upon his breast; his high felt cap pulled over his beetling brows; his keen and glittering eyes fixed upon the eastern quarter of the sky, where the dawn was shedding a rosy tinge over all the land and sea; and the rough galiondgis or boatmen, and the pistolled, sabred, tarbooshed, and bearded policemen of the Bostandgi Bashi were equally taciturn, though Zahroun scowled and swore at us from time to time.
Now I conceived that they might be conveying us to one of the old castles at the mouth of the Bosphorus, or perhaps to Constantinople, but the distance was rather too great to be traversed in an open boat at the season of the year.
Day dawned at last; morning brightened on the Grecian hills, and the outline of many a grim old tower and ruined temple, crowning the grey rocks and storm-beaten headlands, stood in dark relief against the blushing east.
Upon that sea, which mirrored all the morning sky, I gazed with a shudder of horror, for it was the grave of my poor Albanian girl, and her pale, wan face, her beautiful eyes, and angelic smile, came before me with painful distinctness; while, with a morbid grief, I endeavoured to imagine on what coral bed, in what deep and unfathomable rift or abyss of that huge watery tomb, on which the waves were shining in the orient sun, her charming form had found a last resting place.
Poor Iola! I could not yet realize her death, or the conviction that if I was to go back to Rodosdchig I would not meet her at the Ruined Hermitage, in the express cemetery, or in the silken-hung apartments of Hussein, where I had last spent an evening with her. The events of the last night still seemed all a hideous nightmare, or the memory of some terrible phantasmagoria.
'It is long before we become assured of the loss of those we value,' says a charming female writer; so her dying glance was still lingering before me, and shall be so, in years to come, when other memories may have been swept away and effaced, like footprints on the shore of an ebbing sea.
With emotions of rage and hatred, difficult alike to express and to control, I turned from her destroyers, and hid my face in my hands, as this bitterness was replaced by anguish and remorse.
The kochamba continued to run at great speed before a sharp breeze which blew direct from the narrow Dardanelles, and the rocky capes, the sandy bays, and wooded inlets opened and closed again in rapid succession, as we passed them with a flowing sheet, and ere long Callum and I recognised the flat-roofed town and barracks of Heraclea, with the old ruins of the age of Vespasian, and the white foam curling on the rocks of Palegrossa, where the timbers of the Vestal lay—a rent and weedy hull.
I now hoped that the Moolah and his ruffians meant to land us there, and deliver us up to our own commanding officer, and with this idea my spirit rose a little. The familiar faces of our mess came before me; rough Duncan Catanagh, with his old legends about Loch Lomond and stories of the Mahrattah war: frank Jack Belton, and others among whom I had felt happier than ever I hoped to be after the time I had laid my mother in her lonely Highland grave, and since I had been driven from Glen Ora into the wide and selfish world; but this gleam of liberty faded away, for the kochamba still bore on; her head was kept to the seaward, and in another hour Heraclea was left astern.
What could be the Moolah's object, and whither was he going?
Ere long a British screw-steamer-of-war—a frigate under easy sail, and with her steam up—passed us to leeward, on her way apparently for the Bosphorus, and Callum and I gathered new hope as she came close to us, with her scarlet ensign swelling proudly on the morning breeze, and with the sun shining through her open gun-ports. I arose in the boat, believing that my scarlet uniform might arrest the attention or excite the suspicion of those on board; but I was instantly thrust down below the thwarts; a pistol was held to my head by Zahroun; then a tarpaulin, was thrown over Callum and me, to conceal us more completely from any prying eye that might be aloft in the steamer's rigging, and steadily, swiftly, and monotonously the kochamba continued to cleave the glittering waves and run along the coast of Roumelia.
Our Turkish captors were all smoking opium and coarse Latakia in taciturn composure; some had small chibouques, and others cigarettes made up of paper and tobacco, from those little embroidered bags which an Osmanli is seldom without.
Several hours had now elapsed since Callum and I had been tied so roughly by ropes, and these being wetted by the salt spray, had shrunk to a degree that caused us intense and acute pain. My hands became red, swollen, stiff, and benumbed; and with something of satisfaction I saw the lateen-sail trimmed anew, the helm put up, and the prow of the kochamba turned inwards a town which we were nearing. But, still my mind was painfully full of Iola—my poor victim—for conscience made her seem as much the victim of my folly or recklessness—term it as you will—as of the cruelty of that Osmanli dog her husband, whom I had registered a hundred vows to pistol on the first opportunity.
Could I have recalled the events of the last few weeks Iola had still been spared, for my rashness would now have been tempered by reason and the ties of honour; and she had still been a thing of life and of this earth, enjoying the monotonous and secluded existence accorded to a Turkish wife—varied only by an evening ramble in the City of the Silent with the gossips of adjacent harems and anderuns.
The kochamba bore straight and steadily on, and as we neared the harbour, every object increased along the shore, and soon we were in smooth water and between the piers.
This, then, was the place of our destination, and here it was that probably poor Callum and I were to figure before one of those absurdly solemn courts of muftis and kadis who sit in every Turkish town to play the farce of Justice, and whose code of law is the verbose and obscure Koran of Mohammed, and the Koran alone.
Again I ventured to question the Moolah.
'What place is this?'
'Selyvria, in the Sandjiack of Gallipoli,' was the brief reply, as the boat came sheering alongside the low and slimy mole. Then the yard was lowered, and the flapping sail stowed away; the long oars were unshipped, and the painter run through one of the enormous iron rings on the quay.
We were ordered to land, and lost no time in doing so; then the policemen of the Bostandgi drew their sabres and conducted us into the town, where an increasing crowd of chattering Greeks and gambolling young Turkish gamins, with brown, bare legs and red tarbooshes, followed us through the muddy and unpaved thoroughfares with shrill cries of astonishment, amid which the incessant 'Mashallah,' 'Inshallah,' and 'Allah Ackbar,' were the most prominent.
The sun had set now and the aspect of the sea and land was magnificent.
Throned in the eastern heavens, the soft and silver moon was in all her clearest splendour. The studded belt of Orion and the constellation of the Scorpion united with her in filling the wide blue vault of night with lustre, and all the waves of Marmora seemed to be tipped with blue fire and to be rolling in liquid light.
Built on the slope of a hill, the terraced houses of Selyvria were irregular, quaint, and queer, like those of all Turkish towns, and they rose above each other like the seats of an amphitheatre. The hill was green, and on its summit rose a fortress of the Greek Empire—old, say some, as the days of Selys, who founded the city. The lower, or Turkish town, is without enclosure, though an embattled wall connects the outer row of houses, above which rise the domes of its khan and several mosques.
On leaving the town we were conducted along an ancient bridge of about forty arches, the shadows of which were thrown by the moonlight far across the salt sea-marsh, over which it is built. Thence proceeding by a part of the paved road that leads to Stamboul, and is formed of blocks of basalt, we found ourselves beneath the walls of a grim and dilapidated castle, which stands close to the sea-shore. On one hand the waves of the Propontis lay rolling in shining ripples on the yellow beach, and inland, on the other, spread a wilderness of wild vines and cherry-trees, with massive Grecian columns, tottering or prostrate among them, and beyond these a spacious burial-place, with all its shadowy, huge, and solemn cypresses, standing like a rank of giant spectres in the brilliant moonlight.
Above our heads towered the black parapets, the peering cannon, and the red-capped sentinels of the Turkish castle. Then the wild and strange voices of the Osmanli soldiers were heard, as the Onbashi of the Bostandgis conferred with the Mulazim who commanded the guard; the heavy doors were opened, and as we entered a cold and dark archway, we heard the chink of bolt and bar and swinging-chain, as the barrier was secured behind us; and then the ropes were untied from our almost powerless hands—an inexpressible relief!
'Dioul!' muttered Callum, with a shrug of his shoulders, 'we were better at home in desolate Glen Ora, even under Snaggs the factor, than here.'
Before I could reply, we were pushed through a side door, and thrust down a flight of steep and slimy steps, into a hot, close, and noisome place, where the sights, sounds, odours, and horrors that awaited us, require an entire chapter to themselves.