Escorted by a party of Turkish police, or personages armed with similar authority, and accoutred with yataghan and pistols, of course, for these are as indispensable to an Osmanli as his nose and eyes, our new companions who entered were two hideous and ferocious Asiatic Turks, with receding foreheads, sharp temples, ana shaggy eyebrows—black and sinister eyes—hooked noses and long moustaches, having a savage curl, round almost to their ears. While they were being secured by the legs to the wall, a gleam of sunlight from one of the grated slits fell upon them, and I recognised Zahroun and another of the Turks who had assisted the Moolah Moustapha in committing Iola to her dreadful tomb amid the waters.
I stepped towards them, with a dark frown on my face and a twitching in my hands, as if I could have sprung upon their throats; and Callum followed me close, with a gleam in his dark eye that betokened mischief.
Zahroun recognised us, and pointed his dirty brown fingers at me with mockery, while his companion gave us but a scowl and a sullen stare.
'Chaoush,' said I, to the sergeant of the guard, 'of what have these men been guilty?'
'Murder and piracy,' replied the soldier, briefly, as he drew a key from the fetter-lock of Zahroun.
'Murder!—where?—near Rodosdchig?'
'No—for murdering a Frankish officer off the coast of Natolia a night or two ago, in a solitary caique; but they are safe enough till the ferashes of the Bostandgi Bashi lead them out to take their last view of the setting sun.'
Yells, hoots, and groans, whistling and laughter, greeted the chaoush as he retired, and I turned away with aversion from the two wretched assassins who had been added to the number already round us. But their arrival excited a little curiosity in this strange community, and by those who were chained on each side of them, and opposite, they were loudly and vociferously pressed to relate the story of their crime and the cause of their incarceration there.
It was briefly told, for the Turk is neither verbose nor circumlocutory.
They, and a few others, all well armed in a fleet caique, were hovering about the coast of Natolia, on the look-out for any smaller craft they might be able to overpower or pick up, when they discovered, in a creek of the opposite Isle of Marmora, an English pleasure-yacht ashore, wedged upon the sand, and left almost dry, as her crew, without the assistance of a large steamer, were totally unable to get her off. Barek Allah! here was a prize! A well-found, taut-rigged, sharp-prowed, and strong English yacht, of some three hundred tons, pierced for twelve eight-pounder carronades, and handsomely fitted up.
In those disorderly times, when the shores of Asia Minor were swarming with lawless bands, and Greece was vibrating with incipient insurrection, what havoc could be made in the Archipelago with such a craft as this English yacht! But then her owner was a sturdy, burly old infidel, who, since she had gone ashore, had stuck a huge cutlass and four pistols in his girdle. He had a well-picked crew of forty men, all well armed, and who loved fighting better than idleness, for these Ingleez galiondgis were the very devil! He had on board, also, a British officer from Sebastopol, and two Ingleez ladies, beautiful as the houris of Paradise, moon-faced and cushion-hipped (and here the hideous Asiatic rolled his black goggle eyes, and licked his blubber lips), and so the yacht with her twelve brass guns, plunder, et cetera, was deemed well worth venturing one's hide under pewter and steel for.
While Zahroun and his companion Abdul Basig watched her in a little caique, pretending to fish by day and to sleep in an adjoining creek by night; others, their comrades in many a crime, were scouring all the sea-port towns about Rodosdchig and the Natolian coast, to muster enough of lads on whom, by old experience, they could depend—choice and sturdy sons of the handjiar and pistol, to assist in surprising the grounded yacht some cloudy night when the moon was below the horizon, and no help was nigh; for with enough of hands she could easily be boarded in the dark—the throats of the Ingleez cut from clew to earring, and then the whole craft, with all her plunder, provisions, women, wine, plate, and everything, would belong to the captors. Inshallah! was it not a notable speculation?
'One evening,' continued this exulting ruffian, 'Abdul and I were hovering near the creek in our caique, looking at the stranded yacht, and admiring her beautiful mould, and clean run under the counter, as she lay with a heel over to her port side, when suddenly, while we were speaking, her colours were run up to the foremast-head to gain our attention, and a giaour on deck waved his hat to us. Then we pulled alongside, but cautiously and slowly.
'The Effendi to whom she belonged had grown weary of lying in a few feet of water among the woods of that secluded creek, and impatiently proposed that, for so many piastres, we should convey the bearer of a message towards the mouth of the Dardanelles, where he would be sure of falling in with one of the many British cruisers, whose captain would at once lend him all the assistance necessary, on merely mentioning his name; for this stout old infidel in the square-tailed coat, white trousers, and straw hat, evidently deemed himself a great man in his own country; and so perhaps he may be, for Abdul tells me that it is an island of white chalk, where the sun never shines, and whose shores are surrounded by a thousand leagues of mud; and that its mountains are peopled by Arnaouts, who wear a striped camise round their middle like yonder giaour (pointing to Callum Dhu), and that they have tails—Allah Ackbar!—of which, however, they are deprived by the Moolahs at their birth.
'Be that as it may, we agreed with the Frankish Effendi to take his messenger to a castle of the Dardanelles, and for three hundred piastres, which were at once paid over the capstan-head, to set off that very night. Before he left the yacht, his messenger, a handsome Ingleez captain—a Yuze Bashi in the Guards, and bearded like a Janissary, or like all those infidels who come from the war, kissed the unbelieving women before descending to our boat—kissed them before us all, without their yashmacks; and then we put off, set our sail, shipped the sweeps, and pulled away to sea.
'The night was beautiful, and muffled in a coat which had a hooded cape like that of a Bashi Bozook, the Ingleez captain lolled in the stern-sheets of the caique, smoking cigars, speaking, as all these Ingleez do, about the weather, and looking upward at the stars, or back to the Isle of Marmora, where he had left his two wives, for such I took the women to be; but now the Isle was diminished to a dim blue speck upon the waters, and we could no longer see the creek where the yacht lay.
'He had a fine ring on the fourth finger of his left hand; it flashed as he gave us each a few cigars, and lit a fresh one for himself. He had a noble gold watch (all these infidels have such), and he looked at it from time to time, as he hummed a song, and after telling us to "pull like devils, as we should be well paid," fell fast asleep, for he feared nothing.
'Abdul and I continued to pull, but less vigorously than before. We looked slyly at each other, and thought of the watch and the ring. The sea was very quiet and smooth; there was not a ripple on it, and no eye beheld us, but the winking stars. The infidel-dog slept soundly, and he was smiling in his sleep, as he dreamt perhaps of his two Ingleez wives, or his island of mud and fog, for we could see his white teeth shining under his dark moustache in the starlight. We were some miles off Cape Karaburun, for we could see its lighthouse glimmering on our lee. Everything was quiet and lonely as it may well be upon the midnight ocean. We exchanged another glance, and in a moment more, the throat of the infidel was gaping with a red slash of my handjiar, which nearly cut his head off!
'Abdul Rasig made a snatch at the gold watch, and just as we tossed him overboard, I tore off the diamond ring with my teeth, and, Allah Kebir! a mouthful of his unclean flesh came off with it; but here it is—the ring, not the flesh!'
In the excitement of his narrative the wretch forgot himself so much as to exhibit the ring. It was a chaste little jewel—a pure diamond, set round with pearls; and on beholding it, I started back as if a thunderbolt had burst at my ear.
That identical ring I had seen a hundred times on the finger of Laura Everingham; and I had last observed it, to my pique and grief, on the hand of her lover—her husband Clavering—when he dined at our mess in the Castle of Dumbarton!
Astonishment and horror chained all my faculties, and meanwhile the exulting Zahroun continued his revolting narrative.
'We flung him over, and he sunk like a stone; then we put the helm up, and bore away for the river Ustuola, our point of rendezvous on the coast of Natolia—a lonely place, where all our armed caiques were to meet for attacking and taking the yacht. But a storm came on; wallah! a storm of wind and lightning, a flash of which shaved my left whisker clean off, as you may see; we were driven up the Sea of Marmora, and after losing both sweeps and sail, were drifting at the mercy of the wind and tide, when an armed boat of the Bostandgi Bashi—may dogs defile his beard!—overhauled us, just when we were quarrelling and mauling each other about the respective merits of the watch and ring, for Abdul Rasig was wrathful at the splendour of my diamond, vowing, that for every para the watch was worth I had got a piastre, and a para being worth only the thirtieth part of a piastre, four of which now go to make a shilling Ingleez, we loudly accused each other of murder and robbery, like the fathers of fools.
'The Kadi before whom we were brought carefully wound up the watch, applied it to his ear, and as it ticked to his satisfaction, he solved the matter by depositing it in his judicial pocket. He would also have quieted me, by slipping my ring on his finger, but I placed it in my mouth, and swore, by every hair in the boards of the two hundred and twenty-seven thousand prophets of Islam, that I had swallowed it; then we were marched off to the Bagnio, and so are here.'
'Ay, here we are, a thousand burning curses on your folly!' growled Abdul; 'for the four caiques will leave the mouth of the Ustuola on the fourth night from this; the yacht will be boarded and taken, and neither of us will be there to share the plunder or the pleasure; and wallah! I had set my whole soul on having one of those white-skinned Ingleez women!'