Part 2 (1/2)
”'Tis no dream; thou art wide awake,” cried the mysterious voice.
”If it be no dream, give me a sign that I may know before I depart hence that I have not been dreaming.”
”First put thy sword into its sheath.”
”I have done so,” said Ali; but he lied, for he had only slipped it into his girdle.
”Into the sheath, I say,” cried the voice.
It was with a tremor that Ali felt that this being could distinguish his slightest movement in the dark.
”And now stretch forth thy hand!” cried the voice. It was now quite close to him.
Ali stretched forth his hand, and the same instant he felt a vigorous, manly hand seize his own in a grasp of steel; so strong, so cruel was the pressure that the blood started from the tips of his fingers.
At last the invisible being let go, and said in a whisper as it did so:
”Not a muscle of thy face moved under the pressure of my hand; only Tepelenti could so have endured.”
”And there is but one man living who could press my hand like that,”
replied Ali. ”His name was Behram, the son of Halil Patrona,[3] who, forty years ago, was my companion in warfare, and has since disappeared. Who art thou?”
[Footnote 3: The extraordinary adventures of this Mussulman reformer are recorded in another of Jokai's Turkish stories, _A feher rozsa_ (_The White Rose_).]
”Aleik.u.m unallah!”[4] said the voice, instead of replying.
[Footnote 4: ”G.o.d be with thee!”]
”Who art thou?” again cried Ali, advancing a step.
”Aleik.u.m unallah!” was the parting salutation of the already far-distant voice.
The mighty pasha turned back in a reverie, and when he got back into the moonlight, he still saw plainly on his hand the drops of blood which that powerful grasp had caused to leap forth from the tips of his fingers.
CHAPTER II
EMINAH
And now for a story, a marvellous story, that would not be out of place in a fairy tale! Away to another clime where the very sunbeams and blossoms, where the very beating of loving hearts, differ from what we are accustomed to.
In whichever direction we look around us, we shall see the land of the G.o.ds rising up before us in cla.s.sical sublimity, the mountains of h.e.l.las, the triumphal home of sun-bright heroes. There is the mountain whence Zeus cast forth his thunderbolts, the grove where the thorns of roses scratched the tender feet of Aphrodite, and perchance a whole olive grove sprung from the tree into which the nymph, favored and pursued by Apollo, was metamorphosed. The sunlit summits of snowy ta and Ossa still sparkle there when the declining sun kindles his beacons upon them, and Olympus still has its thunderbolts; yet it is no longer Zeus who casts them, but Ali Tepelenti, Pasha of Albania and master of half the Turkish Empire, and the rose which the blood of Venus dyed crimson blooms for him, and the laurel sprung from the love of Apollo puts forth her green garlands for him also.
The poetic figures of the bright G.o.ds are seen no more on the quiet mountain. With a long gun over his shoulder, a palikar walks. .h.i.ther and thither, who has built his hut in a lurking-place where Ali Pasha will not find it. The high porticos lie level with the ground; the paths of Leonidas and Themistocles are covered with sentry-boxes, that none may pa.s.s that way.
From the summit of the mighty Lithanizza you can look down upon the fairy-like city which dominates Albania. It is Janina, the historically renowned Janina.
Beside it stands the lake of Acheruz, in whose green mirror the city can regard itself; there it is in duplicate. It is as deep as it is high. The golden half-moons of the minarets sparkle in the lake and in the sky at the same time. The roofless white houses, rising one above another, seem melted into a compact ma.s.s, and they are encircled by red bastions, with exits out of eight gates.