Part 6 (1/2)
The Albanians consulted together for a brief moment, and then intimated that if a bey of the name of Gaskho really existed, he was as good as dead already.
Towards mid-day Ali sent for his sons. He said not a word to them of the anxieties, the visions, and the apparitions of the night before, but made them, after they had respectfully kissed his hands, sit down all around him. Mukhtar Bey he invited to sit down on his left hand, Vely on his right, and Sulaiman directly opposite.
He addressed himself first of all to Sulaiman.
”Thou art the youngest and boldest,” said he. ”To-morrow thou must go to sea and take three s.h.i.+ps with thee. These s.h.i.+ps thou must take to Sicily, load them there with sulphur, and return without losing an instant.”
”Oh, my father!” replied Sulaiman, ”the tempest is now abroad upon the sea. Who would venture now with a s.h.i.+p upon the billows? All the monsters of the ocean are now running upon the surface seeking whom they may devour, and the phantom s.h.i.+p, with her shadowy rigging and her shadowy crew, pursues her zigzag course across the waters.”
Ali Pasha said no more, but turned towards Mukhtar Bey.
”Thou art the most crafty,” said he; ”go then to the captains of the Suliotes and invite them to a.s.semble with their forces at Janina with all despatch. Spare neither promises nor a.s.surances nor fair winds.”
Mukhtar Bey's face turned quite angry, and, wagging his head, still heavy from his overnight debauch, he answered, sullenly: ”In the mountains the snow is now thawing; every stream is swollen into a river; naught but a bird can find a place for its foot on the dry ground; how, then, can armies move hither and thither? Wait for a week, till the inundations have subsided. Truly there is no enemy on thy borders. In thy whole realm there is not so much as a rat to nibble at thy walls. What dost thou want now with chariots and armed men?”
Ali now turned to Vely, who was sitting on his right hand. ”Go thou over to Misrim,” said he, ”and purchase for me two thousand horses; a thousand of them shall be meet for war-chargers, and a thousand for drawing guns.”
”Oh, my father!” answered Vely, who was the eldest and wisest of Ali's sons, ”I will not object to thy command that the simoon has now begun in Misrim, before whose burning, suffocating breath every living creature is forced to fly. I reck little of that, but the horses, thy precious horses, will perish. And, moreover, I would ask of thee one question. Wherefore dost thou get together a host, and horses and guns, without cause, and with no danger threatening thee? Will not all these warlike preparations excite the rage of the Padishah against thee, and so thy preparing against an imagined peril will saddle thee with a real war?”
Ali Pasha laughed aloud--a very unusual habit with him.
”Well,” said he, ”it is for me to prove to you, I suppose, that you are all wrong in your calculations. Dine with me and be merry. After dinner you shall see that the sea is not stormy, that the rivers are not in flood, and that the simoon is not suffocating. I have a talisman which will convince you thereof.”
So he entertained his sons till late in the evening, and immediately after dinner he whispered to one of the dumb eunuchs, and then he took his sons with him into the red tower, the doors of which were left wide open. He stopped short with them in one of the rooms, the solitary semicircular window of which looked out upon the lake of Acheruz. The window was guarded by an iron grating. Here he sat down with them to smoke his narghily and sip his coffee. The sons would have preferred to mount upon the roof of the tower, where the fresh air and the fine view would have made their siesta perfect; but Ali facetiously observed that in the open air cold and hot winds were just then blowing together at the same time, and he did not want the simoon to make them sweat or the trade-winds to make them s.h.i.+ver.
As they were sipping their coffee there the splas.h.i.+ng of oars was audible beneath the tower, and the sons beheld three large, flat-bottomed boats propelled upon the surface of the water, in which sat the damsels of their harems; the boats were rowed by muscular eunuchs.
The faces of the three beys lighted up when they saw the damsels being rowed on the water, and Mukhtar Bey whispered roguishly in Sulaiman's ear, ”Shall we make the old man also one of our party?”
Ali overheard the whisper, and replied, with a smile, ”Truly your damsels are most beauteous”--here he stroked his white beard from end to end--”I am not surprised, therefore, that you like to stay at home here and call the wind hot and cold, though it is nothing but the breath of Allah, and what comes from G.o.d cannot be bad. But your damsels _are_ beautiful, of that there can be no doubt. Now, last night I dreamt a dream. Before me stood the Prophet, and he told me how you had challenged him to say which of your damsels was the sweeter and the more beautiful.” (Here the sons regarded each other, full of fear and amazement.) ”The Prophet replied,” continued Ali, ”that it was not meet that he should come to your damsels; they should rather go to him. So I mean to send them to Paradise.”
”What doest thou?” cried all three sons, horror-stricken.
The only answer Ali gave was to give a long shrill whistle, at which signal the eunuchs drew out the plugs from holes secretly bored at the bottom of the three boats, leaping at the same time into the water, and leaving the boats in the middle of the lake.
The damsels shrieked with terror as the water began to rush into the boats from all sides. The air was filled with cries of agony.
Mukhtar rushed madly to the door and found it locked. With impotent violence he attempted to burst it open. Sulaiman meanwhile tore away at the iron window-grating with both hands, as if he fancied himself capable of pulling down the whole of the vast building by the sheer strength of his arms. The blue-eyed Albanian girl and the languis.h.i.+ng Jewish damsel, with the fear of death in their eyes, looked up at the closed window; the waves had already begun to swallow their beautiful limbs.
Only Vely Bey remained motionless. He, at any rate, had not sinned. He had not angered the Prophet in that orgie of amorous rivalry. He had loved one only, by her only had he been loved, and she, yes, she was peris.h.i.+ng there among the others!
The boats sank deeper and deeper; nothing could be heard but the cries of the drowning wretches in all the accents of despair. The two sons saw their damsels dying before their eyes, and were unable to rush out and save them; not even one could be rescued. One more shriek of woe, and then the boats sank. For a few moments the surface of the water was covered with bright gauze veils and s.h.i.+ny turbans and white limbs and dishevelled tresses, and then a few solitary turbans floated on the water.
Sulaiman, sobbing in despair, fell down in a heap close by the window, while Mukhtar fell madly on the door and kicked it with all his might, as if he would drown in the din the cries for help of the peris.h.i.+ng damsels. Only Vely Bey looked in bitter silence upon the detestable waves, which within a minute had swallowed three heavens.
Far, far away on the crest of the rising waves a black object appeared to be swimming. What was it? Perhaps one of the damsels. One moment it vanished in the wave-valleys, the next it appeared again on the top of a high ridge of water. What could it be? But farther and farther it receded. Perchance some one had escaped, after all. Greek girls are good swimmers.
And now Ali Pasha arose from his place and said, with a smile, to his sons:
”Methinks that neither the storms of ocean, nor the swollen waters, nor the breath of the simoon will now appear so terrible to you as they did a few hours ago. Depart now with all speed. When you return you will find new harems here, which will make you forget the old ones.” And with that he quitted them.