Part 9 (1/2)

They really did bury Ali.

When the imams and the officers had departed from the covered tomb, Gaskho Bey summoned the keepers of the observatory to the summit of Lithanizza and laid this command upon them:

”Let a man stand in front of this telescope from morning to evening (and mind that he is relieved every four hours), and never withdraw his eye from that tomb. At night, when the moon goes down, a rocket is to be fired every five minutes, that the watchers may see the tomb and never leave it out of sight, and report upon it every hour.”

What? Is Gaskho Bey actually afraid that old Ali, a veteran of seventy-nine, will be able to arise from his tomb and hurl away that heavy marble slab with his dead hands? There are men of whom it is impossible to believe that they are dead, and whom people are afraid of even when they are buried.

Every hour till late in the evening they reported to Gaskho Bey that the tomb remained unchanged, and all the night through not a soul approached it.

Tepelenti, then, was really dead--totally dead.

Early next morning Gaskho Bey heard a very curious story.

In the artillery barracks, where the round guns stood, a drummer had laid down his drum close beside him, with the drumsticks leaning over it, when he suddenly perceived the two drumsticks begin to move of their own accord over the tightly drawn skin of the drums as if some invisible hand wished to beat a tattoo. The drummer cried out at this marvel, and fancied that a _dzhin_ was in the drum.

Gaskho Bey would not believe it till he had himself gone to the barracks and seen with his own eyes how the two drumsticks vibrated with sufficient force to tap the drum pretty loudly, moving in a spiral line backward and forward across it, tap-tap-tapping as they went.

”It is very marvellous!” cried the bey; and he immediately summoned the imams to drive the _dzhin_ out of the drum.

The imams set to work at once. They fetched their fumigators and their sacred books, and they fumigated the drum with nose-offending odors and recited over it drum-expelling exorcisms in a shrill voice. And certainly if the devil was in that drum, and had anything of a nose or ears, he would have been obliged to escape from that noise and stink.

So long as the drum was in any one's hand the drumsticks did not move, but when it was put down on the ground the mysterious tap-tapping began again.

The imams went on howling, and horribly they howled.

The chief of the observatory was present during this scene. As a French renegade he was a man of some education, and therefore he did not accept the theory of the _dzhins_. When he perceived that the imams were not successful in expelling the evil spirits, he called Gaskho Bey aside and whispered in his ear:

”I know nothing about your _dzhins_, and don't understand what you are driving at with all this noise and stench, but I can tell you that this beating of the drum is a sign that invisible hands are at work here.”

”What?”

”It means that we ought to get away from here, for they are digging mines beneath us, and that is why the ground trembles and the drumsticks vibrate.”

Gaskho Bey began smiling. He had as little idea of sapping and mining as the French renegade had of Turkish monsters.

”How superst.i.tious thou art, my brave moosir!” said he, shrugging his shoulders and looking down upon the Frenchman.

The latter, however, did not remain there much longer, but hastened as quickly as he could to the summit of the Lithanizza.

After about an hour and a half's more hubbub the imams succeeded in expelling the _dzhin_. The drum grew quiet, the excitement subsided, and the soldiers were instructed to lay two swords crosswise in front of the gate, so that the spirit might not be able to come back any more; and with that termination of the affair every one was satisfied.

Opposite the gate of the fortress of Janina, at the head of the collapsed bridge, stood a stone building, fenced about with redoubts and palisades, which had now fallen into the hands of the Suliotes.

This building had been chosen by the two Greek kinsfolk for their dwelling-place. They wanted to get as close to Ali as possible; they would not suffer him to escape even in the shape of a bird or a spirit; their large siege-guns were pointed at the walled-up gate. Let him surrender or find his tomb in the fortress.

And lo! he _had_ found his tomb without consulting them about it. In vain they had sharpened their weapons against him--the sword of Death is quicker and cuts down sooner. They had not been able to reach him on the field of battle; they had not been able to plunge their avenging swords into his heart; they had not been able to bring his gray head to the block; it had been reserved for him to pa.s.s quietly away--to die in his bed, untroubled, unmolested, to die the death of the righteous.

Kleon and Artemis were sitting sullenly in a room of the fort by the light of a flickering candle. The girl had absently divested herself of her cuira.s.s and was walking up and down the room with folded arms.

There was not a single womanly trait in her face. It was as cold as the face of a statue.