Part 28 (1/2)

We had eaten our evening meal, and were sitting in the calm night smoking cigarettes, prior to turning in. The two men beside me had placed their rifles upon the ground, where the moonbeams glinted along the bright barrels, and our conversation had become exhausted.

Below, in that dark valley, ran the mule-track to Ipek, therefore day and night it was watched for pa.s.sing travellers, as indeed were all the paths at the confines of the territory over which my friend Vatt Maras.h.i.+, defiant of the Turks, ruled so firmly and yet so justly.

Luk, rolling a fresh cigarette, was making some remark to Palok, my guide, in his peculiar soft-sounding but unwritten language, when it suddenly occurred to me to ask him to give me some little reminiscence of his own adventurous life.

He was silent for a few moments, his keen gaze upon the s.h.i.+ning rifle-barrel before him, then, with Palok translating into Italian, he told me the story of how he earned his nickname of ”The Open Eye.”

About two years before, when his tribe were at feud with their neighbours, the powerful Kastrati, who live in the opposite range of mountains, he was one dark night with a party of his fellow tribesmen in ambush, expecting a raid from their enemies. The false alarms were several when, of a sudden, Luk discerned a dark figure moving slowly in the gloom. Raising his rifle he was on the point of firing when some impulse seized him to stay his hand and shout a challenge.

The reply was a frightened one--and in Turkish.

Luk came forth from his hiding-place, and a few seconds later, to his great surprise, encountered the stranger, who proved to be a woman wearing her veil, and enshrouded by an ugly black shawl wrapped about her. He knew sufficient Turkish to demand her name, and whence she had come, but she refused to satisfy him. She had already recognised by his dress, that he was of the tribe of the Skreli, therefore she knew that she had fallen into the hands of enemies.

”Speak!” he cried, believing her to be a spy from the Kastrati. ”Tell me who sent you here to us? Whither are you going?”

”I know not,” was her reply in a sweet voice which told him at once that she was quite young, and he, being unmarried, became instantly interested.

”Where are you from?” he asked, expecting that she had come from Skodra, the nearest Turkish town.

”From Constantinople,” was her reply.

”Constantinople!” gasped Luk, to whom the capital was so far off as to be only a mere city of legend. It was, indeed, many hundred leagues away. In the darkness he could not see her eyes. He could only distinguish that the lower part of her face was veiled like that of all Mahommedan women.

”And you have come here alone?” he asked.

”Yes, alone. I--I could not remain in Constantinople longer. Am I still in Turkey?”

”Nominally, yes. But the Sultan does not rule us here. We, of the Skreli, are Christians, and our country is a free one--to ourselves, but not to our captives.”

”Ah!” she said with failing heart. ”I see! I am your captive--eh? I have heard in Constantinople how you treat the Turks whom you capture.”

”You may have heard many stories, but I a.s.sure you that the Skreli never maltreat a woman,” was the brigand's proud answer. ”This path is unsafe for you, and besides it is my duty to take you to our chief Vatt Maras.h.i.+ that he may decide whether we give you safe conduct.”

”No, no!” she implored. ”I have heard of him. Take pity upon me--a defenceless woman! I--I thought to escape from Turkey. I have no pa.s.sport, so I left the train and hoped to get across the mountains into Montenegro, where I should be free.”

”Then you have escaped from your harem--eh?” asked Luk, his curiosity now thoroughly aroused.

”Yes. But I have money here with me--and my jewels. I will pay you-- pay you well, if you will help me. Ah! you do not know!”

Luk was silent for a moment.

”When a woman is in distress the Skreli give their a.s.sistance without payment,” was his reply, and then, as day was breaking, he led her up the steep and secret paths to that little settlement where we now were-- the headquarters of the all-powerful Vatt Maras.h.i.+.

At the latter's orders she unwound the veil from her face, disclosing the beautiful countenance of a Turkish girl of eighteen, and when she took off her cloak it was seen that beneath she wore a beautiful harem dress, big, baggy trousers of rich mauve and gold brocade, and a little bolero of amaranth velvet richly embroidered with gold. Upon her neck were splendid emeralds, pearls, and turquoises, and upon her wrists fine bracelets encrusted with diamonds.

She stood in the lowly hut before the chief and her captor Luk, a vision of perfect beauty--looking ”a veritable houri as promised by Mahommed,”

as Luk put it.

Vatt Maras.h.i.+ listened to her story. She had, she told him, escaped from her father's harem because she was betrothed, as is usual in Turkey, to a man whom she had never seen. She had taken money from the place where one of the black eunuchs h.o.a.rded it, and with the a.s.sistance of a young officer, a cousin of hers, had succeeded in leaving the capital in the baggage-waggon of the Orient Express. Unable to procure a pa.s.sport, however, she dare not attempt to cross the frontier into Bulgaria, for she would at once be detected, refused permission to travel, and sent back. For a Turkish woman to attempt to leave Turkey in that manner the punishment is death. So at some small station near the frontier, the name of which she did not know, she had, under cover of night, left the train, and taken to the mountains. For four days she had wandered alone, until Luk had discovered her.

”And what was done with her?” I inquired, much interested.