Volume Ii Part 22 (2/2)
”What, is it not light enough?”
The sailor crossed himself, and replied: ”There is light enough--such as it is!” and he shuddered. ”But the wind, and the running sea, my Lord”--
”Oh! for them, keep on. Under the mountain height of Scutari the sailing will be plain.”
And with much wonder how one so afraid of fire could be so indifferent to danger from flood and gale, the captain addressed himself to manoeuvring his vessel.
”Now,” said the Jew, when at last they were well in under the Asiatic sh.o.r.e--”now bear away up the Bosphorus.”
The light kept following him the hour and more required to make the Sweet Waters and the White Castle; and even there the reflection from the cloud above the ill-fated city was strong enough to cast half the stream in shadow from the sycamores lining its left bank.
The Governor of the Castle received the friend of his master, the new Sultan, at the landing; and from the wall just before retiring, the latter took a last look at the signs down where the ancient capital was struggling against annihilation. Glutted with imaginings of all that was transpiring there, he clapped his hands, and repeated the refrain in its past form:
”Now have the winds come, and the fire, and the punishment. So be it ever unto all who encourage violence to children, and reject G.o.d.”
An hour afterwards, he was asleep peacefully as if there were no such thing as conscience, or a misery like remorse.
Shortly after midnight an officer of the guard ventured to approach the couch of the Emperor Constantine; in his great excitement he even shook the sacred person.
”Awake, Your Majesty, awake, and save the city. It is a sea of fire.”
Constantine was quickly attired, and went first to the top of the Tower of Isaac. He was filled with horror by what he beheld; but he had soldierly qualities--amongst others the faculty of keeping a clear head in crises. He saw the conflagration was taking direction with the wind and coming straight toward Blacherne, where, for want of aliment, it needs must stop. Everything in its line of progress was doomed; but he decided it possible to prevent extension right and left of that line, and acting promptly, he brought the entire military force from the barracks to cooperate with the people. The strategy was successful.
Gazing from the pinnacle as the sun rose, he easily traced a blackened swath cut from the fifth hill up to the eastward wall of the imperial grounds; and, in proof of the fury of the gale, the terraces of the garden were covered inches deep with ashes and scoriac-looking flakes of what at sunset had been happy homes. And the dead? Ascertainment of the many who perished was never had; neither did closest inquiry discover the origin of the fire. The volume of iniquities awaiting exposure Judgment Day must be immeasurable, if it is of the book material in favor among mortals.
The Prince of India was supposed to have been one of the victims of the fire, and not a little sympathy was expended for the mysterious foreigner. But in refuge at the White Castle, that worthy greedily devoured the intelligence he had the Governor send for next day. One piece of news, however, did more than dash the satisfaction he secretly indulged--Uel, the son of Jahdai, was dead--and dead of injuries suffered the night of the catastrophe.
A horrible foreboding struck the grim incendiary. Was the old destiny still pursuing him? Was it still a part of the Judgment that every human being who had to do with him in love, friends.h.i.+p or business, every one on whom he looked in favor, must be overtaken soon or late with a doom of some kind? From that moment, moved by an inscrutable prompting of spirit, he began a list of those thus unfortunate--Lael first, then Uel.
Who next?
The reader will remember the merchant's house was opposite the Prince's, with a street between them. Unfortunately the street was narrow; the heat from one building beat across it and attacked the other. Uel managed to get out safely; but recollecting the jewels intrusted to him for Lael, he rushed back to recover them. Staggering out again blind and roasting, he fell on the pave, and was carried off, but with the purse intact. Next day he succ.u.mbed to the injuries. In his last hour, he dictated a letter to the Princess Irene, begging her to accept the guardians.h.i.+p of his daughter, if G.o.d willed her return. Such, he said, was his wish, and the Prince of India's; and with the missive, he forwarded the jewels, and a statement of the property he was leaving in the market. They and all his were for the child--so the disposition ran, concluding with a paragraph remarkable for the confidence it manifested in the Christian trustee. ”But if she is not returned alive within a year from this date, then, O excellent Princess, I pray you to be my heir, holding everything of mine yours unconditionally. And may G.o.d keep you!”
CHAPTER XXIII
SERGIUS AND NILO TAKE UP THE HUNT
We have seen the result of Sergius' interview with the Prince of India, and remember that it was yet early in the morning after Lael's disappearance when, in company with Nilo, he bade the eccentric stranger adieu, and set forth to try his theory respecting the lost girl.
About noon he appeared southwest of the Hippodrome in the street leading past the cistern-keeper's abode. Nilo, by arrangement, followed at a distance, keeping him in sight. By his side there was a fruit peddler, one of the every-day cla.s.s whose successors are banes of life to all with whom in the modern Byzantium a morning nap is the sweetest preparation for the day.
The peddler carried a huge basket strapped to his forehead. He was also equipped with a wooden platter for the display of samples of his stock; and it must be said the medlars, oranges, figs of Smyrna, and the luscious green grapes in enormous cl.u.s.ters freshly plucked in the vineyards on the Asiatic sh.o.r.e over against the Isles of the Princes, were very tempting; especially so as the hour was when the whole world acknowledges the utility of lunching as a stay for dinner.
It is not necessary to give the conversation between the man of fruits and the young Russian. The former was endeavoring to sell. Presently they reached a point from which the cistern-keeper was visible, seated, as usual, just within the door pommelling the pavement. Sergius stopped there, and affected to examine his companion's stock; then, as if of a mind, he said:
”Oh, well! Let us cross the street, and if the man yonder will give me a room in which I can eat to my content, I will buy of you. Let us try him.”
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