Part 7 (2/2)

”If you go that way you'll go astray the quicker, and if you go t'other way you may plump into a bog.”

”You lead us thither,” intervened Rakoczy, at the same time pressing a ducat into the man's fist.

He looked at it, turned it round in his palm and gave it back to Rakoczy with the request that he would give him copper money in exchange for it.

He could not imagine anyone giving him gold which was not false.

When this had been done he neatly led the gentlemen through the mora.s.s--wading in front of them, girded up to his waist--through those hidden places where the water-fowl were sitting on their nests, and when at last they emerged from among the thick reedy plantations they saw a hundred paces in front of them a fire of heaped up bulrushes brightly burning, by the light of which they saw a horseman standing behind it.

Here their guide stopped and the three men trotted in single file towards the fire, which suddenly died out at the very moment they were approaching it, as if someone had cast wet rushes upon it.

Topay greeted the horseman, who lifted his hat in silence and allowed them to draw nearer.

”There are three of you gentlemen together,” he observed guardedly; ”but that doesn't matter,” he continued. ”It would be all the same to me if there were ten times as many of you, for there's a pistol in every one of my holsters, from which I can fire sixteen bullets in succession, and in each bullet is a magnet, so that even if I don't aim at my man I bring him down all the same.”

”Very good, very good indeed, Master Kokenyesdi,” said Topay; ”we have not come here for you to pepper us with your magnetic globules, but we have come to ask your a.s.sistance for the accomplishment of a doughty deed, the object of which is an attack upon our pagan foes.”

”Oh, my good sirs, I am ready to do that without the co-operation of your honours. In the courtyard of a castle in the Baborsai _puszta_ there is a well some hundred fathoms deep and quite full of Turkish skulls, and I will not be satisfied till I have piled up on the top of it a tower just as high made of similar materials.”

”So I believe. But you would gain glory too?”

”I have glory enough already. I am known in foreign countries as well as at home. The King of France has long ago only waited for a word from me to make me chief colonel of a long-tailed regiment, and quite recently, when the King of England heard how I bored through the hulls of the munition s.h.i.+ps on the Theiss, he did me the honour to invite me to form a regiment of divers to ravage the enemy under water. And I've all the boys for it too.”

”I know, I know, Master Kokenyesdi, but there will be booty here too, and lots of it.”

”What is booty to me? If I choose to do so, I could bathe in gold and sleep on pearls.”

”Have you really as much treasure as all that?” inquired Raining with some curiosity.

”Ah,” said Kokenyesdi, ”you ought to see the storehouse in the Szilicza cavern, where gold and silver are filled up as high as haystacks. There, too, are the treasures dug up from the sands of the sea, nothing but precious stones, diamonds, rubies, carbuncles, and real pearls. I, myself, do not know how many sackfuls.”

”And cannot you be robbed of them?”

”Impossible; the entrance is so well concealed that no man living can find it. I myself can never tell whether I am near it; the s.h.i.+fting sand has so well covered it. Only one living animal can find it when it is wanted, and that is my horse. And he will never betray it, for if anyone but myself mounts him, not a step farther will he go.”

”And how did you come into possession of these enormous treasures?”

asked Raining with astonishment.

”G.o.d gave them to me,” said the horse-dealer, raising his voice and his eyebrows at the same time.

”Very edifying, no doubt, my friend,” said Topay; ”but tell me now, briefly, for how much will you join us against the Turks of Grosswardein?--not counting the booty, which of course will be pretty considerable.”

”Well--that is not so easily said. Of course I shall have to collect together my twelve companies, and it will cost something to hold them together and give them what they want and pay them.”

”At any rate you can name a good round sum for the services you are going to render us, can't you? Come! how much do you require?”

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