Under the Red Dragon: A Novel
never eat with men in the East--was being spread, she rose up at his
entrance, and rendering the usual homage accorded by wives (much to
his astonishment), she then clapped her white hands, on which the
diamonds flashed, as a signal to serve up the dinner. Crushed and
abashed by a long system of domestic tyranny and despair, Mahmoud
Jel-al-adeen, who feared his wife as he had never feared the Russians,
against whom he had fought valiantly at Silistria, failed to perceive
the malignant light that glittered in the beautiful black eyes of
Djemila. But a fear of coming evil was upon him, as on that day, when
he had ridden past the great Arsenal, he had seen a crow fly towards
him; in the East an infallible sign of something about to befall him,
as it was a crow that first informed Adam that Abel was slain.
"So I pray you, Djemila, neither to taunt nor revile me to-day," said
he, "for a strange gloom is upon me."
She laughed mockingly, and Mahmoud shivered, for this laugh was often
the precursor of taunts that could never be recalled or forgotten, and
of having his beard rent, his turban knocked off, and his lips--the
same lips at whose utterance his brigade of three thousand Mahomediyes
trembled--beaten with the heel of her tiny slipper. But she began to
storm as was her wont; and then, while her husband's fingers went into
the pillau from time to time, there began their usual taunting
discussion, with quotations from the Koran, "which, as all the world
knows, or ought to know," continued the Hadji, "is the one and only
book for laws, civil, moral, religious, and domestic."
"Doth not the Prophet say," she exclaimed, closing the slender tips of
her henna-dyed fingers, "in the fourth chapter entitled 'Women,' and
revealed at Mecca, act with equity towards them?"
"Yes; but he adds, 'If ye act not with equity towards orphans of the
female sex, take in marriage such other as please you, two, three, or
four; but not more."
"So--so; and your fancy was for a slave!"
"_Was?_" stammered Mahmoud; then he added, defiantly, yet tremulous
with apprehension the while, "A Circassian, whose skin is as the egg
of an ostrich--her hair as a shower of sunbeams."
"This to me!" she exclaimed; and starting from the divan, she smote
him thrice on the mouth with the heel of her embroidered slipper.
The eyes of the Pasha flashed fire; yet remembering who she was, he
sighed and restrained his futile wrath, and said,
"If you will quote the Prophet, remember that he says in chapter iv.,
'Men shall have pre-eminence above women, because of those advantages
wherein God hath caused one of them to excel the other.'"
Djemila laughed derisively and fanned herself.
"Who dared to tell you of this slave girl?" asked Mahmoud, glancing
nervously at the pretty little slipper; "who, I demand?"
"The wire of the Infidels, that passes over men's houses, and reveals
the secrets of all things therein--even those of the harem," said she,
laughing, but with fierce triumph now; "yea, telling more than is
known by the Munadjim Bashee himself."
The Pasha knew not what to say to this; he quaffed some sherbet to
keep himself cool, and then ground his teeth, resolving, if he dared,
to have all the telegraph wires in his neighbourhood cut down; indeed,
about this time, such was the terror the Turks had of those mysterious
speaking wires, that in Constantinople, to prevent their destruction
as telltales, a few human heads were placed upon the supporting poles
by order of Stamboul Effendi, or chief of the police.
"Thou shalt be stoned by order of my brother, and according to the
holy law!" said Djemila, her proud lips curling and quivering.
"Woman, she is but a slave--an odalisque!"
"Whom you would marry before the kadi?"
"Yes," said Mahmoud, through his teeth, for his temper was rising
fast.
"And you love her?"
"Alas, yes--God and the Prophet alone know how well!" said the Pasha,
whose head drooped as he mentally compared the sweet gentleness of his
Circassian girl with the fiery fury of the royal bride he had been
compelled to espouse, as _a cheap reward_ for his military services.
"_Chabauk!_" exclaimed Djemila. "Serve the next dish. Eat, eat, I say,
and no more of this!"
The cover was removed by a trembling servant, and there lay before the
Pasha Mahmoud the head of the poor Circassian girl--the masses of
golden hair he had so frequently caressed, the eyes, now glazed, he
had loved to look on, and the now pale lips he had kissed a thousand
times in that lonely kiosk beside the sea.
"There is your dessert--_alfiert olsun!_" (May it do you good!)
exclaimed Djemila, with flashing eyes and set teeth.
Mahmoud, horror-struck, had only power to exclaim, as he threw his
hands and turned his eyes upward, "My love--my murdered love--_Allah
bereket versin!_" (May God receive your soul!) and then fell back on
his divan, and expired.
As he had prior to this drunk some sherbet, it was whispered abroad,
ere long, that the poor Pasha had been poisoned; but as no examination
after death took place, the high rank of his wife precluding it, it
was given out that he had died of apoplexy. So he was laid in the
Place of Sleep, with his turban on, his toes tied together, and his
face turned towards Mecca, and there was an end of it with him; but
not so with the Capi Aga, whom the Sultan, for being guilty of obeying
Djemila's order to execute the odalisque, subjected to an old Turkish
punishment now, and long before that day, deemed as obsolete. He was
taken to the Sirdan Kapussi, or Dungeon Gate of Stamboul, close by the
Fruit Market, and placed in a vaulted room, where he was stripped of
all his clothes by the Capidgi Bashi, who then brought in a large
copper plate or table, supported by four pedestals of iron, and
underneath which was a grate of the same metal, containing a fire of
burning coals, at the sight of which a shriek of despair escaped the
miserable Greek. When the plate of copper had become quite hot, the
executioner took the turban-cloth of the doomed man, unwound it, and
placing it round his waist, by the aid of two powerful hamals had it
drawn tight, until his body was compressed into the smallest possible
place. Then by one blow of his sabre he slashed the hapless wretch in
_two_, and placing his upper half instantly upon the burning copper, the
hissing blood was staunched thereby, and he was kept alive, but in
exquisite torture, till the time for which he was ordained to endure
it was fulfilled. He was then lifted off, and instantly expired.
Eagerly, with fixed eyes, half-open mouths, and in hushed silence,
forgetting even to smoke, and permitting their chibouks to die out,
his audience listened to this most improbable story, which the cunning
Hadji related with wonderful spirit and gesticulation; and so "having
supped full with horrors," at its close they showered coins--kopecs,
paras, and even English pennies--upon the narrator. The whole story
was a hoax, the Sultan having no such daughter as Djemila, the names
of the three sultanas being quite unlike it; but that made as little
difference then in Crim Tartary as it did afterwards nearer Cornhill;
and Charley Gwynne and others of ours to whom I mentioned it were wont
to call it "the bounce of the cold chop and the hot plate."
CHAPTER XLII.--THE TCHERNIMORSKI COSSACKS.
The night passed slowly with me in the khan. After the conclusion of
the Hadji's story, the travellers who were halting there coiled
themselves up to sleep, on the divan or on their carpets or felt mats;
but I was too much excited, too wakeful and suspicious of the honest
intentions of all about me, too anxious for dawn and the successful
completion of the important duty confided to me, to attempt following
their example, or even to allow that my horse should be unsaddled. I
simply relaxed his girths, and remained in the travellers' common
apartment, listening to every passing sound, and watching the sharp
oriental features of the black-bearded and picturesque-looking
sleepers by the smoky light of a solitary oil-lamp, which swung from a
dormant beam that traversed the apartment. The arched rafters of the
ceiling were painted in alternate stripes of white and black. There
was a fireplace or open chimney, where smouldered on the hearthstone a
heap of branches and dry fir-cones, the embers of which reddened and
whitened in the downward puffs of wind that eddied in the vent; and
round the walls were rows of shining tin plates, and under these were
other rows of white cloths, like towels in shape and size, but worked
and embroidered with gold thread, all made and prepared before
marriage by the Tartar hostess in her bridal days. All these quaint
objects appeared to recede or fade from my sight, and sleep was just
beginning to overpower me, when my sleeve was twitched by the Hadji,
who pointed to the snow-covered summits of the mountains then visible
from the windows, and becoming tipped with red light; and stiff and
weary I started up, to have my horse corned and watered for the task
of that day, the close of which I could little foresee.
The wife of the Tartar placed before me, on a table only a foot high
and little more than a foot square, a large tin tray, containing some
hard boiled eggs, black rye bread, and a vessel filled with the sweet
juice of pears. It was a strange and humble repast, but proved quite
Apician to me after our mode of messing before Sebastopol. I had
barely ended this simple Tartar breakfast, when the Stamboul Hadji,
who was to be my guide to Canrobert's post near Kokoz, exclaimed, in a
startled voice, "_Allah kerim_--look!"
I followed the direction indicated by his hand and dark, gleaming
eyes, and with emotions of a very chequered kind saw, through an open
window, "a clump of spears," as Scott would have called them; in
short, a party of Cossacks riding slowly and leisurely down the
mountain-path that led straight towards the house. In the eastern
sunlight the tips of their lances shone like fiery stars; but no other
appointments glittered about them; for unlike the gay light cavalry of
France and Britain, their uniforms are generally of the most plain and
dingy description. As yet they were about a mile distant, and if I
would escape them, there was not a moment to be lost. I rushed to my
horse, looked hastily but surely to bridle-bit, to saddle-girth, and
stirrup-leather; and without waiting for the Hadji, who, being afoot,
would only serve to retard my pace and lead to my capture, I gave some
money to the Tartar hostess, and galloped away, diving deep into the
forest, hoping that I had been as yet unseen, and should escape if
none of the people at the caravanserai betrayed me, either under the
inspiration of cowardice or malevolence. To avoid this party, who, it
would appear, were coming right along the road I should pursue, I rode
due eastward towards the ridge of Mount Yaila, which rose between me
and the Black Sea, and which extends from Balaclava nearly to Alushta,
a distance of fifty miles.
The day was clear and lovely, though cold and wintry, as the season
was so far advanced, and I proceeded lightly along a narrow forest
path, the purely-bred animal I rode seeming scarcely to touch, but
merely to brush, the dewy grass with its small hoofs. The air was
loaded by the fragrance of the firs; here and there, between the dark
and bronze-looking glades, fell the golden gleams of the morning sun;
and at times I had a view of the sombre sea of cones that spread over
the hills in countless lines, and in places untrodden, perhaps, save
by the wolf and the badger; overhead the black Egyptian vulture
hovered in mid-air, the brown partridges whirred up before my horse's
feet, and the hare, too, fled from its lurking-place among the long