CHAPTER XL.
Mahomet had not expended all his petulant rage upon feelingless waves and distant Christians. He summoned to his presence the Admiral of his defeated fleet, Baltaoghli, and ordered that he should be impaled.
The Admiral had shown as much naval skill as could, perhaps, have been exhibited with the unwieldy boats at his command; and, moreover, had brought from the fight an eyeless socket to attest his bravery and devotion. The penalty, therefore, which Mahomet attached to his misfortune, brought cries of entreaty in his behalf from other brave officers, especially from the leading Janizaries. This opposition at first confirmed the determination of the irate despot. But soon the petition of the honored corps swelled into a murmur, which the more experienced of his advisers persuaded Mahomet to heed.
The Sultan had schooled himself to obey the precept which Yusef, the eunuch, who instructed his childhood, had imparted, viz, "Make passion bend to policy." He therefore apparently yielded, so far at least as to compromise with those whom he feared to offend, and commuted the Admiral's sentence to a flogging.
The brave man was stretched upon the ground by four slaves. Turning to Captain Ballaban, the Sultan bade him lay on the lash. Ballaban hesitated. Drawing near to Mahomet, he said respectfully, but firmly,
"The Janizaries are soldiers, not executioners, Sire."
Mahomet's rage burst as suddenly as powder under the spark.
"Away with the rebel!" cried he. "We will find the executioner for him, too, who dares to disobey our orders."
Seizing his golden mace, the Sultan himself beat the prostrate form of the Admiral until it was senseless.
Wearying of his bloody work, Mahomet glared like a half satiated beast upon those about him.
"Where is the damned rebel who dares dispute my will? Did no one arrest him?"
"The order was not so understood," said an Aga who was near.
"You understand it now," growled the infuriated, yet half-ashamed, monarch. "Arrest him!—But no! Let these slaves go search for the runaway. It shall be their office to deal with one who dares to break with my will."
The Janizaries returned to their places near the walls.
Mahomet was ill at ease when his better judgment displaced his unwise passion. His love for Ballaban, the manliness of the captain's reply to the unreasonable order, and the danger of injuring one who stood so high in the estimate of the entire Janizary corps, were not outweighed even by the sense of the indignity which the act of disobedience had put upon the royal authority.
The slaves, not daring to venture among the Janizaries in their search for Captain Ballaban, easily persuaded themselves that he must have fled; and that, perhaps, he might be lurking somewhere on the shore, as this was the only way of escape. Their search was rewarded. Though in the disguise of scant garments, utterly exhausted so that he could make no resistance, their victim was readily recognized by his form and features, which were too peculiar to be mistaken. The captain had apparently attempted to escape by water; perhaps, had ventured upon some chance kaik or raft, and been wrecked in the caldron which the strong south wind made with the current pouring from the north.
His wet garments, such as he had not stripped off, and his exhausted look confirmed their theory.
One of their number brought the report to the Grand Vizier, Kalil, who repeated it to the Sultan.
"I will deal with him in person. Let no one know of the capture until I have seen him," said Mahomet, seeking an opportunity to revoke the threat against his friend, which he had uttered in insane rage; and, at the same time, to cover his imperial dignity by the semblance of a trial.
The culprit was brought in the early evening to the Sultan's tent. A large lantern of various colored crystals hung from the ridge-pole, and threw its beautiful, but partly obscured, light over the arraigned man.
His captors had clothed him in the uniform of the Janizaries.
"His face has a strange look, as if another's soul had taken lodging behind the familiar lineaments," the Sultan remarked to Kalil as he scanned the culprit closely.
"Do you know, knave, in whose presence you are?" said Mahomet, sternly.
"I know not, Sire, except that the excellent adornment of your person and pavilion suggest that I am in the presence of his majesty the—"
"Silence, villain! do you mock me?" cried the Padishah, in surprise at the man's assumed ignorance.
"I mock thee not, Sire," said the victim, bowing with courtly reverence, and speaking in a sort of patois of Greek and Turkish. "But I was about to say that I know thee not, except that from the excellence of thy person and estate thou art none less"——
"Silence, you dog! This is no time for your familiar jesting, Ballaban. Speak pure tongue, or I'll cut thine from thy head!" interrupted the Padishah.
"I speak as best I can," replied the man, "for I was not brought up to the Turkish tongue. I presume that I address the king of the Turks."
"Miserable wretch!" hissed his majesty, drawing his jewelled sword. "Dare you call me king of the Turks? Turks! thou circumcised Christian dog! thou pup of Nazarene parentage! thou damned infidel, beplastered with Moslem favors!"[78]
"It would seem that I needed Moslem favors, which in my destitute condition and imminent danger, I most humbly crave," replied the object of this contumely.
"Are you mad?" shrieked the Sultan, rising and glaring into the other's face. "You are mad, man. Poor soul! Ay! Ay! I see it now. Some demon has possessed you. Some witch has blown on the knots against you."[79]
"I am not mad, Sire," said the culprit, "but a poor castaway on your coast."
"Hear him, poor fellow! so mad that he knows not himself. Well! well! I must forgive you then for not knowing me," said Mahomet, with genuine pity. "Did you love me so, old comrade, that my harsh words knocked over your reason? or did your reason, toppling over, lead you to challenge me as you did? We must cure this malady, though it takes the treasure of the empire to do it." Lowering his voice he addressed the Vizier:
"I could not believe that my faithful comrade would have rebelled. It was not he, but the demon who has possessed him. Think you not so, good Kalil?"
The Vizier bowed in assent to the Sultan's theory, and whispered, "It provides a wise escape from antagonizing the Janizaries. But you should summon a physician."
Clapping his hands, an attendant appeared, who was dispatched for the court physician; a man of fame in his profession, whose duty it was to be always within call of the Sultan.
The physician entering, examined the culprit, looking into his eyes, balancing his head between his hands to determine if there were any sudden disturbance of the proportionate avoirdupois; noting if his tongue lay in the middle of his mouth, and feeling his pulse. At length he said in low voice to the Sultan and Vizier:
"There is, Sire, no outward evidences of lacking wit. I would have him speak."
"He is the Janizary, Captain Ballaban," whispered the Vizier. "You will observe that the wit is clean gone from him. Tell us your story, Ballaban, or whoever you are."
"I beg the favor of your excellency, your lordship, Sire; for, since you deny that you are the king of the Turks, I know not what title to give to your authority. I am your prisoner. I fought on the Byzantine galley as Jesu gave me strength, but was unfortunate enough to fall overboard, and fortunate enough to avoid capture by the Turkish boats, as I dived beneath them, or rested myself below their sterns until I reached the shore. But as heaven willed it, I landed below the walls of the city. I was altogether weaponless, having shuffled off my armor that I might swim—and altogether blown by my effort—or, by the bones of Abraham! I had never been captured by the cowardly slaves you sent. I ask only the treatment of an honorable enemy."
"By the beard of the Prophet!" exclaimed Mahomet, "if he were a Christian I would give him liberty for the valor of his speech. Some of the spirit of our gallant Ballaban is still left in him. The witches could not take the great heart out of him, though they stole away his wits. What say you, Sage Murta?" The physician replied, knitting his brows and stroking his chin—
"The Padishah is wise. The man is mad. But since his heart is not touched by the demon, but only his memory erased and his imagination distorted, my science tells me there is hope of his cure."
"What medicament have you for a diseased mind?" asked the Sultan.
With reverent pomposity, but in low voice not overheard by the patient, the physician uttered the prescription:
"First, we have the religious cure—if so be that the man is under the charm of the evil spirits—Find thee a cord with eleven knots tied on it:—for such was the number on the cord with which the daughters of Lobeid, the Jew, bewitched the Prophet. As thou untiest the knots repeat the last two chapters of the Koran, which the Angel Gabriel revealed as the talisman, saying—
"'I fly for refuge unto the Lord of the daybreak, that he may deliver me from the mischief of the night, when it cometh on; and from the mischief of women, blowing on the knots; and from the mischief of the envious; and from the mischief of the whisperer, the devil, who slyly withdraweth, who whispereth evil suggestions into the breasts of men: and from genii and men.'
"If this should fail—as I have known it to fail in the case of those who were not born in the sacred family of Islâm—we should try the virtues of the heritage bowl, which is much esteemed among the Giaours. I have possessed myself of one, once the property of an ancient family. It is made of silver, and engraved with forty-one padlocks. A decoction mixed in this bowl, and poured on the head of the patient any time within seven weeks after the day on which they celebrate the imagined rising of Jesu, son of Mary, from the dead, will often break the most malignant spell. The Christian Paska[80] is just past; so that it will be opportune."
"But should this likewise fail?" asked Mahomet, impatient with the sage's prolixity.
"Ah! we shall then have to try our strictly human remedies. This ailment is called by the Latin disciples of Galen, dementia, which signifieth that the man's mind, his natural thoughts, have gone away from him. We must recall them. For this we must have some strong appeal to that which was his hottest passion or interest before his mind flew away from him. Do you know the absorbing humor of this man? Was he a lover? If so, we must find the fair one who has robbed him of his better part, and, restoring her to him, we shall restore him to himself."
"Nay," said Mahomet. "Captain Ballaban was never enamored of woman. The maid who lured the Prophet from the charms of Ayesha and Hafsa,[81] would not have turned Ballaban's head. I once offered him the choice of a bevy of Georgians; but he would not even look at them. He is a soldier; from tassel to shoe-thong a soldier."
"Ah! then we have the remedy at hand," said Murta, rolling his eyes as if reading the prescription in the air. "Give him command; military excitement; honors of the field. When the cimeters gleam then will reason flash again. And my science is at fault if the simple summons to some high duty work not a counter charm to break the spell that is on him, though it were woven by the mystic dance of all the genii and devils."
"We will try this last remedy first," said Mahomet. "Dismiss him. Let him go as he will, without hindrance or seeming to follow, until my orders be brought him by his Aga. In the meantime search the shore for the knotted cord the witches may have blown upon. And, good Murta, send for the silver bowl; for my brain is that hot that I fear me the Giaour ghosts we have sent gibbering to hell during the last few days have left the spell of their evil eyes upon me too."
The following day was not far advanced when Captain Ballaban was summoned to the Sultan's tent, the rumor of his restoration to royal favor having been made to precede the summons. In fact, after the affair of the preceding afternoon, Ballaban had not gone to the sea shore, but retired to his own quarters, where he loyally awaited either his death summons, or an invitation for some wild frolic with the Padishah; he knew not which, so thought about neither; but busied himself over a plan for a new gun-carriage he was going to submit to Urban.
With assumed stolidity he entered the royal tent. As he rose from his obeisance upon the earth, his majesty embraced him with boyish delight.
"Your old self again: I see your soul in your face. I'd give half the horse-tails in the empire rather than lose that shock of hair from my sight, or the glowing brain that is under it from my councils, my red-headed angel!"
"There is no need to lose it, except by cutting it off at my shoulders," said Ballaban, falling in with the humor of the Sultan, yet watchful not to be taken unawares, if, in its fitfulness, that humor should turn.
"I have a grand service for you, if you have skill and courage enough to execute it," said Mahomet, watching the effect on his friend.
The captain's eyes flashed with the prospect, as he said:
"I wait your plan, Sire; only let it be bold."
"I have no plan, you must make one. I would see if your brain is as square as the pot you keep it in," said the Sultan, tapping him on the head with a jewelled whip staff, and adding,
"It is evident, Captain, that we must get possession of the Golden Horn; for so long as the enemy hold that for their harbor, we cannot prevent their reprovisioning the city as they did yesterday; and a few more such auxiliaries as they brought, indeed, another such leader as the Genoese Giustiniani, would compel us to raise the siege. How can we take the harbor? Our boats can never raise the chain at the mouth."
"That has been my problem since the siege began," said Ballaban. "I remember while in Albania, as I lodged one night in a village, I met with some Italian officers, who had come to offer their swords to Castriot. They told how they moved their fleet overland, several miles on a roadway of timbers.[82] We can use that device. The thing is not impracticable; for there is a depression to the north of Galata, through which from the Bosphorus to the inland extremity of the Golden Horn is but five or six miles. Our vessels are not large; could be transported with the multitudes of our troops, and on the still water of the harbor would soon, by superior numbers, capture those of the Christians."
"A good conception!" said Mahomet, "and if my reading has not been at fault, the Roman Augustus did something similar.[83] It shall be done. Let it not be said that the Ottoman was surpassed in daring or difficulty of enterprise by Pagan or Christian. You shall perform it, Ballaban. The woods above Galata will serve for planking, and the engineers can be spared from before the walls until it is accomplished."
A few days later a large fleet of the Moslems was conveyed overland, by means of a roadway of greased timbers. To the amazement of the Christians their adversary's navy no longer lay idly upon the Bosphorus, but was transformed into a line of floating batteries within the harbor of the Golden Horn, and from their rear soon destroyed the fleet of the defenders.