The last day, after the treasure boxes, now duly stenciled "Antiques, Statuary, Chgs. Pd., With Care," were stowed away in a secret compartment of the Slava's hold, we all found time to go to the British Embassy to see Hugh and Betty married. Kara, strangely subdued in a costume furnished by Betty, hung to Nikka's arm and watched the ceremony with amazement.
"Do the Franks have to do all that to be married?" she commented. "I am more than ever glad I am a Tzigane."
"What are you going to do with her, Nikka?" asked Betty. "Send her to school? Or let me look after her? I'd love to."
Nikka laughed.
"You wouldn't very long. No, I'm not going to curb my wild hawk so drastically. She shall taste of civilization sip by sip, until it savors sweetly on her tongue."
"And you?" cried Hugh. "Aren't you coming with us?"
"No. I must tame her. And in taming her I shall indulge the craving that has grown in me to sample again the joys of the open road that I have not known since I was a lad. We are going to wander, Kara and I. We will go up into the Rhodopes with Wasso Mikali for a while, and then we will take the Tzigane's Trail through the Balkans and over the Danube and the Carpathians, on, on, wherever we choose."
So, when the Slava steamed out of the Golden Horn that afternoon, Hugh and Betty, Vernon King, Watkins and I waved good-by to our comrade. Nikka and Kara stood on the pier-end as long as we could see them; and after they had dwindled out of sight we turned our gaze on the matchless skyline of Stamboul, with its lofty domes and slender minarets and close-packed buildings tumbling down the hillsides to the great cordon of the old Byzantine sea-wall.
And on the very edge of the wall was poised the squat bulk of Tokalji's weird establishment. We could see it clearly, the fine lines of the House of the Married, the plumy tip of a cedar waving from its mysterious hidden courtyard, and the L-shaped mass of the bachelor's quarters opposite. They bulked smaller at this distance than when seen from the bobbing cockpit of the Curlew. Already it began to seem difficult to believe that within their walls we had witnessed so much of tragedy and devotion.
"See, there is the mouth of the drain!" exclaimed Betty, beside Hugh.