Beyrout had a Sunday appearance. The shops were nearly all closed, and the churches, especially the Catholic, were crowded. It might have been a peaceful day but for our imbroglio, which began to be serious; we could not afford the time to wait two weeks for the next Cyprus steamer, we did not like to abandon our dragomans, and we needed their services. The ladies who depended upon Achmed were in a quandary. Notes went to the consul, but produced no effect. The bankers were called into the council, and one of them undertook to get Achmed free. Travellers, citizens, and all began to get interested or entangled in the case. There was among respectable people but one opinion about the consul's dragoman. At night it was whispered about that the American consul had already been removed and that his successor was on his way to Beyrout. Achmed came to us in the highest spirits with the news.
All day Monday we expected the steamer. The day was frittered away in interviews with the consul and the pasha, and in endeavoring to learn something of the two cases, the suit for damages and for the debt, supposed to be going on somewhere in the seraglio. After my interview with the consul, who expressed considerable ignorance of the case and the strongest desire to stop it, I was surprised to find at the seraglio all the papers in the consul's name, and all the documents written on consular paper; so that when I appeared as an American citizen, to endeavor to get my dragoman released, it appeared to the Turkish officials that they would please the American government by detaining and punishing him.
The court-room was a little upper chamber, with no furniture except a long table and chairs; three Moslem judges sat at one end of the table, apparently waiting to see what would turn up. The scene was not unlike that in an office of a justice of the peace in America. The parties to the case, witnesses, attendants, spectators, came and went as it pleased them, talked or whispered to the judges or to each other. There seemed to be no rule for the reception or rejection of evidence. The judges smoked and gathered the facts as they drifted in, and would by and by make up their minds. It is truth to say, however, that they seemed to be endeavoring to get at the facts, and that they appeared to be above prejudice or interest. A new complication developed itself, however; Antoine Ouardy claimed to be a French citizen, and the French consul was drawn into the fray. This was a new device to delay proceedings.
When I had given my evidence to the judges, which I was required to put in writing, I went with Abd-el-Atti to the room of the pasha. This official was gracious enough, but gave us no hopes of release. He took me one side and advised me, as a traveller, to look out for another dragoman; there was no prospect that Abd-el-Atti could get away to accompany me on this steamer,—in fact, the process in court might detain him six months. However, the best thing to do would be to go to the American consul with Ouardy and settle it. He thought Ouardy would settle it for a reasonable amount. It was none of his business, but that was his advice. We were obliged to his Excellency for this glimpse behind the scenes of a Turkish court, and thanked him for his advice; but we did not follow it. Abd-el-Atti thought that if he abandoned the attempt to collect a debt in a Turkish city, he ought not, besides, to pay for the privilege of doing so.
Tuesday morning the steamer came into the harbor. Although we had registered our names at the office of the company for passage, nothing was reserved for us. Detained at the seraglio and the consul's, we could not go off to secure places, and the consequence was that we were subject to the black-mail of the steward when we did go. By noon there were signs of the failure of the prosecution; and we sent off our luggage. In an hour or two Abd-el-Atti appeared with a troop of friends, triumphant. Somewhere, I do not know how, he and Achmed had raked up fourteen witnesses in his favor; the judges would n't believe Ouardy nor any one he produced, and his case had utterly broken down. This mountain of a case, which had annoyed us so many days and absorbed our time, suddenly collapsed. We were not sorry to leave even beautiful Beyrout, and would have liked to see the last of Turkish rule as well. At sunset, on the steamer Achille, swarming above and below with pilgrims from Jerusalem and Mecca, we sailed for Cyprus.
XVIII.—CYPRUS.
IN the early morning we were off Cyprus, in the open harbor of Larnaka,—a row of white houses on the low shore. The town is not peculiar and not specially attractive, but the Marina lies prettily on the blue sea, and the palms, the cypresses, the minarets and church-towers, form an agreeable picture behind it, backed by the lovely outline of mountains, conspicuous among them Santa Croce. The highest, Olympus, cannot be seen from this point.
A night had sufficed to transport us into another world, a world in which all outlines are softened and colored, a world in which history appears like romance. We might have imagined that we had sailed into some tropical harbor, except that the island before us was bare of foliage; there was the calm of perfect repose in the sky, on the sea, and the land; Cyprus made no harsh contrast with the azure water in which it seemed to be anchored for the morning, as our ship was. You could believe that the calm of summer and of early morning always rested on the island, and that it slept exhausted in the memory of its glorious past.