“This is the way to the big door, your honour;” and turning down another passage they arrived at a double door, which Horace had no doubt was the one that he had seen in the court-yard. Posting the men there he hurried back, and soon found the room where the servants had been sitting. The work had already been done. The sailors had all been provided with short lengths of rope, and the Turks were lying bound upon the floor. Telling the cobbler to accompany him, he went into the next room. Two sailors, with drawn cutlasses, were standing by the side of the pasha. The three officers had been bound, and were lying on the divan, with a sailor standing over each, while the other sailor stood over the attendant, who cowered on the ground in an attitude of abject terror. Martyn was standing facing the pasha.
“Now, Horace,” he said, “tell your man what to say to the pasha.”
This had been arranged between them, and Horace at once addressed the pasha.
“Do you speak Greek?”
The pasha shook his head.
“Tell him,” Horace said in that language to the interpreter, “that we belong to the ship to which the officers and sailors he has in his prison also belong, and that we have come here to fetch them away. We are fighting under the flag of Greece; but we are Englishmen by blood, and we shall do no harm to him or his family. The prisoners, however, we will have; and unless he sends at once, with an order for their delivery from the prison, and hands them over to us, we shall be obliged to carry him, the three officers here, and the ladies of his family and his children, off on board our ship as hostages; and if a hair of the prisoners’ heads is touched, we shall be forced to hang him and the whole of his family to the yard-arms of the ship.”
THE CAPTURE OF THE PASHA
The interpreter translated his words sentence by sentence. The Turk had at first looked perfectly impassive; but at the threat to carry off his women and children his expression changed, the veins stood out of his forehead, and his face flushed with fury.
“Tell him,” Horace went on, “that we should deeply regret to have to take such a step, and that we sincerely trust that he will see the necessity for his yielding to our demands. There is no possibility of assistance reaching him, we are a well-armed body of determined men, his servants have been secured, and all the doors are guarded, as also the windows outside—he is completely in our power. As we came in noiselessly and unobserved, so we shall depart. If he refuses to comply with our demands we shall, of course, be compelled to bind and gag all our captives, and to carry the ladies and children.”