When the last sentence had been translated, Horace said to Martyn, “I think, Captain Martyn, you had better get those officers carried into the next room, so that we can touch upon the money side of the question.”
Martyn gave the order, and the officers and the attendant were removed.
“Now, pasha,” Horace went on, “let us look at this thing reasonably. On the one side is the certainty that you and the ladies of the household and your children will be carried away; and that unless the prisoners are given up to us in exchange for you, you will be all put to death. On the other hand, you have but to surrender prisoners whom you did not even capture in war, but who were wrecked on your shore. We know that you have sent to Smyrna for directions concerning them. Were it not for that you would have handed them over to us without difficulty; but as the pasha there, who is your superior, now knows of it, you think that he will be angry when he hears of their escape, and that you might fall into disgrace. But I don’t think that the pasha of Anatolia, if he were placed in the same position as you are, would hesitate a moment in giving up a score of captives of no great importance one way or the other; and that if the matter were placed by you in the proper light before him, accompanied, perhaps, by a present, nothing more would be heard about it. In any case we are ready to pay you the sum of one thousand pounds as a ransom for them. We have sent your officers out of the room that they should not hear this offer, which will be entirely between ourselves. It is not meant as a bribe to you, but as a ransom, which, if you choose to send it to Smyrna, will doubtless assist the pasha there to perceive that being, with your whole family, at our mercy, you had no resource but to comply with our commands. We will give you five minutes to make up your mind.”
When this was translated, the pasha asked:
“How am I to know that, if the captives are restored to you, you will not still carry me and my family away?”
“You have simply the word of English gentlemen,” Horace said when the question was translated to him. “You see we are acting as considerately as we can. Your ladies upstairs are still unaware that anything unusual is going on. Our men have touched nothing belonging to you. We are neither robbers nor kidnappers, but simply men who have come to save their comrades from a cruel death.”
“I will write the order,” the pasha said firmly. “Had I been in the house by myself I would have died rather than do so. Being as it is, I cannot resist.”
“Who will you send with the order?” Horace asked.
“One of the officers you have taken away is the colonel of the regiment. He will take it and bring the prisoners here. He is the oldest of the three.”
Horace went into the next room and ordered the officer to be unbound and brought in by two of the sailors.