“How much ransom was to be paid?” the Albanian asked.
“Three hundred pounds, and if you will send us there now our friends will be glad to pay it to your people. I tried to explain that to them on the way, but they would not listen to me.”
“They are fools,” the chief said decidedly; “and besides, they don’t speak Greek. It is too late now. I must take you to the Pasha, who will deal with you as he chooses.” Then rising, and followed by a group of his officers and the prisoners in charge of four men, he walked across to the Turkish camp.
“They are a picturesque-looking set of cut-throats,” Macfarlane said.
“That they are. People at home would stare to see them with their white kilted petticoats and gaudy sashes, with their pistols inlaid with silver, and their embroidered jackets and white shirt sleeves. Well, what are we to say if we are asked about the ship?”
“We must tell the truth, lad; I doubt not they have had news before now that the schooner is cruising about on the coast; and even if we were disposed to tell a lie, which we are not, they would guess where we had come from. No English merchantman would be likely to be anchored off the coast here to buy vegetables; and, indeed, there are very few British vessels of any sort in these waters now. You need not just tell them that the schooner is the craft that has been playing the mischief over on the other coast and robbed them of their Chiot slaves; nor is it precisely necessary to enter into that affair near Cyprus. We need simply say, if we are asked, that we are Englishmen in the naval service of Greece; I don’t expect they will ask many questions after that, or that we shall have any occasion to do much more talking.”
“You think they will hang us, doctor.”
“It may be hanging, Horace, or it may be shooting, and for my part I am not very particular which it is. Shooting is the quickest, but then hanging is more what I may call my family way of dying. I should say that as many as a score of my ancestors were one way or another strung up by the Stuarts on one miserable pretence or other, such as cattle-lifting, settling a grudge without bothering the law-courts, and trifles of that sort.”
Horace burst into a fit of laughter, which caused the Albanian chief to look round sharply and inquiringly.
“It is all right, old chap,” Macfarlane muttered in English; “we are just laughing while we can, and there is no contempt of court intended.”