While the boys were speaking the steamboat was puffing into the Golden Horn, an inlet of the sea, at the north of the promontory.
Once on the central quay of the harbor the prisoners were marched through an exceedingly crooked and tortuous street to the forbidding front of a gloomy-looking and huge pile of bygone architecture, and a few minutes later were the sole occupants of an immense and dimly lighted apartment, stone-walled and furnished only with a few wooden benches, upon two of which the disconsolate quartette seated themselves and waited in dreary anticipation for the next deal of fate.
CHAPTER XXVI.
SEEING THE SULTAN.
“If it should please the gentleman in the bushy trousers who served as chief of the reception committee to place some light repast before us, he would at this moment fill a long-felt want.”
Canby was not constructed to remain under a cloud for any lengthy period, and he proceeded with his inimitable drawl to divert the dismal train of thought.
“Turn me loose in the corridor out there with the fellow who appropriated my revolvers,” growled the fighting Macauley, “and I will credit it up to a change of luck.”
“Tut, tut, Danny, you must cease exercising your temper,” chided Canby, with a grin; “always meet misfortune with a May morning face.”
“You go hang,” replied “Daring Dan,” who was compelled to smile in spite of himself.
“Your suggestion respectfully turned down,” bantered Canby, “and the same to the Turk, even if he should insist upon it.”
The Turkish officer who had brought the prisoners up from Marmora just then made his appearance, accompanied by a couple of attendants, who served an excellent brand of coffee to the captives, along with plates of sweetmeats. When the two Britons finally located themselves behind huge cigarettes, also presented by their captor, they were in a mood to seek information as to the near future.