Shortly afterwards, the dauntless robber took possession of a richly laden French merchantman—which, through ignorance of the locality, came too near his fortress—and after appropriating its cargo, sank the vessel and sent the captain and crew to the French Consul at Alexandretta. Protests against these high-handed proceedings were made by all the consular authorities at Aleppo, but without avail. To the vigorous remonstrance of the Dutch Consul, Kutchuk Ali coolly and blandly replied:
My dear Friend, I am threatened with attacks from the four quarters of the earth; I am without money; I am without means; and the ever watchful providence of the Almighty sends me a vessel laden with merchandise. Say, would you not in my place lay hold of it, or not?
It was only a few months later that this same consul was arrested and imprisoned by the audacious freebooter. And, notwithstanding the cordial friendship which had long existed between the two men, the ruthless marauder did not liberate his prisoner until he had extorted from him a very large ransom.
And during the eight months’ incarceration of the hapless consul, Kutchuk Ali—was it from shame for ill-treating an old friend?—never once visited his hapless victim or admitted him to his presence. But, to show the character of this singular brigand, he did not fail, through his lieutenant, to send to his prisoner words of sympathy and consolation.
Tell him [the captor said] that unfortunately my coffers were empty when fate brought him into this territory; but let him not despair, God is great and mindful of us. Such misfortunes are inseparable from the fate of men of renown, and from the lot of all born to fill high stations. Bid him be of good cheer; a similar doom has twice been mine, and once during nine months in the condemned cell of Abdul Rahman Pasha; but I never despaired of God’s mercy, and all came right at last,—Alla Karim—God is bountiful.[199]
When one is told that Kutchuk Ali, during his forty years of a desperado’s life, never had more than two hundred men, and frequently a far less number, it seems incredible that he was so long able to defy not only the Porte but even the greatest powers of Europe. But we forget that the notorious Calabian bandit, Fra Diavolo, during the same period and with a much smaller band of outlaws, was wantonly perpetrating similar atrocities in southern Italy. And it was only a few generations earlier that the notorious Captain Kidd was roving the high seas in open defiance of the naval power of the civilized world.
One of the most popular legends in Cilicia is that of the Seven Sleepers. According to the Christian version they were seven brothers who fell asleep in a cave near Ephesus during the persecution of the Emperor Decius, and did not awake until the time of Theodosius II—nearly two hundred years later. The Mohammedans, however, contend that the cave in which this preternatural event occurred was about ten miles northwest of Tarsus. Because of the prominence the Prophet gives the legend in the Koran, the Cilician cave has become among the Moslems a favorite place of pilgrimage. Mohammed has, however, elaborated the story by introducing the dog—Al Rakim—of the Seven Sleepers and descanting on the care that Allah took of the bodies of the sleepers during their long, miraculous sleep.[200]
But it is in classical legend and myth that Cilicia is specially rich. It was near the mouth of the Pyramus, according to Homer, that Bellerophon, after his fall from Pegasus,
Forsook by heaven, forsaking humankind,
Wide o’er the Aleian field he chose to stray,