'True,' said I with a sigh, as I thought of the evicted men of Glen Ora.
At this entertainment, the sulky old Yuze Bashi, warmed by the forbidden juice of the grape (of which being animated by our example he partook rather freely, notwithstanding the anathemas of him whose sabre cleft the moon in twain—Mohammed 'the Holy Camel Driver'), seemed to conceive a sudden favour for me, and in his strange jargon of French and Arabic, with a few hiccups between, gave me an account of himself and of the Sultan's service.
He was named, it would appear, Hadjee Hussein Ebn al Ajuz (or the son of the old woman), as his mother had been a cast-off slave of Mehemet Ali, the Viceroy of Egypt; and his paternal parent was supposed to be a certain enterprising corporal of Mamelukes, who died with a bowstring about his neck for borrowing the silver lamps of a mosque at Suez. Little Hussein became a soldier, and fought at the battles of Koniah and Homs, in the war against Mehemet Ali; and in these affairs had cut off various heads, and stowed away innumerable Egyptian ears in the mysterious depths of his red Oriental breeches, all to his own great satisfaction and contentment—as a head was worth a piastre, and a pair of ears sold before Reschid Pasha's tent for ten paras.
At the rout of Koniah he had saved the only pair of Turkish colours which escaped the furious advance of the Egyptian infantry—viz., those of Scherif Bey's regiment—by stuffing them into his voluminous regimental breeches, wherein various bullets lodged harmlessly thereafter during the retreat; for this and other acts of devotion, he was rewarded by the government of Rodosdchig, a little fortress a few miles from Heraclea; and after making the pilgrimage, partly by steamer, to Mecca; after drinking of the Zemzem well, and of that which flows at Midian where Moussa watered the flocks at Jethro, and rolled from its mouth a stone which the united strength of Jethro's seven shepherds failed to move; after kissing the holy Kaaba, and flinging a few stones at an imaginary devil, he returned in a mingled state of beer and beatitude to his fortress. There, since 1842, he had spread his carpet, reposed in the lap of a charming odalisque, and smoked his chibouque in contentment and peace; and there—nathless his being a Hadjeè, and the builder of a little gilt mosque—he drank and swore like any enlightened Christian of the western world.
Fat, cunning as Lucifer, sensual as a sybarite, and intensely illiberal, he was a fair specimen of the old Turk of the worst kind; and if the curve be the line of beauty, then the shins of Hussein, like those of most Osmanlies, were perfection. His ears were set high on his head; his forehead was low and narrow; his eyebrows nearly met, and thus betokened a cruel and revengeful nature. He gave me, however, a little insight into the economy of military life in the sultan's service.
'Our regiments,' said he, 'all consist of four battalions, and each battalion is commanded by a cole agassi (major), and has one standard. A colonel or lieutenant-colonel commands the whole, with one great standard—the banner of the prophet—upon whose name be glory! Each battalion has its squad of slaves, who carry water on the march and bear the wounded from the field of battle. So strict is the etiquette maintained in our service by officers, that they never dine with subordinates in rank; hence the jovial messes of Frangistan excite only our wonder; and to see a great Mir Alai, who commands four thousand bayonets, drinking wine with a poor little devil of an ensign, would astound the whole Turkish army. Even in the street a superior officer always walks half a pace before an inferior; thus I have seen five officers all walking along a street at once in echelon, and maintaining a conversation at the same time. None among us wear beards under the rank of general—with a few exceptions. A junior officer always rises and salutes a senior on the latter entering a room, and cannot seat himself again without his permission, or appear before him without his fez, belt, and sabre. Our Turkish privates receive about four shillings Ingleez per month; but our lord the Sultan provides for their food and clothing over and above their pay.'
I thanked the old fellow for this information, which did not impress me highly with the position of an officer under his Majesty Abdul-Medjid; and after a time Jack Belton and I, tired of the entertainment, and of hearing lamentations for the fall of Kars, and description of a palace of silver—solid silver—which the Sultan was to build in London when he visited the Queen of the Ingleez; so, carefully loading our revolvers, and placing them in our belts, we took our regimental swords and dirks, and set forth for a ramble in the dusk, regardless of the warnings of Catanagh and the Mir Alai Saïd, who told us that strangers were never safe from assassination and robbery after sunset. However, we took with us Callum Dhu, who, in addition to his bayonet, carried a heavy cudgel cut in the wood of Coilchro; and a regular adventure of some kind—no matter what—was the very thing we required to enliven us a little, after our long sea-voyage, and our recent bibulous déjeûné with the Turkish officers.
When off duty, honest Callum was seldom a moment from my side. The Gael have a proverb, which says, 'affectionate to a man is his friend, but a foster-brother is the life-blood of his heart;' and faithful as one of my own blood could have been, was the gallant Mac Ian to me!
As we stumbled along the narrow and muddy streets, we soon remarked the total absence of everything that resembled a petticoat, for the Turkish females in their hideous wide pantaloons and ghostly yashmacks were unlike aught that was human, as they flitted among the few shops which the town contained. The sun had long since set, and the night was dark. There is no twilight in Turkey, where the sunshine and darkness succeed each other suddenly at certain seasons.
'I miss nothing so much here as the petticoat, God bless it!' said Belton, 'for you must allow, Allan, that it is a very interesting and somewhat mysterious garment.'