Try these cheroots, Mac Innon, and please pass the wine, Jack; we must drink to Allan—a pleasant march to Rodosdchig, and may we soon have him safe back again, to be under my illustrious command, if not quite under this auspicious mahogany!'
CHAPTER XXXVII.
I MARCH TO RODOSDCHIG.
With a sergeant and thirty rank and file—one of whom was Callum Dhu, and with a piper playing at their head, I marched out of Heraclea, and by an old paved path of the Sultan Solyman, took the coast road to Rodosdchig. My men were in heavy marching order; their feather-bonnets cased in oilskins; their great-coats rolled; their wooden canteens, haversacks, and white gaiters on. We were accompanied by the portly Yuze Bashi; but as the day proved to be Friday, which is set apart by the Mohammedans for prayer and worship, he made it an excuse for being lazy, and instead of riding beside me on horseback, which, as a soldier, he ought to have done, he marched like a prince of Bourbon, i.e., travelled in his snug araba or Turkish carriage, where he sat, trussed up among soft cushions, and given up to dozing over his pipe and the Prophet.
Jack Belton accompanied me for three or four miles westward of the town, as far as an old Roman bridge, which crosses a river with a name that no jaws save those of a Believer were ever meant to compass; and there bidding me warmly adieu, he galloped back to breakfast and to morning parade.
We passed the head of the olive valley, where the poor Greek officer had been so barbarously executed; and all the terrible scene of that morning came fresh upon my memory. In the distance lay the sea and the grey rocks of Palegrossa, whereon was the rent and gaping hull of the Vestal.
The atmosphere soon became oppressively hot—singularly so for that season of the year, and consequently I seldom saw the round visage, or heard the guttural voice of the Yuze Bashi, save when he stormed at a passing carrier, whose string of laden mules raised a dust on the highway; or when he swore at the terrified Boba of some wayside khan, who was long in supplying him with sherbet or iced water, for which supplies, by the way, he seldom seemed to pay, save in threats and maledictions.
At one of these temporary halts near a khan, a poor old Jew, wearing the blue turban and blue boots enforced on those of his religion, approached with great timidity, and with a humility which to me—the son of a free soil—was painful and oppressive, offered some cigars and tobacco for sale.
'Do not buy of him,' said Hussein, pulling sharply back the curtains of his araba; 'he is a Jew, and will cheat you—they are all cheats, believing that, at most, they shall only endure for eleven months the fires of hell—for such is their accursed creed. Oho! is this you, Isaac Ebn Abraha, who keeps the little booth in the new Frank street of Stamboul?'
'The same, at the service of my lord,' replied the old Israelite, bending his white head.