'I threw myself upon the earth towards the Keblah—the Holy City of Mecca; and I vowed seven times—by the seven gates of Paradise—by the souls of the seven lawgivers—and by all the lights of the faithful—to become a good, a pious, and a new man; and from that hour I ceased to be a soldier, a reveller, a dicer, and a gamester; I became a moolah, and went through all Greece and Asia Minor, preaching the faith of the Koran and of the only Prophet—Mahmoud resoul Allah—for there is no God but God, and the Camel Driver is his Prophet!'
Such was the vision of the old corporal Moustapha!
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE TURKISH VEIL.
With this strange story hovering in my mind, and the Yuze Bashi asleep in the cushioned recess of his araba, I paraded and marched off my detachment from the valley at the first peep of early dawn next day. I bade farewell to the old moolah Moustapha—the ex-corporal of Scherif Bey—and gave him one of the small Turkish notes (which are printed on thin yellow paper, and are worth about ten shillings sterling) for the benefit of his mosque; and feared that if he was not slightly defective in brain, he had at least but a slight acquaintance with the goddess whose billet is popularly said to be at the bottom of a well.
Along a road bordered by rare plants and gorgeous flowers; between groves of orange, lemon, and fig trees, all growing in wild luxuriance, and among myrtle-scented fields, we continued our march by the shore of the sea of Marmora, the voices of my thirty soldiers all uniting at times in one merry chorus, as they trod the old paved causeway of the great Sultan Solymon, many of whose works are, by the ignorant, ascribed to the Genii—just as our Scottish peasantry aver their old ruins to be the work of Picts or of the fairies—and before mid-day, we saw the little town of Rodosdchig rise before us, with the blue sea washing its old grey walls; with its dark cypresses and white minarets; its harbour full of quaint caiques; and its old castle of the Greeks, on which was the red Turkish standard, with an oval centre, bearing the three crescents of the Prophet.
As we marched in, the drum beat at the guard-house, and a guard of lubberly Turkish militiamen scrambled from around a logwood fire, where they had been toasting kabobs and dough-balls; they stood to their arms, and gave us a military salute. The officer at their head still retained at his neck the ancient gilt gorget, now long disused in our service.
We were immediately beset by Greek kabob-roasters, and sherbet-venders, from the arched gates of the bazaars, and a crowd of wondering Osmanlies, whom the strange sound of the Highland warpipe brought forth from every door, where they had been squatted on carpets, dozing over opium, coffee, and chibouques; yet though louder, more martial, and more shrill, our pipe is almost similar to the instrument now used by the kilted mountaineers of Albania.
Not a woman was visible, though at times a veiled head and two brilliant eyes appeared at the wire lattices which opened to the unpaved and unlighted streets.
We marched into the old castle, of which the Yuze Bashi was commandant, governor, or suzerain, and as such was the terror of all Rodosdchig. He was the only officer there at present, though the quaint old Greek towers of the last emperor were garrisoned by his company of Bombardiers, and were mounted by ten iron twenty-four pounders and two ten-inch mortars. On the walls towards the sea were several old and useless, but enormous, brass guns, covered with Turkish letters and pious sentences, with piles of moss-grown marble shot between them. The stockades in many places had disappeared, for our thrifty commandant had sold them when his piastres became scarce, to the kabob-roasters, for firewood.