Alarm for her, and shame for myself, deprived me of utterance. I could only interpose the long, glittering blade of the Highland claymore between us, and gaze on Hussein's angry front, debating whether or not I should slash him across the fingers, lest he might shoot one or both of us; and I remembered poor Callum Dhu and his thirty comrades, who would be at the mercy of Hussein's hundred Bombardiers, and might, moreover, be exposed to the fury of the populace, from whom not even the Greek Archbishop of Rodosdchig could protect them.
'Oh, face of brass and heart of steel! what do I see?' he exclaimed. Then uttering that expression of grief which is so frequently in the mouths of Mohammedans, he rent his white beard, and cried, 'We are God's, and unto Him we shall return! You have darkened the light of my eyes, oh Frank! but may the fiends have me if I take not a sure and terrible vengeance for this!'
'Hear me?' I implored, without knowing what to say.
'Nay—stir not a step, or these balls shall whistle through your brain!'
'Yuze Bashi, hear me, I beg of you, and you shall know all.'
'All!' he reiterated, stamping with rage; 'ye shall wish yourselves like the brutal Greeks, from whom this woman sprang—deaf and dumb and without understanding—before the measure of my vengeance is full. Her fate she knows; but for thee, accursed Frank—thou who hast reft me of her, who was to be unto me a garment and a comfort, as the blessed Koran saith—by the seven heavens and the seven earths, and by the hand that hung and cleft the moon in the firmament, I will have your heart to tread beneath my heel; but first the ferashes shall apply the bastinado until every toe you have has dropped from your feet in blood! Hallo, Chaoush! Hallo, Onbashi!'
'Do with me as you please, Effendi, but spare her.'
'As for her, the hand of a profligate Christian has touched her—a hand which defiles all it touches—yea, even the food of a dog; so, from this hour, she is alike divorced—thrice, I say it, divorced, divorced and accursed by Hussein!'
With these words, he pulled both triggers at once; but the pistols, having old flint locks, by the mercy of heaven, flashed in the pan and hung fire. Then, finding the necessity of immediate action, just as he was about to draw his sabre, I grasped him by the gilded waist-belt, and hurling him, with all my force, back upon the cushions which lay piled upon the floor behind him, I locked Iola into an inner apartment—kissed her cold hands, and rushed by a back door to the foot of the staircase. Then crossing the castle-yard, I regained my quarters, where I was immediately joined by Callum Dhu, who, ever kind and watchful, had been awaiting my return.
Alarmed, on seeing me spring in with my sword drawn, and excitement in my eye,