'Death?'
'Yes—yes! hand me my dirk and the shot-belt for the revolver; get your bayonet. The Yuze Bashi means to drown his wife in a sack—'
'Dhia! it is horrible!—like a puppy-dog.'
'Or, it may be, to behead her by a slash of a yataghan. If either takes place, her blood will be on our heads, Callum—on mine, at least.'
'I don't understand all this; but, dioul! I will follow YOU anywhere, Mac Innon—so lead on.'
I slung my dirk and revolver-pistol to my belt; Callum buckled on his bayonet; we hurried from the castle, and soon reached the landing-place, where a few boats were usually moored.
The night was dark and cloudy; no moon was visible, and the sea of Marmora lay between its headlands like an ocean of ink; yet, by stooping low, I could perceive between me and the white streak that lingered at the horizon a large boat, containing several dark figures, being pulled like a great funeral barge, silently and rapidly to seaward.
''Tis those we are in search of,' said Callum, as we leaped on board of a little Greek caique, slashed through the painter, shipped the oars, and pulled sturdily and breathlessly after them.
In such a land as Turkey, where, in 1808, the Sultan Mahmoud II. could quietly, and quite as a matter of course, or as a piece of state policy, strangle his deposed brother Mustapha IV., together with his infant son; and also command four of his female slaves to be sacked and drowned, because they were likely to increase the royal family by presenting him with four little Harem-zadehs; where even his son, the present Sultan Abdul Medjid, with all his vaunted civilization, has committed more than one act of domestic barbarity, more especially the assassination of the two little princes, his nephews; and where too many of the atrocities recorded by travellers in all ages are still perpetrated, I knew all that hung over the doomed wife of Hussein; all I had to repent of, and all I had to fear!
Ill-fated Iola!