CHAPTER LIII.
A ROW IN THE BAGNIO.
It is impossible for me to analyze my thoughts or reflections, on hearing this terrible relation of Clavering's lonely and helpless butchery in his sleep, by the hands of villains such as these Turkish galiondgis.
Poor Tom Clavering! his well-whiskered face and manly figure came vividly before me, as I had last seen them in Dumbarton Castle, when he seemed the jolliest of our merry mess; and when full of joy at his approaching marriage, and all thoughtless that I was his rival, he spoke to me of his love for Laura; of her beauty, and that which was better than beauty, her worth; and when, in the fulness of his heart, he generously placed his purse at my service with all the frankness of a soldier and of an English gentleman.
But he was gone, and Laura was a widow now.
A widow at two-and-twenty, or thereabout!
Here was food for thoughts of hope and ardour, for now she would be free to choose another; and though the pale image of Iola still hovered painfully and oppressively before me at times, I felt that I loved Laura still. Then came the crushing and startling thought of the dangers which menaced her, and the words of the villain Abdul were yet tingling in my ears.
'The caiques will leave the Ustuola on the fourth night from this, and the yacht will be boarded and taken!'
Taken by those Greek pirates and Turkish outlaws whose savage barbarity have long made terrible the shores and isles of the Ægean sea!
So Laura was with me in this land so distant from our home; she was within a few miles of me, and a great longing seized my soul—a longing to look once more upon her face—to hear her voice again; the voice that in other times had thrilled through my inmost heart, which now began to 'ache with the thought of all that might have been;' but it stood still, forgetting almost to beat, while my blood ran cold at the reflection that I was a prisoner, and totally incapable of assisting, warning, or protecting her or her friends.
All my soul seemed now to be with that stranded yacht on the Isle of Marmora, which was more than forty miles distant, as a bird would fly.