He replaced the amber tube of the narguillah in his mouth, waved his hand to indicate that he wished to hear no more on the subject, and dismissed me, with a heart swollen by grief and mortification. I felt how low the son of Mostapha was fallen when a miserable trader despised his alliance! God of Mohammed, had we come to this?
As I rode slowly back to the poor village where with my brothers I dwelt on the hills above Anapa, I revolved a thousand schemes of daring and conquest; for Basilia was now to me a light—a star—a guide; but between us I saw the dark battalions and the strong ramparts of the abhorred Russians, and worse than all, the cunning and the avarice of her selfish father. Could I repel one, or bound the other?
When riding slowly on I saw a raven in my path, and shuddering at the bird of ill omen, turned aside, for I knew it was a sign of coming evil; because there is an old tradition in the countries of the East, that Cain, after committing fratricide, became sorely troubled in mind, and bore about with him for many days the dead body of his brother, until Heaven taught him how to bury it, by the example of a raven, which after killing another in his presence dug a little pit for it by beak and talon; and so scraping a hole with his hands, Cain interred his brother at the foot of a palm, whose branches heretofore erect drooped mournfully for ever after. Then the murderous raven which had perched itself on a branch thereof flew away to Adam, and croaked huskily in his ear that his youngest born was now slain and buried, and from that hour the raven has been a bird of evil augury to all the world. And now my heart became a prey to a thousand dark and gloomy forebodings. The bird had not come to me for nought.
I prayed Merissa, the mother of God, to take Basilia under her protection, for, like the Christians, we believe in the intercession of a woman, though, perhaps, her name is but a remnant of the faith that was first preached to the Circassians before the banner of the blessed Prophet swept the gods of error from the shores of the Caspian Sea.
Night was closing as I ascended the mountain, when suddenly from a gorge there rose that wild and terrible yell which is the war-cry of Circassia; and led by Schamyl, the conquering, the holy Murid Schamyl, a host of mounted warriors, all clad in shirts of shining steel and round helmets, armed with lance and musket, bow and sabre, each with a bag of millet and bottle of skhou slung at his saddle for service, dashed their fleet horses through the narrow way, and above their heads waved the green standard of the confederated princes with its three golden arrows and twelve white stars—the Sangiac Sheerif—the sacred banner of our people, for green is the colour of the Prophet.
Selim and Karolyi were among them, and they sprang to my side with joy and ardour.
A vast Russian army of horse, foot, and artillery, they told me, had just passed the shores of the Kuban, and entered among the mountains; Schamyl, the holy murids who devote themselves to death, and all our confederated princes, had summoned the land to battle, and every man between the straits of Yenikale and the Mingrelian frontier was in arms for Circassia Thus opened the Christian year 1840, so memorable to us by the capture of all the frontier forts of the Russians by our arms, but chiefly those of Mikhailov and Nikhailovska.
The excitement, the glory, and the splendour of our mountain host equipped for war, with the hopes of conquest and of triumph, filled my soul with such ardour and exultation that my emotion nearly overcame me. The hope of winning back in this war, if it was successful, the land, the home, and the grave of my forefathers, and with these the flower of the Abassian maids for my bride, made me pant for the hour of battle with such ardour as never bridegroom awaited the unveiling of his new-made wife.
The great Dervish Mohammed Mansoor, from the misty land of Daghestan, had foretold our triumph when he died at Anapa, and we never doubted we should be victorious.
Over my father's fugitive people a command was assigned me by the confederated princes; my brothers, Selim and Karolyi, rode by my side; all who followed us shared our ardour, and we were brave even to ferocity: thus, pouring down from the snow-capped Alps of the Caucasus towards the hosts of the Russ, then blackening and desolating the banks of the Kuban, while their fleets of three deckers and steamers scared the golden dolphins from our shores, we commenced the desperate war of 1840.