The multitude were wild with delight. The inverted soup-kettle was turned over, and swung by its handle from the top of the staff; following which, the crowd poured out from the court.[105]
Within a few days Ballaban, as chief Aga, led his corps toward Albania.
CHAPTER LII.
After the defeat of Moses as a Turkish leader, and his return to his patriotic allegiance, there was a lull in active hostilities between the two powers. Amesa, like other of the prominent voivodes in Scanderbeg's army, took the occasion offered to look after his own estates. He had added somewhat to his local importance by marrying the daughter of a neighboring land-owner. But neither conjugal delights, nor the additional acres his marriage brought him, covered his ambition. His envy of Castriot had deepened into inveterate hatred.
The Voivode sat alone in the great dining hall of his castle. It was late in the night. As the blazing logs at one end of the room cast alternately their glare and shadows around, the rude furniture seemed to be thrown into a witching dance. Helmets and corselets gleamed bravely from their pegs, suggesting that they were animated by heroic souls. The great bear-skin, with its enormous head, lying at the Voivode's feet, crouched in readiness to receive the lunge of the boar's tusks which threatened it from the corner. Pikes, spears, bows and broad-mouthed arquebuses were ranged about, as if to defend their owner, should any demon inspire these lifeless forms for sudden assault upon him.
Amesa had been sitting upon a low seat between the fire and a half-drained tankard of home-brewed liquor, his brows knit with the concentration of his thoughts.
A slight sound without arrested his attention.
"Drakul is late, but is coming at last. If only he has brought me the red forelock of that fellow who used to be always crossing my track, and has now come back to Albania!" he said, in a tone of musing, but intended to be heard by the delinquent as the great oaken door creaked behind him. Raising his eyes, but not turning his head to look, Amesa changed his soliloquy into a volley of oaths at the comer.
"I thought your name-sake, Drakul, had run off with you, you lazy imp.[106] What kept you?"