CHAPTER I
THE SWORD OF SOLOMON
The current of our story takes us once more to the White Castle at the mouth of the Sweet Waters of Asia.
It is the twenty-fifth of March, 1452. The weather, for some days cloudy and tending to the tempestuous, changed at noon, permitting the sun to show himself in a field of spotless blue. At the edge of the mountainous steep above Roumeli Hissar, the day-giver lingered in his going down, as loath to leave the life concentrated in the famous narrows in front of the old Castle.
On the land, there was an army in waiting; therefore the city of tents and brushwood booths extending from the shore back to the hills, and the smoke pervading the perspective in every direction.
On the water, swinging to each other, crowding all the shallows of the delta of the little river, reaching out into the sweep of the Bosphorus, boats open and boats roofed—scows, barges, galleys oared and galleys with masts—ships—a vast conglomerate raft.
About the camp, and to and fro on the raft, men went and came, like ants in storing time. Two things, besides the locality, identified them—their turbans, and the crescent and star in the red field of the flags they displayed.
History, it would appear, takes pleasure in repetition. Full a thousand years before this, a greater army had encamped on the banks of the same Sweet Waters. Then it was of Persians; now it is of Turks; and curiously there are no soldiers to be seen, but only working men, while the flotilla is composed of carrying vessels; here boats laden with stone; there boats with lime; yonder boats piled high with timber.
At length the sun, drawing the last ravelling of light after it, disappeared. About that time, the sea gate in front of the Palace of Julian down at Constantinople opened, and a boat passed out into the Marmora. Five men plied the oars. Two sat near the stern. These latter were Count Corti and Ali, son of Abed-din the Faithful.