At a sudden signal the fires were ignited: and the condemned caïque was soon one graceful mass of flame. But the most extraordinary portion of the spectacle was the crowd of men, dressed only in wide cotton drawers, their partially shaven heads bare, and their arms tossed high in the air, who were wading up to their necks in the sea, and feeding the fires with shrieks and yells worthy of a chorus of demons. At intervals, they all rushed out of the water, and sprang across the flames of the huge fires which were burning along the coast, looking like infernal spirits celebrating their unholy orgies; and then, plunging once more into the stream, they danced round the lesser island in a circle, to the wild chanting of the spectators on the shore.
The effect of the whole scene was thrilling. The bright-barrelled firelock of the Turkish sentinel, who was posted at the battery above the village, flashed as he trod his beat, in the fierce light which fell upon it. The line of heights behind the houses was covered with spectators: the women seated on mats and cushions, and the men standing in groups among them, all as distinctly visible as beneath a noon-day sun; while, in the opposite direction, the ripple of the Bosphorus ran shimmering along like liquid gold, and the caïques, wedged together as closely as though they had been one compact body, gleamed out gaily with their crimson rugs and gilded ornaments.
The same wild sports continued for two hours, gradually decreasing in violence, as the fatigue of the fierce and unremitted exertions of the actors made itself felt; when the Wallachian band, and an immense fire kindled beneath the windows of the house in which we were passing the evening, and which was formed of wicker baskets wedged one within the other, with a tall tree planted in the midst, that produced a very singular effect, gradually withdrew the crowd from the expiring glories of the coast; and as the last note of the Sultan’s March died away, the throng dispersed, and we were left to the undisturbed society of our friends.
Veronica could never have been handsome; the expression of her countenance is sweet and agreeable, but her features are neither regular nor fine; nor does she possess the low soft voice which is so great a charm in the Turkish women, and to which the coarse language of the Armenian nation does not lend itself. She is rather under the middle size, calm in her manner, and graceful in her carriage; and her sable dress and melancholy history invest her with an interest that mere beauty would fail to excite. As I conversed with the widowed wife, and saw her shrink beneath the night air like a withered flower, and fold her furred pelisse closer about her with her thin wasted hand, I could have wept over her faded youth and blighted feelings. It is painfully evident that the memory of her error and of her wrongs sits heavily upon her, and that it is a poisoned chain whose fetters can be flung off only in the grave. Even Time, the great physician of all moral ills, has no power over a grief like her’s.
Before we returned home, we rowed slowly towards Therapia; which, etched in fire, and loud with music, threw its bright shadow far along the waves. Caïques glided past us every instant with lights at their stern, whence the sounds of laughter or of song swept cheerily over the ripple; and more than once we narrowly escaped collision with a mirth-laden bark, whose conductors were pressing forward in all the heedless eagerness of hilarity.
It was near midnight ere we withdrew from the busy scene: and when I fell asleep, I dreamt that Veronica was the wife of one of the Cæsars; and that a young and dark-eyed Greek prince was leaping over the burning city of Constantinople, while a portly Armenian, who had been of the evening party, was filling his unwieldy calpac with water, as he stood breast-high in the Bosphorus, and handing it to a set of wild Indians who were howling and dancing amid the flames.
Truly my sleeping visions produced a second “Festival of Fire.”