CHAPTER XVIII.
Wherein is related what very different fates befell the two honest comrades.
The wicked kidnapers took off all their captives' upper garments, leaving them nothing but their shirts and hose to cover their limbs with, and drove them in this guise through all the villages they came to.
The captive girl had bruised her feet on the stony ways so that it was as much as she could do to limp painfully along. Valentine could not bear to see the robbers goading the poor child on with their whips, as if she were a brute beast, so, as if he had not enough wretchedness of his own to carry, he must needs take her on to his shoulders and trudge along with her to Eger, where they happened to arrive on market day. The slaves were driven straight to the market place, where a brisk traffic in oxen, sheep, and buffaloes was going on, and one of the accursed robbers blew a hoarse, squeaking fife, to advertise his slaves, and after attracting a crowd around them, began to praise their good points with a glib tongue. He called attention to Valentine's mighty arms as he stood there defiantly protruding his broad chest; but as for Simplex, he pulled such wretched faces and was so doubled up by his misery, that the robber felt bound to flip him now and then with his whip just to put a little life into him. The female slaves were treated with even less ceremony, for the robber tore the very smocks from their shoulders to show the purchasers how smooth their skins were.
First of all the woman and her little daughter were sold. A Mudir required them both, so at all events they had the consolation of each other's society.
Then there came an under-sized Turkish butcher who dealt in sheep flesh, and rejoiced greatly when he learnt from Valentine that he was a butcher's assistant. He did not chaffer very long about him, but paid the thousand ducats which the robber demanded for Valentine, put him in chains, and drove him off, at the same time bidding him be of good cheer, as he would be very well treated, have enough to eat, and when the vintage time came, might work in the vineyards in the open air, and have plenty of sour wine to comfort his heart with.
But for Simplex no purchaser could be found. They all looked at his hands, which were quite smooth and soft, for how could trumpet blowing make them hard? Nobody would have him. In vain did the robber make him dance at the end of a rope like a bear, and cry continually:
"Buy! buy! Who'll buy this giaour?"
At last, finding that no one would buy him, he led him to the fortress to the pasha. There the Muteshin came to meet him, and the robber said that he had brought him a captive soldier, for all captive soldiers had to be handed over to the pasha, who made an immense profit out of them by buying them dirt-cheap and then reselling them to their friends at fancy prices. The Muteshin, therefore, paid the robber forty ducats down for Simplex, one of which the godless wretch gave to the poor captive as a sort of parting gift.