Towards evening they had arrived at the hut of the Erdbuhar hermit.
"I have been expecting you," said the dervish, when they came up to him. "Have you not suffered shipwreck and slept all night with the dzhin?"
Evidently one marvel after another was in store for them.
The dervish gave them meat and drink, and washed their feet, and after they had enjoyed his hospitality he offered to conduct them all the way to the gates of Seleucia. The merchant would very much have liked to know something of his wondrous deliverers, but as the dervish answered all his questions with quotations from the Kuran, he learned very little that was definite from that holy man.
When Seleucia came in sight, the merchant began thanking the dervish for his good offices. "Do not weary thyself any further, worthy Mussulman," cried he; "I know not how to reward thy labors, but Allah will requite thee. I am a beggar. Thou dost see that I am as bare as one of my fingers. The ocean hath swallowed up my all."
And all the while his reticule was full of precious stones; but he would have considered it a very great act of folly not to have made capital out of his wretchedness, and paid the dervish with fine words.
But the dervish would not even accept his thanks. "It is but my duty," said he, "and I did it not for thy sake, but for the sake of others." And with that he quitted them, after giving a string of praying-beads to each of the children.
The children went on in front till they reached the gate of the city, talking in a low voice together; but when they found themselves in the populous streets they took Leonidas by the hand, and Thomar said, "All that was thine has been lost in the sea, and who will help us in the great strange city, where nobody knows us? Let us therefore sing in the market-place and before the houses of the great men, and they will give us money, and so we shall be able to go on farther."
The merchant was greatly affected by this naïve offer, and allowed the children to sing in the market-place and in the porch of the pasha's house, and in this way they gained enough money to enable them to go on to the next city.
Thus, at last, they got back to Smyrna. If they had been his own children Argyrocantharides could not have looked for greater and heartier affection from them. They fasted that he might feast, they shivered that he might be warmly clad, they denied themselves sleep that he might slumber all the more tranquilly, and lowered themselves to singing in the market-place that he might not be compelled to beg at the corners of the streets.