Ali called together his sons, of whom Vely was Lord of Lepanto, Sulaiman of Trikala, and Mukhtar Pasha of Durazzo. He showed them on the map where their territories lay, and pointed out that if they lost them they would have nothing left. Let all three of them, therefore, gird upon their thighs the swords he intrusted to them and fight like men. The two younger sons swore fervently that they would conquer Fortune with their weapons, but Vely Bey preserved a gloomy silence.
"Art thou not my son?" asked the veteran.
"Allah hath so willed it," answered Vely, "and I also will fight, not for thee but for myself, not for life nor for what is on the other side of death, but because I have a little child in Lepanto, and the enemy is besieging that fortress. That little child is all the world to me. I will fight as only a father can fight for his son. I will rescue him if possible. Thy glory or thy ruin is alike indifferent to me. If the report reach thee that the enemy hath taken Lepanto and slain my son, then count no more upon the sword which thou hast intrusted to me."
And with these words Vely turned his back on his father and softly withdrew.
As Ali saw his son quietly pass before him, it occurred to him whether it would not be as well to draw his pistol from his belt and shoot down the waverer before he quitted Janina. It is true that he had known all this beforehand. His own wife, his own sons, his own weapons, were to turn against him; but then, on the other hand, was he not to stand at the gate of the Seraglio on a silver pedestal?
A host of more than twenty thousand men stood under arms at his disposal, Albanians and Suliotes. A gallant host, if only it would fight. But for whom would it fight?—for him or for the Sultan? And these soldiers, when they saw him besieged, would they forget their murdered kinsfolk, their plundered fields, their burned villages? Did not every man of them know that Ali Tepelenti had been amassing treasures all his life, but had never troubled himself about good deeds? And now these treasures would surely be his ruin.
Time brought the answer. While his enemies were still afar off, the Suliotes arose, under the leadership of a girl among the mountains of Bracori, where one of Ali's grandsons, Zaid, was recruiting soldiers, and massacred Ali's men to the very last one. The last one, however, they suffered to escape and convey to Ali Zaid's severed head, at the same time informing him that it was sent by that girl the head of whose betrothed he had cut off before her very eyes, and she meant to send him still more.
This was the Greek's declaration of war. There at Janina, under his very nose, the Greek captain, Zunga, deserted the Albanian camp, and when the Grand Signior's army reached Trikala, and Gaskho Bey's herald galloped between the two armies with the imperial firman hanging round his neck, and summoned the vassals to take up arms against the Pasha, the whole camp went over to Gaskho Bey. Alone, without the smallest escort, Sulaiman, Ali Pasha's youngest son, fled without having had the opportunity of testing his father's sword, and they captured him on the road.
Still he had the other two. Mukhtar Bey, with a powerful fleet, lay in the Gulf of Durazzo, and Vely Bey, wroth though he might be with his father, was a valiant warrior, and his son was in Lepanto, and save him he must and would.
But not only his son, some one else was there also. On that cruel, murderous day when Ali Pasha drowned the harems of his sons in the lake, one person among so many escaped, and this was Xelianthé. The damsel loved Vely as much as he loved her, and contrived to let him know that she was alive. Vely Bey sent her to Lepanto, and kept her in hiding there with his little son in order that she might be far from his father.