"Tell Odysseus that I and my soldiers are in the habit of killing the enemy's officers on the battle-field. Only one of them, and he in disguise, remains. He, however, is Tepelenti's grandson, who has recognized him and ransomed him from me for a hundred thousand piastres, which he has engaged to pay me within an hour. Is it not so, Tepelenti?"
"It is so," said Ali; "within an hour the hundred thousand piastres shall be in thy hands."
Zaid, with a shriek of joy, kissed the hem of his grandfather's robe, and Kleon gave his hand upon the bargain. An hour later the money arrived in little hogsheads, and he had it weighed in the presence of his captains. Ali, however, binding his grandson by the left arm, and giving him his own caftan, had him conducted into the fortress of Janina.
Kleon looked contemptuously after him. So the old man had become soft-hearted! How he had wept and supplicated and paid for this youth, who was his favorite grandson!
An hour later the roll of drums was heard on the bastions of Janina, and when the Greeks looked in that direction they saw the stake of execution erected there. Four black executioners were carrying Zaid, who had his hands tied behind his back, and was wearing the self-same caftan which Ali had given him. Ali himself, mounted on a black horse, rode right up to the stake. At a signal from him the executioners hoisted Zaid into the air, and a moment later Tepelenti's favorite grandson, whom he had dandled so often on his knee, was done to death by the most excruciating torments!
Ali watched his death-agony with the utmost sang-froid, and, when all was over, he shouted down from the bastions with a strong, firm voice, "So perish all those of Tepelenti's kinsfolk who draw the sword against him! For them there is no mercy!"
Kleon felt his heart's blood grow cold. Ah! he had much, very much to learn from the agonized cries of the dying before he could overtake Ali, that old man who weeps, prays, and pays, in order to rescue his favorite grandson for the sole purpose of killing him himself with refined tortures!
Of all Ali's large family only two sons now remained, Sulaiman and Mukhtar. They were the first who had betrayed their father, and it was their treachery that had wounded him most. For a whole year Ali carried that wound about in his heart. During that time nobody was allowed to mention the names of his sons in his presence. Everything, absolutely everything, which reminded him of them was removed from the fortress. If any one was weary of life, he had only to mention the name of Mukhtar before Ali, and death was a certainty.
Meanwhile the two apostate sons were living in great misery at Adrianople; for the Sultan, though he paid them for their treachery, would have nothing more to do with them. The first instalment of the money which they were to receive as the price of their father's blood melted away very rapidly in merry banquets, pretty female slaves, fine steeds, and precious gems; and when it was all gone the second instalment never made its appearance. Far different and far more important personages had still stronger claims upon the Sultan's purse. Tepelenti's vigorous resistance, the innumerable losses suffered by the Sultan's armies, buried in forgetfulness the services of the good sons whose betrayal of their father had profited the Sultan nothing. They were already beginning to bitterly repent their overhasty step when the rumor of Ali's victories reached them; and as the days of necessity began to weigh heavily upon them, as money and wine began to fail them, as they found themselves obliged to sell, one by one, their horses, their jewels, and, at last, even their beautiful slave-girls, it became quite plain to them that no help could be looked for from any quarter, unless perhaps it was from wonder-working fairies, or from the genii of the Thousand and One Nights.
But let none say that, in the regions of the merry Orient, fairies and wonders do not still make their home among men.