"And we'll man her with a Greek crew."
"Then we will send Dirham with the messages written in the eggs to Bublinia, and we'll write great things therein. We'll tell her that we stand ready here with our fleets, and if she will attack the Kapudan Pasha in front we will attack him in the rear. The woman is mad. She will come forth from the Archipelago and fall upon the Turkish fleet. Then the Kapudan Pasha will assemble his forces against her, and she will engage all his attention till we have nicely set sail, nor will we stop till we reach Cadiz."
"Admirable! for that is the land of good wine and fair women."
"And then Ali Pasha may wait for us till the angel Izrafil blows his trumpet on the last day!"
"And Bublinia as well—not forgetting the Sultan! Let them worry each other."
"Mashallah! Life is sweet!"
And so it chanced that the sons of Ali, like the princes in a fairy tale, suddenly and marvellously came into the possession of great riches, and were wise enough to profit by these riches in the merriest manner in the world. The money was given to them for blood and weapons. They were going to lavish it on love and wine. And is not life lovelier so?
When Dirham came back they immediately boiled the eggs hard, and wrote upon them every sort of magnificent message that occurred to their minds. They promised to hasten to the assistance of the Greeks, both by land and by sea; to cut their way through the fleets with their fire-ships and blow the Turkish flag-ship into the air; to incite the Janissaries to rise against the Sultan and the Greeks to rise against the Janissaries; in all of which there was not a single word of truth. Only worthy Dirham believed these things, and trembled in body and soul at the bare thought of the sublime deeds that his masters had determined to perform.
He himself hired a barge, loaded it with wool, and, hiding the eggs full of secrets in a basket, set out for the Archipelago.
The good youths meanwhile laughed to their hearts' content. They laughed at worthy Dirham; they laughed at the worthy Bublinia, and at the wise Kapudan Pasha; they laughed at this amusing piece of good fortune which brought them riches in heaps. But at nobody did they laugh so much as at old Tepelenti, who was believing all along that his sons were collecting war-ships for him.