The Beg did all that he was bidden to do.
"Who, then, are these walking on the bank of the Danube?"
"Young girls," stammered the Beg.
"And those things spread out yonder."
"Wet linen."
"Dost thou not hear the songs of the girls?"
"Certainly I do."
"Look now, my master, what wonders there are beneath the sun!" said Azrael, turning towards Hassan Pasha; "is it not marvellous that Yffim should see armies when there is nothing but pretty peasant girls?"
"Miracles proceed from Allah, but methinks Yffim Beg must have very bad sight to mistake maidens for men of war."
Yffim Beg durst not say to Hassan Pasha that he also had bad sight; he might just as well have pronounced his own death sentence at once. Hassan wanted to pretend to see all that his favourite damsel pointed out, and she proceeded to befool the pair of them most audaciously in the intimate persuasion that Hassan would not betray the fact that he could not see, while Yffim Beg was afraid to contradict lest he should be saddled with that plaguy Transylvanian business.