Lancey saw it, and admitted that it must have been a bad one.
“And do you see the light that is blazing in these two eyes?” he added, pointing to his own glowing orbs with a touch of excitement.
Lancey admitted that he saw the light, and began to suspect that the Pasha was mad. At the same time he was struck by the sudden and very great improvement in his friend’s English.
“But for you,” continued the Pasha, partly raising himself, “that cut had never been, and the light of those eyes would now be quenched in death!”
The Pasha looked at his guest more fixedly than ever, and Lancey, now feeling convinced of his entertainer’s madness, began to think uneasily of the best way to humour him.
“Twenty years ago,” continued the Pasha slowly and with a touch of pathos in his tone, “I received this cut from a boy in a fight at school,” (Lancey thought that the boy must have been a bold fellow), “and only the other day I was rescued by a man from the waters of the Danube.” (Lancey thought that, on the whole, it would have been well if the man had left him to drown.) “The name of the boy and the name of the man was the same. It was Jacob Lancey!”
Lancey’s eyes opened and his lower jaw dropped. He sat on his cushion aghast.
“Jacob Lancey,” continued the Pasha in a familiar tone that sent a thrill to the heart of his visitor, “hae ye forgotten your auld Scotch freen’ and school-mate Sandy? In Sanda Pasha you behold Sandy Black!”
Lancey sprang to his knees—the low couch rendering that attitude natural—grasped the Pasha’s extended hand, and gazed wistfully into his eyes.
“Oh Sandy, Sandy!” he said, in a voice of forced calmness, while he shook his head reproachfully, “many and many a time ’ave I prophesied that you would become a great man, but little did I think that you’d come to this—a May’omedan and a Turk.”