Fortune so far favoured our adventurers that several miles before reaching Girgeh they saw the party of which they were in search seated on the ground near a spring of water, and refreshing themselves with the fragrant fumes of the pipe.
Slackening his speed as he approached, Hassan drew near the group, and saluting them courteously in Turkish, sat down in the midst of them, nearest to one who by his dress he knew to be their yuzbashi, or captain, and ordering Abd-hoo to fill his pipe, our hero commenced a conversation on the heat, and indifferent subjects, with a careless ease that would have done honour to an old diplomatist. The captain was charmed with the polite frankness of his new guest, who failed not to call him colonel by mistake, and who ere long drew from him an account of the object and success of his morning’s expedition.
No sooner did he hear that one supposed to be of some rank in the band of the formidable Hassan had been captured than he started with feigned surprise, and inquired, pointing to Abou-Hashem, who sat disarmed and pinioned at some distance, whether that was the fellow whom they had captured? A reply being given in the affirmative—
“By your head, colonel,” he said, “I will go and look at the vagabond: they have done much evil to my lord the Pasha, and I have seen service against them. You son of a dog,” continued he, drawing near the prisoner, and addressing him in a loud and angry voice, “methinks you are the very fellow who killed my brother near Siout; you have just his ugly, villainous look, and now I will have your blood.”
So saying, he drew a sharp poniard and brandished it over the head of the prisoner.
“Do not kill the vagabond, O Aga!” shouted the captain, still lazily smoking his pipe, “for I hope to get five or six purses for his apprehension: could I have caught his chief, Mashallah! I would have claimed one hundred.”
“Inshallah! you will claim them another time,” said Hassan politely. “Meanwhile, I must give this vagabond a prick with my poniard. I will not touch his life, but I wish him not to forget me.”
So saying, he brandished his poniard again, and advanced close to the prisoner in order to see how with one rapid cut he could sever his bonds.
“Do not touch him, Aga, with your knife,” cried out Abd-hoo; “here is a courbatch wherewith to beat him.”
Under this pretext Hassan led Shèitan and his own horse near to the prisoner: at the distance of only a few yards a groom was holding a horse which, from its appearance and trappings, seemed to be that of the captain.