“And in that case,” continued the judge, “what would you have done with the greeting? Would you not have been obliged to keep it as payment and to be content with it? My sentence is, therefore, that you return the note, and that your friend gives you his greeting.”
When this decision was translated to the spectators, shouts of laughter proclaimed far and wide the wisdom of the new Solomon. The condemned man himself, after arguing for some time, was obliged to yield, and said, as he looked at the note: “I knew beforehand that I should lose if that dog of a Christian interfered.” This singular confidence shows the idea entertained by these people of European superiority, and the innate feeling for justice that exists among the fiercest of men.
Kaskambo had written three letters since his detention without receiving any answer: a year had passed. The wretched prisoner, without linen, and in want of all the comforts of life, found his health declining, and gave way to despair. Ivan himself had been ill for some time. The severe Ibrahim, to the major’s great surprise, had however freed the young man from his fetters during his sickness, and still left him at liberty. The major questioning him one day on this matter: “Master,” Ivan said to him, “I have been wanting for a long time to consult you about a plan which has come into my head. I think that I should do well to turn Mahometan.”
“You are certainly going mad!”
“No, I am not mad: this is the only way in which I can be useful to you. The priest has told me that if I were circumcised they could no longer keep me in chains; then I could do you service, procure you at least good food and linen, and at last, who knows? when I am free ... the God of the Russians is great! We shall see....”
“But God Himself will desert you, poor wretch, if you betray Him.”
Kaskambo, even while scolding his servant, could hardly refrain from laughing at his whimsical plan, but, when he went so far as to forbid it formally: “Master,” Ivan answered, “I can no longer obey you, and it would be useless for me to try to hide it from you; it is already done: I have been a Mahometan since the day when you thought I was ill and they took off my chains. I am called Hussein now. What is the harm? Can I not be a Christian again when I wish and when you are free! See, already! I no longer have chains, I can break yours on the first favourable opportunity, and I have a strong hope that it will present itself.”
As a matter of fact, they kept their word to him: he was no longer fettered, and from that time enjoyed greater freedom; but this very freedom was nearly fatal to him. The chief authors of the expedition against Kaskambo soon began to fear that the new Mussulman might desert. His long stay in their midst and his knowledge of their language put him in a position to know them all by name, and to give a description of them to the line if he returned there; which would have exposed them personally to the vengeance of the Russians; they highly disapproved of the priest’s misplaced zeal. On the other hand, the good Mussulmans, who had favoured him from the time of his conversion, noticed that, when he was saying his prayer on the roof of the house, according to custom, and as the mullah had expressly enjoined him, that he might gain the public good-will, he often, through habit and inadvertently, mixed up signs of the cross with the prostrations he made towards Mecca, to which it sometimes happened that he turned his back; this made them doubt the reality of his conversion.
A few months after his pretended apostasy he noticed a great change in his intercourse with the inhabitants, and could not mistake the manifest signs of their ill will. He was vainly seeking to discover its cause, when the young men with whom he chiefly associated came to propose that he should accompany them in an expedition which they intended to undertake. Their plan was to cross the Terek, to attack some merchants who would be going to Mozdok; Ivan agreed to their proposal without hesitation. He had long been desiring to procure himself arms; they promised him a share of the spoils. He thought that when they saw him return to his master’s side the people who suspected him of wishing to desert would no longer have the same reasons for distrusting him. However, the major having strongly opposed the plan, he seemed to be thinking of it no longer, when one morning Kaskambo, on awaking, saw the mat on which Ivan slept rolled up against the wall; he had gone during the night. His companions were to pass the Terek on the following night, and attack the merchants, of whose progress they knew from their spies.
The trustfulness of the Tchetchens ought to have aroused some suspicion in Ivan’s mind: it was not natural that men so wily and suspicious should admit a Russian, their prisoner, into an expedition directed against his compatriots. In fact it transpired from what followed that they had only asked him to accompany them with the intention of assassinating him. As his character of a new convert compelled them to use some caution, they had planned to keep him in sight during the march, and afterwards to rid themselves of him at the instant of attack, letting it be believed that he had been killed in the fight. Only a few members of the expedition were in the secret; but the event upset their calculations. At the moment when the band had laid their ambush to attack the merchants, they were themselves surprised by a regiment of Cossacks, who charged them so vigorously that they had great difficulty in recrossing the river. Their great peril made them forget the plot against Ivan, who followed them in their retreat.