“Were I to judge you by your looks,” quoth he, “I would swear that my Persian hussy has cast a spell upon you. Well, you shall hear her story. Seven years ago we had a Holy War. I chanced to be at Khorsabad, while our Circassian troops were there, uprooting from the garden of the faith those weeds, the Yezidees. As I was nearing a cabin, out strode one of our men. He was a strapping fellow, with big black whiskers, and so tall that he had knocked awry his bearskin shako as he forgot to stoop in coming forth. One hand held his sword, smoking with blood. The other gripped Zaidee. Flinging her in front of me, he roared: ‘Will you buy? She’s yours for thirty liras. But I warn you—she’s the serpent-tamer’s daughter.’ Before I could answer, she was clinging to my knees, screaming: ‘Oh! save me, save me from that dreadful butcher!’ Well—I brought her home; but she’s but an ingrate. These seven seasons have I labored to convert her to God and His Prophet Mohammed, but I can not wean her from the faith of Zoroaster. So this week I shall sell her at public auction, if I am bid a thousand mejedieh for her. She’s worth that, if she’s worth a piastre.”
The last word had hardly left Hosein’s lip ere Page Lomax had whipped forth from his pocket his fountain-pen and traveler’s circular cheque-book and was writing rapidly. Through eyes narrowed to a contemptuous slit, the Turk watched his companion in silence, until the latter had laid the writing on his lap, when he said: “What’s this for?”
“The girl,” replied Page Lomax. “That’s the price you named. The Stamboul Branch of the Credit Lyonnaise will pay it to you in gold, when you present this to it.”
“Your swift Western way of trafficking is indeed bewildering to a slow Turk,” rejoined Hosein, in honeyed tones, which barely hid a bitter sneer. “We would have smoked our narghiles and drank coffee and chaffered for a week, while as for you—you fire a cheque at one, hair-trigger fashion. Nakir.” Here he turned to the sullen African, “Get that cashed. The jade goes with the American hence. But, ere you leave, Mr. Lomax. I must show you the most beautiful scene on earth, so they say—Constantinople from a distance. And my own poor fields have somewhat of charm, too, about them, I believe. Let me guide you through them. You shall witness things, which—being strange—perchance may thrill you as familiar sights can not. Nay, Nakir, there is no haste about the cheque. Tomorrow will do. Get you now to the harem and prepare Zaidee for her departure. Come, Mr. Lomax, we’ll fare forth.”
At a pavilion, which was perched on the wrinkled lip of an abyss—a sheer thousand feet in depth—the Turk paused and, with sweeping gesture, brought to the notice of Page Lomax’s eye a range of lofty mountains, which kissed the horizon at their left.
“There!” he exclaimed. “Are not those sublime? But they are deadly, too; for in them lurk huge spiders, as big as tigers and twice as fierce. You smile, as if in doubt. I do not blame you. It is hard to believe. But they are there. I am no zoologist, so I can not explain it, but I have been told that spiders came ages ahead of man on this earth, as their fossils are found in rock of the primary epoch, while we appear first with the quaternary. If this be so, perhaps these ogres are survivals of gigantic prehistoric spider forebears. But I don’t pretend to know anything about it, except that they are there. No hunter has ever tamed them; but I have caught and caged one. You shall see it, before you leave. Look now to the right.”
Afar off, yet perfectly plain in every line, thanks to the limpid clearness of the air, lying in the arms of emerald meadows with her head pillowed on undulating hills crowned with cypresses as brunette as the Queen of Sheba, lay Constantinople, many-colored yet shimmering iridescently under the sapphire tent of heaven, while the Golden Horn poured the waters of the East at her pearly feet. So noble was the sight that Page Lomax’s gaze lingered long upon it ere, following the sky-line, it rested at last on a frowning stronghold, whence a road wound down to a wharf at which a skiff was moored. So grim and threatening was this heap of stone that the young man asked Hosein:
“What is that old keep?”
“That,” replied his host, “I have named the Tower of Vengeance. During the late Muscovite war, my brother, Selim, held it as an outpost. But the boy’s soldiers were too few, our supporting column too far away. At dawn one day, the Russians hurled a regiment against it, stormed it, butchered its garrison, fired it. I was too late to save the boy, but I headed the cavalry, which cut off retreat for his murderers. As I charged in, their Colonel quenched this eye for me, but in ten minutes he and all his followers were dead. Selim is buried there. Thither I repair each afternoon to lament and feed his grave.”
“To feed his grave?” echoed Page Lomax, inquiringly.