Stories of Mystery Part 19

I could be "as tedious as a king," in a.n.a.lyzing those chivalrous instincts of masculine youth that lured me from college at nineteen, and away over the watery deserts of the sea; and, like Dogberry, "I could find in my heart to bestow it all of your wors.h.i.+ps." But since, like the auditor of that worthy, you do not want it, I will pa.s.s over the embarkation, which was tedious, over the sea-sickness, which was more tedious, over the home-sickness, over the monotonous duties a.s.signed me, and the unvarying prospect of sea and sky, all so tedious that I grew as morose after a time as a travelling Englishman.

Neither was coasting, with restricted liberty and much toil, amongst people whose language I could not speak, quite all that my fancy painted it,--although Genoa, Venice, the Bay of Naples,--crimsoned by Vesuvius, and canopied by an Italian sky,--and the storied scenes of Greece, all rich in beauties and historic a.s.sociations, repaid many discomforts at the time and remain to me forever as treasures of memory the more precious for being dearly bought. But these, with the pleasures and displeasures of Constantinople,--the limit of our voyage,--I will pa.s.s over, to the midsummer eve when, with all the arrangements for our return voyage completed, we swung slowly out of the northern eddy of the Golden Horn into the clear blue Bosphorus.

Already the lengthening shadows of a thousand domes and minarets stretched across its waters, and glimpses of sunlight lay between them, like golden clasps linking continent to continent. Around us were s.h.i.+ps and sailors from all parts of the habitable globe; while through s.h.i.+ne and shadow flitted boats and caiques innumerable, and except where these, or the rising of a porpoise, or the dipping of a gull, broke the surface of the water, it lay as smooth as a mirror, reflecting its palace-guarded sh.o.r.es.

The men were lounging about the deck or leaning over the bulwarks, listening to a neighboring crew chanting their vespers, while we awaited the coming on board of our captain. Meanwhile the shadows crept up the Asian hills, till the last sombre answering smile to the sun's good-night faded from the cypress-trees above the graves of Scutari.

Beside me, long in silent admiration of the scene, stood my messmates, Fred Smith and Mike O'Hanlon,--two genuine specimens of Young New York, the first of whom disappointed love had driven to sea, whither also friends.h.i.+p and a reckless spirit of adventure had impelled the second. Behind us was one, a just impression of whom--if I could but convey it--would make what followed appear as possible to you as it did to us who were long his companions. I never knew to what country he belonged; for he spoke any language occasion called for, with the same apparent ease and fluency. He was far beyond the ordinary stature, yet it was only when you saw him in comparison with other men that you observed anything gigantic in his form. His hair was black, and hung in a smooth, heavy, even wave down to his ma.s.sive jaw, which was always clean shaved, if indeed beard ever grew upon it. Neither could I guess his age; for though he was apparently in manhood's prime, it often appeared to me that the spirit I saw looking through his eyes must have been looking from them for a thousand years.

And how I used to exult in watching him deal with matter! He never took anything by the wrong end, nor failed to grasp a swinging rope or a flapping sail, nor miscalculated the effort necessary to the performance of whatever he undertook. He was silent, but not morose. Yet there was something in his measured tones and the gaze of his large gray eyes which Mike compared in their mingled effects to the charms of sight and sound that the victims of the rattlesnake's fascination are said to undergo. Whatever sensations they occasioned, men shrank from renewing them, and the frankest and boldest of the crew shunned occasions for addressing him. Stranger still, this feeling, instead of wearing off by the close companions.h.i.+p of our little bark, seemed to deepen and strengthen, until at length, except myself, no one spoke to him who could avoid it. Even the captain, when circ.u.mstances allowed him a choice, always directed his orders to another, though this man's duties were performed with the quiet promptness of a machine. If he was conscious of anything peculiar in the behavior of his companions toward him, he betrayed no indication of it. Such he was who stood listening, with an appearance of interest unusual in him, to our otherwise inconsequent chat.

"You are bidding a very silent adieu to the Genius of the East,"

I said.

"Yes," Fred answered, "it's her first actual revelation to me, but it's a glorious one."

"Let those who love to decipher illegible inscriptions, to contemplate a throttled centaur on a dilapidated frieze, or a carved acanthus on a fallen capital, grope over the Acropolis and invoke Athenian Pallas," said Mike; "but for me these painted seraglios and terraced, bower-canopied gardens, vocal with nightingales and seeming to impregnate the very air with the pleasures of desire, justify the decision of Paris. Hurrah for Asiatic Venus!"

"You are no true Christian knight," I said. "Your Rinaldos and Sir Guyons always waste your gardens of voluptuous delight, and wipe out their abominations."

"Yes," he retorted, "all but the abomination of desolation."

"But do you consider," said Fred, "how many sweet birds may be looking out through the bars of those bright lattice cages even now, who can follow neither their hearts' desires nor their souls'

aspirations, but whom fate has degraded to be the slaves of some miserable old Blue Beard?"

"Why don't you sail in and rescue some of them?" said Mike mockingly.

"Tell the old tyrant to his cerulean beard that he has too many strings to his bow, and he will undoubtedly spare a bow-string to twine around your manly neck. But I guess you had better, after all, leave the Fatimas to their fate. The barriers that fence them in from their hearts' desires and souls' aspirations here are not more real, if more palpable, than those that guard them in our land of boasted freedom; neither are they altogether secure from sale and barter there; and as for us outside barbarians, I'd as lief be shut out by palace walls from a beauty I can only imagine, as by custom still more insurmountable from beauty set visibly before me and enhanced with intellectual and social graces."

I cited the lady in the song, who says:--

A tarry sailor I'll ne'er disdain, But always I will treat the same,

as proof that such exclusiveness was far from being the universal rule at home, and encouraged him to rival the "swabber, the boatswain and mate" for "Moll, Mag, Marion, and Margery."

"Or," said he, "like the jolly tar you quote, dismiss both your songs as 'scurvy tunes,' and, swigging at a black jack, say: Here's my comfort."

"I am not sure," said Fred bitterly, thinking of his own rejected suit, "that Stephano's philosophy is not the best for wretches like us."

"Yes," said Mike, "until after the Millennium. Then the march of civilization will be ended, and the ranks may be broken. Then soft hands and hard hands may clasp each other. Then rays from the purest and most refined souls may s.h.i.+ne through bright eyes without being especially chilled for those whom a cold destiny makes especially needful of their heart-warming influences. Then you, poor as you are, may aspire to wed the daughter of a banker, and Joe or I may seek to satisfy the heart's desires of the Sultan's daughter, without Aladdin's lamp or Oberon's whistle."

Here our strange auditor came forward with a small tin whistle in his hand, and gravely presenting it to Fred, he advised him to try its note on the hard-hearted parent who opposed his happiness. In the deepening twilight, Fred and Mike, putting their heads together, read the following legend graven upon it:--

O whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad!

We all laughed outright, except the donor.

"This is not Oberon's whistle, at any rate," I said.

"No," he answered, "the inspiration of this is from Mammon, whose gates I understood shut Mr. Smith out from his true love. A single blast on it will, I dare say, open them wide enough to let him in."

"Then it's as good as money to you, Fred," said Mike.

"That's what our old boss used to tell us," answered Fred ruefully, "when he gave us orders on a neighboring grocery, in lieu of cash for our wages. But I must confess I have now, as I had then, a prejudice in favor of the circulating medium."

"If so, whistle for it at once," said the other.

Fred looked at him, and then at Mike and me, with a puzzled expression which seemed to ask: Is this a crazy freak, or an absurd, insulting joke?

"Now," said the object of this scrutiny, turning to me, "I have a talisman for you also, wherewith to entice the Sultan's daughter.

It is a ruby of rare size and color, and therefore valuable. But the power of the spell it is said to possess remains to be tested.

I give it to you because in you, at this moment, are fulfilled the conditions necessary to exercise this spell; which you do by simply taking the jewel in your hand thus, and saying,--

Come, O royal maiden, come to me this hour."

"And she'll come, of course," said Mike, bantering me in his turn.

"Now hoist your signal and hail the daughter of the Grand Turk, and let Fred pipe for his princess at the same auspicious moment."

"Amen!" I said, holding up the gem till the moonbeams blushed red in it, and calling out with a strange, impulsive sense of power,--

"Come, O royal maiden, come to me this hour."

But no responsive tooting of the whistle echoed from the lips of Fred. I looked toward him for an explanation of the silence, and beheld him spitting out the fragments of the instrument, which had gone to pieces in his mouth.

"What's all this?" he exclaimed, unrolling a little scroll of paper that had been compressed within it, and holding it up to the light.

"See here, Joe, what do you make of this?"

"A draft for ten thousand pounds sterling, on the Bank of England, duly signed and indorsed," I answered after scrutinizing it carefully.

We turned simultaneously for an explanation, but there was no one to give it.

"I always suspected who _he_ was," said Mike, "but he's got no hold on me,--no claim to a bond signed with _my_ blood. See, there he goes!"

I looked, and saw a boat shooting across the stream with a swiftness that argued some optical delusion. That unmistakable figure stood in the stern, urging it with a single scull, and as it disappeared in the confusion of boats and the darkness, a superst.i.tious suspicion crept over me that he might be the person Mike suggested. Soon the captain came on board, and on learning the absence of the boat and its occupant, he expressed considerable anxiety and impatience.

A breeze sprang up and began to curl the surface of the water, and clouds obscured the moon. Then the wind freshened to a storm, and lifted the waves on the channel, and roared in the cypress forests above Pera and Scutari. Under the light sails already set, the s.h.i.+p tugged hard at her cable. Yet the boat did not return.

The captain walked the deck nervously, and finally gave orders to weigh anchor, when just as our bark, freed to the wind and the current, sprang forward on her long voyage, the boat for which we were looking shot suddenly under the prow, and in an instant our mysterious comrade stepped in upon the deck from the bow-chains.

As he did so, the light of the mate's lantern fell full upon him, and the scene it revealed will certainly never be forgotten by anyone who witnessed it.

There he stood, looming out from the tempestuous darkness more gigantic and terrible than ever, with the form of a beautiful girl, gorgeously clad and flas.h.i.+ng with jewels, held easily and firmly by one encircling arm. His disengaged right hand was stained as if with blood, and spots of the same sanguinary hue were on his brow and his garments. The expression of his face was unmoved as usual.

For a moment he permitted the slippered feet of the trembling girl to rest upon the deck, though his arm still encompa.s.sed her shrinking form, and, while her great dark eyes, dilated with horror, like those of a captured bird, threw wild, eager glances to left and right, as if in search of any desperate refuge from the terrors that possessed her, he said in his usual quiet tones to the captain,--

"This is the pa.s.senger for whom I engaged the cabin. She will, by your leave, take possession of it at once." So saying, he led her gently forward and disappeared at the companion-way, conducted by the captain.

Every face on deck had grown pale, and every heart throbbed with the conviction that we had just beheld the consummation of a most desperate and b.l.o.o.d.y deed. It was evident the girl had been s.n.a.t.c.hed suddenly from the harem of some palace, probably from the royal seraglio itself, off which we had been lying. And the horror depicted on her face, as well as the stains of blood on her abductor, told with what ruthless violence. Here then, I thought, in all human probability, was the royal maiden I had summoned; here was the wildest vagary of my imagination realized. But how different from the bright fancy was the woful reality!

Soon the captain returned on deck, pale and excited like the rest of us, and ordered a rash amount of sail to be set. The mate, a bluff, powerful man, swore an oath that we should first understand the meaning of what had just transpired.

"I know no more about it than you do," avowed the captain, "except that it's a piece of business very likely to bring all our heads to the block unless we show a clean pair of heels for it. So now avast jawing, and obey orders!"