CHAPTER XII
THE SHIPWRECK OF LEONIDAS
Now, one fine day, when the worthy Leonidas Argyrocantharides set outfrom Smyrna on one of his prettiest ships, a vexatious little accidentbefell him by the way. The ship, which had taken in a cargo of tannedhides at Stambul, was overtaken, _en route_, by a tempest which droveher upon the coast of Seleucia. There, in the darkness of the night,she was thrown upon a sand-bank, from which she was unable toextricate herself till morning; and it was only when the land becamevisible in the early light of dawn that the merchant began to realizethe awkward position into which his ship had got, despite SaintProcopius and Saint Demetrius, who were very beautifully painted onboth sides of her prow. The vessel had heeled over on one side, andthat side of her which lay above the waves was threatened every momentwith destruction by the onset of the foaming surf which broke fromtime to time over the deck, making a pretty havoc of the masts andspars. The joints of the ship's timbers began to be loosened, creakingand shivering at each fresh shock of the waves. And if the fate of theship on the sand-bank was sad enough, still sadder would it have beenif she had broken loose therefrom; for right in front of her lay therocks of the Seleucian coast, whose steep crags were lashed sofuriously by the raging sea that the crashing waves leaped fully ahundred fathoms up their sides. A nice place this would have been forany ship to play pitch-and-toss in!
The worthy merchant sorely lamented his fate, sorely lamented, also,his fine ship, which was painted in elaborate patterns with all thecolors of the rainbow. He lamented his many beautiful goat-skins, nota single bundle of which he would allow to be cast into the sea forthe purpose of lightening the ship; rather let them all go to thebottom together! He mourned over himself, too, condemned at thebeginning of the best years of his life to be suffocated in the sea;but what he lamented far more than ship, goat-skins, or even lifeitself, were the two Circassian children, the precious, beautiful boyand girl, Thomar and Milieva, who were worth, at the current marketprices of the day, ten thousand ducats apiece; Leonidas would havegiven his own skin for them any day!
Full of great hopes, he had embarked the two children at Stambul (thetanned hides were only a secondary consideration); and lo! now, justwhen he was reaching his goal, the curse of Kasi Mollah overtook him.
Two long-boats fully manned had made an attempt to reach the shore, inorder that they might from thence haul the ship off the sand-bank, andboth boats had been seized before his very eyes by the breakers, anddashed to pieces against the steep rocks; so there was nothing for itbut to remain behind and perish on the sand-bank.
One wave after another drove the hulk deeper and deeper down; thosewho still remained aboard wrung their hands and prayed or cursed,according as temperament or habit urged them.
As for Leonidas, he did both--he prayed and cursed at the same time;for it seemed quite clear to him that praying or cursing separatelywas of not the slightest use. The two children, meanwhile, holdingeach other tightly embraced, sat beside the broken stump of the mastand seemed to mock at the terrible tempest.
Not a sign of fear was visible on their faces. This roaring wind,these foam-churning waves, seemed to afford them a pleasant pastime.The black-and-white storm-birds sitting on the towering billows wereswimming there all round the doomed ship, merrily flapping the waterwith their wings. Oh, those sea-swallows were having a fine time ofit!
The two children had agreed between themselves, some time before, thatif the ship went down, they would fling themselves into the water andswim ashore. That would be a mere trifle to them, of course.
Full of despair, the merchant rushed towards them, and embracing themwith both his arms, he exclaimed, looking bitterly at the sky,"Merciful Heaven! ten thousand ducats!"
The children fancied that terror had made the merchant mad, and theytried to comfort him with kind words:
"Don't distress yourself, dear foster-father; we will not perish here,and we will not leave you to perish either. As soon as the ship goesdown, we'll swim for the shore. We both of us know very well how tocleave the waves with our strong arms, and we will fasten you to ourgirdles and save you along with ourselves."
The merchant kissed the two dear children, and embraced them tenderly.An hour later the last planks of the fine ship broke away from eachother, and the shipwrecked crew clung desperately to the floatingspars that the waves tossed hither and thither. The greater part ofthe ship's company was ingulfed forthwith by the waves or dashed topieces against the hard rocks; only three persons were saved--themerchant and the two children.
Leonidas, fast tied to their girdles, allowed himself to be cast amongthe waters. The first who rose on the crest of the foaming waves wasThomar. He perceived the rock on which a huge mountain of surf,rushing after him, threatened to dash him to pieces, and, watching hisopportunity, grasped the long dangling roots of a tree which grew outof a cleft of the rocks and, with a tremendous effort, dragged allthree of them up to it. The wave rolled right over them, burying themfor an instant in deep water; but the next moment the surge rolledback again, and they were on the rocky coast.
The merchant was more dead than alive, so the children had to drag himwith them for a long way inland, lest the returning surge should carrythem back to sea again. They only ventured to rest when they hadreached a rocky cavity where they could feel sure that they were safe.Even here the water, which shot up as high as a tower against theopposing rock, covered them every moment; but they did not feel itsweight.
There they had to remain, crouching closely together, till theevening. Neither in front nor behind was there any place of refuge,and it was with a feeling of envy that they looked down upon thestormy petrels which towards evening began to sit down in long rows onthe edge of the rocks, whither it was impossible for them to follow.
Gradually, however, the storm died away, the sea subsided and grewsmooth, and the place where the shipwrecked group had taken refugerose three ells above the surface of the water. Then they couldventure to look around them. The whole shore was strewn with pieces oftimber and mangled corpses. Wreckage and dead bodies were all that thesea had vomited forth of the rich cargo of the fine ship.
But the merchant did not despair. Making the two children kneel downbeside him, he knelt down in their midst, and made them pray a prayerof gratitude to Heaven for their marvellous deliverance; and then,pressing them to his bosom, he sobbed, with the tears in his eyes,"What do I care, though my ship is lost and all my wares aresubmerged, so long as ye remain to me, my precious offspring? That isquite consolation enough for me."
And the worthy merchant told the truth, for as soon as ever he couldreach Stambul he was sure of getting for these two children enough toenable him to buy two ships and twice as many wares as he had lost atthe bottom of the sea.
But now the most difficult question arose--How were they to get awayfrom that spot to any place inhabited by man? All ships gave thisdangerous coast a wide berth; there was nothing to tempt them to thespot. Even fishermen did not venture as far in their barks, so thatthe unfortunate refugees who had escaped the waters saw starvationapproaching them.
But suddenly, while they were meditating over the misery of theirposition, they fancied they heard human voices a little distanceoff--deep, manly voices, apparently engaged in a lively dispute.
The two children rejoiced, thinking that good men were hard by; butthe merchant trembled, for, thought he, "What if they be robbers?"
Thomar now bade his sister remain with Leonidas while he went in thedirection of the voices to discover who the speakers might be. Thebrave boy clambered from one cliff to another, made the circuit of therock-chamber behind which they were sitting, and when he came to theopposite side of it a spacious empty cavern yawned blackly in front ofhim, half covered by whortleberry bushes. Probably the conversationcame from thence, but neither near nor far was a human creature to beseen, nor were there any footprints of men on the ground; the front ofthe cavern was covered with thick green moss, on which footprints leftno tra
ce. Thomar shouted into the cave, and as not a word came back,he boldly entered, and slowly advanced forward. He went on and on asfar as the light of the outside world extended, and then, as no onereplied to his loud challenges, turned back again by the way he hadcome, and, making the circuit of the rock again, told the merchantthat he had not come upon any human beings, but had only found acavern which, at any rate, would make them good night quarters.
The conversation they thought they had heard must have been adelusion. Then they helped one another along the rocks and arrived atthe mouth of the cavern.
Milieva had scarcely cast a glance into it when she exclaimed, full ofjoy: "Look, Thomar, here are two chests among the bushes!" And,indeed, there were two boxes made of boards, and Thomar wondered thathe had not noticed them before. No doubt the sea had cast them upthither out of some ship that had been wrecked there before.
One of the boxes resembled those chests in which sailors keep theirbiscuits, but the shape of the other suggested that it was one ofthose hermetically sealed vessels used for holding good wines. Whyshould they not turn them to some account?
They were not long in forcing them open, and what was theirastonishment when they perceived that the biscuits in the first boxwere not even mouldy, but quite dry and sound, as if they had onlybeen brought thither quite recently; while in the second box not oneof the scores of flasks there displayed was broken or cracked, but layneatly stored away in layers of straw?
The refugees did not greatly concern themselves with the question, Whoput these boxes here? and why? Nobody who, after being tossed about onthe sea for three days with nothing to eat or drink all the time, andis then unexpectedly confronted with rich stores of bread andwine--nobody, I am sure, under such circumstances would think ofconsulting the Kuran as to whether a conscientious Mussulman shouldeat and drink such things, but would fall to at once, and thank Allahfor the chance.
The children forgot, in the twinkling of an eye, the dangers to whichthey had been exposed, and, after the first glass or two of wine,overcome by fatigue, lay down on the soft bed which Nature had madeready for them with her most fragrant moss. Leonidas, however,remained sitting where he was, considering it his bounden duty totaste all the wines which were here offered to him gratis, one afterthe other; in consequence whereof, when he _did_ lie down at last, hechose a position in which his head was very low down while his feetwere high in the air, and so they all three slumbered peacefullytogether.
Then the voices of men were heard once more far off in the cavern, andnot long afterwards there emerged from its black mouth sixgray-haired, pale-faced human beings. He who came first was theeldest. His white beard reached to his girdle, his mouth was hidden byhis mustache, and his eyes were covered by his white eyebrows.
These men were fakirs of the Omarite Order, whose rule obliges them toendure the most terrible of all renunciations--abstention from allenjoyment of the light of day. Plunging themselves into eternaldarkness for the glory of Allah, they make of life a long midnight,and the sun never beholds them on the face of the earth.
The night was well advanced when the six Omarites came forth to thesleepers, and while five of the fakirs stood round them in silence,the sixth--the one with the long flowing beard--bent over thechildren and examined their features attentively in the darkness ofthe night, which was only mitigated by the light of a few faint starshalf hidden among errant clouds. At last he whispered to his comrades,"It is they." Then, turning the tips of his thumbs downwards, he laidthem softly on Thomar's head. All five fakirs listened with raptattention. The bosom of the sleeping lad began to heave tumultuously;he clinched his fists; his face grew hot; his lips swelled. The oldman then seemed to breathe upon his forehead, as if he would whispersomething, whereupon the sleeping lad exclaimed, in a strong, audiblevoice, "With swords, with guns, with arms!"
The old men shook their heads, showing thereby that they approved ofhis words.
Then the eldest old man bent over the other child and made passes overher face with his five fingers. The maiden's bosom expanded visibly,and when the old man stooped over and breathed upon her she cried outin an energetic, dictatorial manner, "Down on your knees before me!"
At this the Omarites all whispered together, and two of them liftingthe lad, two the girl, and two the merchant, they carried them ontheir shoulders into the depths of the cavern.
The mouth of this cavern was the already mentioned tunnel whosefarthest exit debouched upon the valley of Seleucia, half a leaguefrom the sea--that waste, barren, and savage valley.
The Omarites moved to and fro in the black cave without a torch, likethe blind, who do not go astray in the turnings and windings of thestreets, although they see them not. The sleepers had drunk a magicpotion, which did not permit them to awake for some time, and the mencarried them on their shoulders to the opposite entrance of the cavernand there laid them down on the moss, in a place where the sunlightwas wont to penetrate.
It was already late in the day when the two children awoke. As soon asthey had opened their eyes, their first care was to kiss and embraceeach other. Then they aroused the merchant also and, rubbing sleep outof their eyes, began to tell him, in childish fashion, what they hadbeen dreaming about.
"Ah! what a lovely dream I had!" cried Thomar, and even now his eyessparkled. "I was standing beside the Sultan, who was leaning on myshoulder. Before me and around me howled a rebellious multitude, andthe Sultan was pale and sad. Turning towards me he sighed, 'Wherewithshall I appease this raging sea?' For a long time I could find noanswer. It was as if something were weighing me down, something asheavy as a mountain, when suddenly the words escaped from my lips,'With swords, with guns, with weapons!' And then the Padishah girdedhis own sword upon me, and I rushed among the howling mob, and I cutand hacked away at them till they were all consumed, and at last afield that had been reaped lay before me, and it was covered withnothing but corpses."
"That is a foolish dream," said Leonidas. "Why did you eat so muchlast night?"
And now Milieva told her dream.
"I also must have been confused by the wine. Before me also arebellious multitude appeared, and it then seemed to me as if I wasnot a girl but a boy. Furiously they rushed upon me from every side,but I feared them not, and when they were quite near to me I cried outto them, 'Down on your knees before me! I am the Sultan's daughter!'And everything was instantly quiet."
The merchant laughed till he choked at this dream. Who but childrencould dream such rubbish?
"But at home they used to say," observed Thomar, with a grave face,"that whatever any one dreams in a strange place where he has neverslept before, he will see that dream accomplished."
"Well, I am much obliged to you," said the merchant, "for in my dreamI was hanging up in Salonika by my feet, with my head downwards."
Then the merchant made the children leave the cavern.
"Come, my children," said he, "let us see if the sea has calmed down,and whether a ship is approaching from anywhere."
Thomar obeyed, quitted the cavern, and exclaimed, in astonishment:
"Look, my dear foster-father! How could a ship come here when the verysea has vanished, and only the bottom of it remains."
And indeed the district stretching out before them was quite bare andbarren enough to be taken for the bottom of the sea.
Leonidas took the lad's words for a joke, and it was a joke he did notrelish.
"Keep your witticisms for another time, my son," said he, "and rubyour eyes that they may see the better."
But Milieva leaped after Thomar, and when she had got up to him sheclapped her hands together, and exclaimed, with naive amazement:
"Why, the sea has run away from us!"
And now the merchant himself arose from his place, went out of thecavern, and could scarce believe his eyes when he saw before him thesavage, rocky region, where not a drop of moisture could be seen, tosay nothing of the sea!
"God has worked wonders for us," sighed the merchant. "It is plaint
hat we are in quite a different place from that wherein we went tosleep."
"No doubt the peris of the mountains of Kaf have conveyed us hither,"said Milieva.
"Peris, no doubt," observed Leonidas, absently, groping for his longreticule, and feeling whether his diamonds were still there. If itwere not peris, they would certainly have searched him for hisdiamonds.
And now they had to find out where they were, and what was the bestway to get out of the wilderness. The greatest anxiety haddisappeared; they had no longer anything to fear from the sea. On dryland it would be much easier to find a place of refuge.
After a little searching they came upon footprints in the sand, andthese footprints led them to the mouth of the valley. Whole forests ofthe large cochineal cactus grew among the rocks, and here and therethey saw a light-footed kid grazing on the dry sward. Not very longafterwards they fell in with the goatherd. Leonidas was rather alarmedthan delighted at the sight of the grim muscular figure, who, onperceiving them, came straight towards them, and addressed them in agruff voice.
"Are ye those shipwrecked fugitives who slept at night in the Cavernof the _dzhin_?"
"_Dzhin!_" said Leonidas to himself. "Methinks it must have been aspirit of evil, then."
The children answered the goatherd boldly, and begged him to directthem to some inhabited region.
"Go straight along this gorge," said he; "you cannot mistake the path.On your right hand you will find a hut where dwells a fakir of theErdbuhar Order, who will direct you farther. Salam alek!" And withthat the goatherd quitted them, to the great amazement of Leonidas,who had expected nothing less of him than highway robbery.
Towards evening they had arrived at the hut of the Erdbuhar hermit.
"I have been expecting you," said the dervish, when they came up tohim. "Have you not suffered shipwreck and slept all night with the_dzhin_?"
Evidently one marvel after another was in store for them.
The dervish gave them meat and drink, and washed their feet, and afterthey had enjoyed his hospitality he offered to conduct them all theway to the gates of Seleucia. The merchant would very much have likedto know something of his wondrous deliverers, but as the dervishanswered all his questions with quotations from the Kuran, he learnedvery little that was definite from that holy man.
When Seleucia came in sight, the merchant began thanking the dervishfor his good offices. "Do not weary thyself any further, worthyMussulman," cried he; "I know not how to reward thy labors, but Allahwill requite thee. I am a beggar. Thou dost see that I am as bare asone of my fingers. The ocean hath swallowed up my all."
And all the while his reticule was full of precious stones; but hewould have considered it a very great act of folly not to have madecapital out of his wretchedness, and paid the dervish with fine words.
But the dervish would not even accept his thanks. "It is but my duty,"said he, "and I did it not for thy sake, but for the sake of others."And with that he quitted them, after giving a string of praying-beadsto each of the children.
The children went on in front till they reached the gate of the city,talking in a low voice together; but when they found themselves in thepopulous streets they took Leonidas by the hand, and Thomar said, "Allthat was thine has been lost in the sea, and who will help us in thegreat strange city, where nobody knows us? Let us therefore sing inthe market-place and before the houses of the great men, and they willgive us money, and so we shall be able to go on farther."
The merchant was greatly affected by this naive offer, and allowed thechildren to sing in the market-place and in the porch of the pasha'shouse, and in this way they gained enough money to enable them to goon to the next city.
Thus, at last, they got back to Smyrna. If they had been his ownchildren Argyrocantharides could not have looked for greater andheartier affection from them. They fasted that he might feast, theyshivered that he might be warmly clad, they denied themselves sleepthat he might slumber all the more tranquilly, and lowered themselvesto singing in the market-place that he might not be compelled to begat the corners of the streets.
Good children! sweet children!
As soon as the merchant could get a new ship he took them with him toStambul, and this time no misfortune happened to them by the way.
At Stambul he exhibited them to the Kizlar-Agasi, who, after examiningtheir limbs and satisfying himself as to their capabilities, boughtthe pair of them from the merchant at his own price--the youth for theSultan's corps of pages, the girl for the harem.
To the honor of the worthy merchant, however, it must be said thatwhen he did hand the children over he sobbed bitterly. Good, worthyman!