In Greek Waters: A Story of the Grecian War of Independence

“At any rate, Horace, I regard the idea of there being a chance of their rescuing us as out of the question. What they will do is, of course, beyond guessing. It is vexing to think that if they did but know at the present moment we were being put on board ship, they might cut us off at the mouth of the Dardanelles. It is little farther from the Gulf of Zeitouni than it is from the mouth of this river, and the schooner would probably sail twice as fast as any craft we are likely to be put on board. It is annoying, but it is of no use being annoyed. They don’t know we are going to be embarked, and they can’t learn it for four or five days at the very earliest, so don’t let us worry about that. We have reasonable cause for worry in knowing that we are going to be taken to Constantinople, for not improbably we will be executed when we get there.”

“You think that it is probable, doctor?”

“I do, indeed. The Sultan is not the man to stand on niceties. He has decided not to give quarter to foreigners who fight against him, and as a matter of policy he is perfectly right. We knew all along what our fate would be if we fell into the hands of the Turks. We have done them an immense amount of mischief: we have destroyed a frigate and beaten off their boats; we have taken a lot of prizes, and delivered some two or three thousand valuable slaves from their hands. The only set-off to this is that we assisted to save some three hundred Turkish women and children, as to whose fate the Sultan was probably perfectly indifferent. The balance is very heavy against us.”

Horace could not but admit that this was so, but in this beautiful valley, and with Constantinople still in the distance, the idea that ere long a violent death might befall him there was not sufficiently vivid to depress his spirits greatly.

After four hours’ riding they came down upon the little port at the mouth of the river. Two or three craft were lying there under the guns of the battery.

“That is our vessel, you will see, Horace. It is a man-of-war brig. I expect she is placed here on purpose to enable the pasha to communicate direct with Constantinople, instead of having to send up through the passes to Salonika.”

Leaving the prisoners under charge of the guard, the officer took a boat and rowed off to the brig. In a few minutes a large boat lying beside her was manned by a dozen sailors and rowed ashore. The officer was on board of her. Two of the men who had brought their valises strapped behind their saddles had already removed them, and stepped into the boat forward, while their comrades took charge of their horses. The officer then signed to Horace and the doctor to step on board, and they were rowed out to the brig. Half an hour later the anchor was got up, the sail set, and the vessel left the port.

There was no attempt at restraint of the prisoners. A young lieutenant who spoke Greek informed them, in the name of the captain, that the orders of the pasha were that they were to be treated as ordinary passengers, and he requested them to take their meals with him in the cabin. They would be entirely at liberty, except that they would not be allowed to land at Tenedos, or at any other port at which the vessel might touch.

The brig proved a fairly fast sailer; the wind was favourable, and late on the afternoon of the day after they had sailed they dropped anchor off Tenedos, and the officer in charge of the captives at once went ashore with the pasha’s letter to the governor. He returned late at night, after the prisoners had turned in in one of the officers’ cabins that had been vacated for their use. There was not a breath of wind in the morning, and the captain accordingly did not attempt to weigh anchor.

“It would be a fine thing if this calm would last for a fortnight,” the doctor said as they came on deck in the morning.

“Yes, but there is no chance of that, doctor. We have never had a dead calm for more than three days since we came out.”

“Well, we might do equally well with a light breeze from the north. That would help the schooner across the gulf, and at the same time would not enable the brig to work up the Dardanelles; there is a strongish current there. Still, I am not at all saying it is likely; I only say that I wish it could be so.”

When the officer came on deck he informed them, through the lieutenant, that the governor had given him a strong letter to the Porte speaking in the highest terms of the humanity they had shown towards the Turks they had rescued from Athens. An hour later two or three boats came off. Among those on board them were several women. When these saw the doctor and Horace leaning over the bulwark, they broke into loud cries of greeting.

“I expect they are some of those poor creatures we brought over,” Horace said. “I don’t remember their faces, we have had too many on board for that, and I don’t understand what they are saying, but it is evidently that.”

Some of the boatmen understood both Greek and Turkish, and these translated the expressions of the women’s gratitude, and their regret at seeing him a prisoner. They were not allowed to set foot on the brig, but they handed up baskets of fruit and sweetmeats. One of the women stood up in the boat and in Greek said in low tones to Horace, as he leant over the rail:

“There are but few of us here, and we are poor. Our hearts melted this morning when the news spread that you were prisoners on board a ship on her way to Constantinople. We can do nothing but pray to Allah for your safety. My husband was one of the soldiers you brought over, the one who had lost his arm, and who was tended by the hakim. As he was of no more use they have discharged him, and he has remained here, as I am a native of the island and have many friends. He will start in an hour with some fishermen, relations of mine. They will land him above Gallipoli, and he will walk to Constantinople. Then he will see the bimbashi and his former comrades, and find out Osman and Fazli Beys, who were with us, and tell them of your being prisoners, so that they may use their influence at the Porte, and tell how you risked your lives for them, and all – May Allah protect you both, effendis!”

Her story terminated abruptly, for the captain at this moment came up and ordered the boat away from the side.

“What is all that about, Horace?” Macfarlane asked as Horace returned the woman’s last salutation with two or three words of earnest thanks. “Why, what is the matter, lad? there are tears in your eyes.”

“I am touched at that poor woman’s gratitude, doctor. As you can see by her dress she is poor. She is the wife of a discharged soldier, that man who lost his arm. You dressed the stump, you may remember. I know you said that it had been horribly neglected, and remarked what a splendid constitution the Turk had; you thought that had he been an Englishman the wound would probably have mortified long before.”

“Of course I remember, Horace. And has he got over it?”

“He has.” And Horace then told him what the woman had said.

“It does one good to hear that,” Macfarlane said when he had finished. “Human nature is much the same whether it is in the wife of a Turkish soldier or of a Scottish fisherman. The poor creature and her husband are doing all they can. The bimbashi and the beys were great men in their eyes, and they doubtless think that they are quite important persons at Constantinople. Still, it is pleasant to think that the poor fellow, whose arm must still be very far from healed, is undertaking this journey to do what he can for us. It minds me of that grand story of Effie Deans tramping all the way from Scotland to London to ask for her sister’s pardon.

“I don’t say that anything is like to come of it, but there is no saying. If these Turks are as grateful as this soldier and his wife they might possibly do something for us, if it were not that the Sultan himself will settle the matter. An ordinary Turkish official will do almost anything for money or favour, but the Sultan is not to be got round; and they say he is a strong man, and goes his own way without asking the advice of anyone. Still it is, as I said, pleasant to know that there are people who have an interest in us, and who are doing all in their power to help us.”

An hour later a small boat was seen to put out from the port and to row away in the direction of the mainland.

For three days the brig lay at her anchorage. Then a gentle breeze sprang up from the south. Making all sail, the brig was headed to the entrance of the Dardanelles.

“Unless there is more wind than this,” Horace said, “I should hardly think she will be able to make her way up, doctor. She is not going through the water more than two knots an hour.”

“No, she will have to anchor again as soon as she is inside the straits unless the wind freshens, and I don’t think it is likely to do that. To my mind it looks as if it would die out again at sunset.”

This proved to be the case, and before it became dark the brig was anchored in a bay on the Asiatic side a short distance from the entrance.

The next morning the breeze again blew, and somewhat fresher than before. All day the captain strove to pass up the straits. Sometimes by keeping over out of the force of the current he made two or three miles, then when they came to some projecting point the current would catch the vessel and drift her rapidly down, so that when the breeze again sank at sunset they had gained only some four miles. Next day they were more fortunate and passed the castle of Abydos, and the third evening came to anchor off Gallipoli. On the following morning the wind blew briskly from the east, and in the afternoon they dropped anchor off Constantinople.

“Eh, man, but it is a wonderful sight!” Macfarlane said, as they looked at the city with the crenellated wall running along by the water’s edge, the dark groves of trees rising behind it, and the mosques with their graceful minarets on the sky-line. Ahead of them was Pera with its houses clustering thickly one above the other, and the background of tall cypress. Across the water lay Scutari, with its great barracks, its mosques, and the kiosks scattered along the shore. Caiques were passing backwards and forwards across the water; heavy boats with sailors or troops rowing between the ships of war and the shore; native craft with broad sails coming up astern from Broussa and other places on the Sea of Marmora; pleasure boats, with parties of veiled women rowing idly here and there; and occasionally a long caique, impelled by six sturdy rowers, would flash past with some official of rank.

“I have seen many places,” the doctor went on, “but none like this. Nature has done more for Rio, and as much perhaps for Bombay, but man has done little for either. We may boast of our western civilization, and no doubt we can rear stately buildings; but in point of beauty the orientals are as far ahead of us as we are ahead of the South Sea Islanders. Who would think that the Turks, with their sober ways, could ever have even dreamed of designing a thing so beautiful as that mosque with its graceful outlines. See how well those dark cypresses grow with it; it would lose half its beauty were it to rise from the round heads of an English wood.

“Just compare the boats of light-coloured wood all carved and ornamented with their graceful lines, and the boatmen in their snow-white shirts, with their loose sleeves and bare arms, and their scarlet sashes and fezzes with the black tub of an English or Scottish river. Look at the dresses of the peasants in that heavy boat there, and compare them with those of our own people. Why, man, we may be a great nation, intelligent, and civilized, and all that; but when it comes to an appreciation of the beautiful we are poor bodies, indeed, by the side of the Turk, whom we in our mightiness are accustomed to consider a barbarian. I know what you are going to say,” he went on, as Horace was going to speak. “There is tyranny and oppression, and evil rule, and corruption, and other bad things in that beautiful city. I grant you all that, but that has nothing to do with my argument. He may be a heathen, he may be ignorant, he may be what we call uncivilized; but the Turk has a grand soul or he never would have imagined a dream of beauty like this.”

As the sun set half an hour after the anchor was dropped the officer sent with them by the pasha did not think it necessary to land until the following morning, as the offices would all be shut. At eight o’clock he was rowed ashore and did not return until late in the evening. Business was not conducted at a rapid rate in the offices of the Porte. The lieutenant interpreted to the prisoners that the letter of the governor of Tenedos had been laid before the grand vizier, who would deliver it with that of the pasha to the Sultan at his audience in the evening.

“Did he see the grand vizier himself?” Horace asked.

The answer was in the affirmative.

“Did he gather from him whether it was likely that the Sultan would regard the matter favourably?”

The two Turks spoke together for some time. “I am sorry to say,” the lieutenant replied when they had done, “that the vizier was of opinion that the Sultan would be immovable. He has sworn to spare none of those who have stirred up his subjects to rebellion, and who, without having any concern in the matter, have aided them against him. He regards them as pirates, and has resolved by severity to deter others from following their example. The vizier said that he would do his best, but that when the Sultan’s mind was once made up nothing could move him; and that having himself received the reports of the destruction of one of his war-ships, and the very heavy loss inflicted on the boats of the fleet at Chios, and having, moreover, received memorials from the merchants at Smyrna as to the damage inflicted on their commerce by what was called the white schooner, he felt that he would be deaf to any appeal for mercy to two of her officers.”

At eight o’clock next morning a boat with twelve soldiers and an officer came off to the brig. The officer, mounting on the deck, handed to the captain an order for the delivery to him of the two prisoners sent from Thessaly.

“Things look bad, I am afraid,” Horace said as they stepped into the boat. “I saw the officer exchange a word or two with the cavalry man who brought us here and the captain, and I am sure, by the expression of their faces, that the news was bad. I am sure, too, from the way they shook hands with us at parting.”

“Some of these men’s faces seem familiar to me,” the doctor said as they were being rowed towards a landing to the east of the palace gardens. “I can’t say that they were among the men we brought from Athens, but I have a strong idea that two or three of them were. Do you recognize them?”

“I can’t say that I do. You see they were only on board one day, and I thought more of the women and children than of the soldiers and sailors.”

“I am almost sure of them, Horace; yet it is curious, that if they are the men we saved they did not make some sign of recognition when we came down the ladder. Turkish discipline is not very strict. They did not seem to look up much. They were all sitting forward of the six oarsmen, and I noticed, that till we pushed off they seemed to be talking about something together, and were so intent on it that they did not look up until after we had pushed off. I did notice that the oarsmen looked a little surprised when the officer, as we pushed off, gave an order to the man steering, and they saw which way the boat’s head was turned.

“I don’t suppose they knew that we were prisoners, Horace, and were expecting to go back to the place they came from. I suppose the landing they are taking us to is the nearest one to the prison.”

There were no boats lying at the broad steps alongside which the boat drew up. Six of the soldiers took their places in front of them, the officer marched between them, and the other six soldiers followed behind. The road, which was a narrow one, ran between two very high walls, and rose steeply upward.

“Evidently this landing-place is not much used,” the doctor said. “I suppose it leads to some quiet quarter.”

A hundred yards from the landing-place the officer gave the word to halt, and then another order, upon which one of the men, who carried a bag, began to open it.

“Quick, gentlemen!” the officer said in Greek; “you must change here. Quick! there is not a moment to lose.”

Astonished at the order, the doctor and Horace obeyed it.

“I suppose,” the former muttered, “they don’t want it known they have got two European prisoners. I don’t see what else they can be up to.”

The change was quickly made. Two long baggy Turkish trousers were pulled over their own, their jackets were thrown into the bag, and they were enveloped in Turkish robes. Their caps were thrown beside their jackets, and turbans placed on their heads, while their shoes were pulled off and their feet thrust into Turkish slippers. The officer and two of the soldiers aided in the work, and in a couple of minutes the metamorphosis was complete.

“Allah be praised!” the officer exclaimed fervently; and the words were echoed by the soldiers. These for a moment, regardless of discipline, gathered round the prisoners. One after another seized their hands, and bending over them pressed them to their forehead; then the officer gave an order, and one or two at a time – the soldiers carried only their side-arms – left the group and hurried on ahead, until the officer remained alone with the astonished Englishmen.

“What does this all mean?” Horace asked the officer in Greek.

“It means that you are free, my friends,” he said, shaking each of them cordially by the hand; “at least, so far free. Now let us follow the others.”

Still, almost thinking they were dreaming, the doctor and Horace accompanied their companion up the narrow lane, and emerged into a quiet street behind a great mosque; skirting the wall of this, they entered a wider street.

“Be careful,” the officer said in Greek; “walk along carelessly, and seem to be conversing with me.”

Horace translated the remark to the doctor.

There were not a great many people about, but as they went along the number increased. They crossed a busy street, turned down a lane on the other side, and then walked for upwards of half an hour, turning frequently, and as far as Horace could guess, making a wide detour, and again approaching the busy part of the town. Presently the officer stopped near the corner of a lane in a quiet street, and began to talk in an animated tone about the size of the town and other matters, until he saw that the street was for a moment empty; then he turned sharply down the lane, which ran between the backs of two sets of houses, went for a hundred yards, and then stopped at a door in the wall; opened it with the key, hurried them in, and locked the door behind him.

“Allah be praised!” he again said; “you are safe thus far. Now come in, they are anxiously expecting us.”

He entered the house, which stood in a small inclosure, and led the way into a room. They were received at the door by a Turk, whom both recognized at once as Osman Bey, one of the principal Turks they had carried from Athens. He repeated the officer’s pious exclamation:

“Allah be praised for his mercies!” and then in Greek he said, “Truly I am rejoiced, my friends, that Allah has granted me an opportunity of showing that I am not ungrateful, and that as you saved me and mine from death, so have I been able to save you; and I am doubly glad in seeing, what I knew not before, that one of you is the son of the Englishman to whom principally we owed our escape.”

“We are grateful, indeed,” Horace said; “but at present we understand nothing. This officer has told us nothing whatever.”

“This officer is my son, and is only an officer for the occasion,” Osman Bey said. “But come into the next room; my wife and daughters are eagerly expecting you.”

Three ladies rose from a divan on which they were sitting when the bey entered the room. They were lightly veiled, but the bey said:

“Lay aside your veils. These are as my sons, and you can unveil as if they were members of the family.”

The ladies unveiled. Horace had not seen their faces before on board ship, for the women of the upper class had remained closely veiled. The mother was a stout, elderly woman, with a kindly face. Her daughters were girls of fourteen or fifteen, with dark hair, somewhat colourless faces, and lovely eyes. The bey’s wife expressed her pleasure at the arrival of the Englishmen. The girls shrank rather timidly behind her, embarrassed at being thus unveiled before strangers.

“Now sit down,” the bey said. “Zuleika, do you bring in coffee and sweetmeats yourself. I do not wish your attendant to enter while these gentlemen are here.”

“I have sent her down the town on a message,” the bey’s wife said, while the younger girl rose and left the room. “She is faithful, but girls will chatter. Mourad, we know, we can trust.”

The girl soon returned with a tray with coffee, cakes, and sweetmeats. Then the bey said:

“Now I will tell you all about this. Ahmed, the sooner you get rid of that uniform the better. Give it to Mourad at once, and let him take it back to its owner, he may want it.”

The young man left the room.

“Now this is how it happened,” the bey began. “Three days ago came the messenger from Tenedos. Did you know of his being sent hither?”

“Yes; his wife told us he was leaving – a soldier who had lost his arm.”

“That was the man. He went to Hassan Bimbashi, who brought him first to Fazli Bey, and then to me. We had a consultation. It was clear to us all that it would be intolerable that men who had behaved with such humanity to us should be put to death, if we could possibly save them. It took us a long time to arrange the matter, and we three sat in the next room there debating the matter all night. We took Ahmed into our council at once, for he was, of course, as anxious to aid the men who had saved his parents and sisters from massacre as we were. Naturally, we at first thought of getting you out of prison by bribing the guards; but though this would have been comparatively easy, it was doubtful whether there would be time to carry it out. There are several prisons here, and there was no saying which you might be sent to, or who would be the men in charge of you; therefore, time would be needed after you arrived here, and we saw that it was probable that no time would be given us. The Sultan might, of course, view your case favourably; but, on the other hand, if he ordered you to execution, there would be no delay.

“When a thing has to be done, especially when foreigners are in the case, it is better to do it at once; otherwise, the Porte would be pestered by the foreign representatives. It was agreed, therefore, that if you were to be rescued, it must be done between the time of your arrival and your being put in prison. We divided the work into four parts. Fazli, who has most interest at the Porte, was to try all in his power to influence the ministers, and to get the grand vizier to represent the matter favourably to the Sultan. He was to give us the earliest news of whatever decision might be arrived at, and above all, he was to get some minor official there to follow the officer to whom the order for bringing you ashore should be given.

“The soldier who had brought the message from Tenedos was to find out a dozen of those who had been rescued with us, and to enlist them in the business. The bimbashi undertook the work of seizing the officer bearing the order. He could not very well take the command of the soldiers. Their faces would not be noticed by the sailors in the dockyard boat, nor by those on board the ship; but Hassan’s would be fully seen by both. My son, therefore, volunteered to undertake this part of the affair, dressed in Hassan’s uniform. He was to meet the twelve men at some spot agreed upon, near the dockyard gate; to march in with them, produce the order, and go out in one of the dockyard boats to the vessel; bring you ashore, and lead you here. My part of the business was to conceal you as long as necessary, and to arrange for your escape from Constantinople. Thus, you see, the risk was slight in each case. Fazli would be suspected, because he had urged your case at the Porte; but nothing could be proved against him. His servants might be examined, and his house searched. He would be able to prove that he spent the evening with several of his friends, to whom he gave an entertainment; and this morning, at the time the boat came for you, he was to be at the ministry again, trying what could be done on your behalf.