Timar's Two Worlds
by Mór Jókai · English · Gutenberg #31409 · 876,873 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Timar's Two Worlds
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Timar's Two Worlds
Author: Mór Jókai
Translator: Mrs. Hegan Kennard
Release date: February 26, 2010 [eBook #31409]
Most recently updated: January 6, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31409
Credits: Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TIMAR'S TWO WORLDS ***
Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: M. J. IVERS & CO. PRICE 25 CENTS.
AMERICAN SERIES No. 343.
TIMAR'S TWO WORLDS By MAURUS JOKAI.
Entered at Post-Office, New York, as Second-Class Matter. Issued
Monthly--November 17th, 1894--Subscription, $3.00 per Year.]
_AMERICAN SERIES._
TIMAR'S TWO WORLDS.
BY MAURUS JOKAI.
NEW YORK:
M. J. IVERS & CO., PUBLISHERS,
379 PEARL STREET.
CONTENTS.
_BOOK FIRST.--THE "ST. BARBARA."_
I.--THE IRON GATE 5
II.--THE WHITE CAT 14
III.--A DANGEROUS LEAP WITH A MAMMOTH 17
IV.--A STRICT SEARCH 22
V.--THE OWNERLESS ISLAND 27
VI.--ALMIRA AND NARCISSA 32
VII.--THE VOICES OF THE NIGHT 40
VIII.--THE HISTORY OF THE ISLANDERS 45
IX.--ALI TSCHORBADSCHI 53
X.--THE LIVING STATUE 56
XI.--A BURIAL AT SEA 58
XII.--AN EXCELLENT JOKE 61
XIII.--THE FATE OF THE "ST. BARBARA" 63
XIV.--THE GUARDIAN 67
_BOOK SECOND.--TIMÉA._
I.--GOOD ADVICE 75
II.--THE RED CRESCENT 78
III.--THE GOLD MINE 82
IV.--MICHAEL TIMAR, BARON VON LEVETINCZY 88
V.--A GIRL'S HEART 93
VI.--ANOTHER JEST 102
VII.--THE WEDDING-DRESS 105
VIII.--TIMÉA 114
_BOOK THIRD.--THE OWNERLESS ISLAND._
I.--THE MARRIAGE OF THE MARBLE STATUE 123
II.--THE GUARDIAN DEVIL 127
III.--SPRING MEADOWS 134
IV.--A SPIDER AMONG THE ROSES 144
V.--OUT OF THE WORLD 153
VI.--THE TROPIC OF CAPRICORN 157
VII.--SWEET HOME 167
_BOOK FOURTH.--NOÉMI._
I.--A NEW GUEST 176
II.--THE WOOD-CARVER 185
III.--MELANCHOLY 197
IV.--THERESE 207
_BOOK FIFTH.--ATHALIE._
I.--THE BROKEN SWORD 213
II.--THE FIRST LOSS 223
III.--THE ICE 227
IV.--THE PHANTOM 235
V.--WHAT HAS THE MOON TO TELL? 247
VI.--WHO COMES? 250
VII.--THE CORPSE 252
VIII.--DODI'S LETTER 254
IX.--"YOU STUPID CREATURE!" 257
X.--ATHALIE 262
XI.--THE LAST STAB 269
XII.--THE PENITENT IN "MARIA-NOSTRA" 273
XIII.--NOBODY 273
TIMAR'S TWO WORLDS
_BOOK FIRST.--THE "ST. BARBARA."_
CHAPTER I.
THE IRON GATE.
A mountain-chain, pierced through from base to summit--a gorge four
miles in length, walled in by lofty precipices; between their dizzy
heights the giant stream of the Old World, the Danube.
Did the pressure of this mass of water force a passage for itself, or
was the rock riven by subterranean fire? Did Neptune or Vulcan, or both
together, execute this supernatural work, which the iron-clad hand of
man scarce can emulate in these days of competition with divine
achievements?
Of the rule of the one deity traces are visible on the heights of Fruska
Gora in the fossil sea-shells strewn around, and in Veterani's cave with
its petrified relics of saurian monsters of the deep; of the other god,
the basalt of Piatra Detonata bears witness. While the man of the iron
hand is revealed by long galleries hewn in the rock, a vaulted road, the
ruined piers of an immense bridge, the tablets sculptured in bas-relief
on the face of the cliff, and by a channel two hundred feet wide,
hollowed in the bed of the river, through which the largest ships may
pass.
The Iron Gate has a history of two thousand years. Four nations--Romans,
Turks, Roumanians and Hungarians, have each in turn given it a different
name.
We seem to approach a temple built by giants, with rocky pillars,
towering columns, and wonderful colossi on its lofty frieze, stretching
out in a perspective of four miles, and, as it winds, discovering new
domes with other groups of natural masonry, and other wondrous forms.
One wall is smooth as polished granite, red and white veins zigzagging
across it like mysterious characters in the handwriting of God. In
another place the whole face is rusty brown, as if of solid iron. Here
and there the oblique strata suggest the daring architecture of the
Titans. At the next turn we are met by the portal of a Gothic cathedral,
with its pointed gables, its clustered basaltic columns. Out of the
dingy wall shines now and again a golden speck like a glimpse of the Ark
of the Covenant--there sulphur blooms, the ore-flower. But living
blossoms also deck the crags. From the crevices of the cornice hang
green festoons. These are great foliage-trees and pines, whose dark
masses are interspersed with frost-flecked garlands of red and gold.
Now and then the mouth of some valley makes a break in the endless,
dizzy precipice, and allows a peep into a hidden paradise untrodden by
man.
Here between two cliffs lies a deep shadow, and into this twilight
shines like a fairy world the picture of a sunny vale, with a forest of
wild vines, whose small red clusters lend color to the trees, and whose
bright leaves weave a carpet below. No human dwelling is visible; a
clear stream winds along, from which deer drink fearlessly; then the
brook throws its silver ribbon over the edge of the cliff. Thousands
pass by the valley, and each one asks himself who lives there.
Then follows another temple more huge and awful than the first; the
towering walls drawing closer by three hundred yards and soaring three
thousand feet into the sky.
That projecting needle at the top is the "Gropa lui Petro," the grave of
St. Peter; the two gigantic forms on either side are his apostolic
companions; yonder monster opposite is the "Babile," and the one which
closes the vista is the "Golumbaczka Mali" or Dove-rock; while the gray
pinnacle which towers above is the high Robbers' Peak, "Rasbojnik
Beliki."
Between these walls flows the Danube in its rocky bed. The mighty
mother-stream, accustomed far above on the Hungarian plains to flow with
majestic quiet in a bed three miles wide, to caress the overhanging
willows, to look on blooming meadows and play with chattering mills, is
here confined in a pass only a hundred and fifty fathoms in width.
With what rage it rushes through! He who traveled with it before
recognizes it no longer; the grisly giant is rejuvenated into heroic
youth. Its waves leap along the stony bed, from which sometimes a great
bowlder projects like a witch's altar, the huge "Babagay," the crowned
"Kassan." On this it bursts with majestic fury, roaring round it with
swirls which hollow deep abysses in the bottom; thence it rushes,
hissing and seething, across the slabs of rock which stretch obliquely
from side to side of the channel. In many places it has already mastered
the obstacles which barred its way, and flows foaming through the open
breach. There, it has burrowed beneath the wall of the ravine, and by
its continuous current has washed out a channel below the overhanging
rock. Here, it has carved islands out of the stubborn granite, new
creations, to be found on no chart, overgrown with wild bushes. They
belong to no state--neither Hungary, Turkey, nor Servia; they are
ownerless, nameless, subject to no tribute, outside the world. And there
again it has carried away an island, with all its shrubs, trees, huts,
and wiped it from the map.
The rock and islets divide the stream, which between Ogradina and
Plesvissovicza has a speed of ten miles an hour, into many arms; and the
sailor has need to study these intricate and narrow passages, for there
is but one deep-water channel through the rocky bed--in-shore none but
the smallest boats can float.
Among the small islands between the lesser branches of the Danube,
singular constructions of human hands are mingled with the grand works
of nature; double rows of palisades made of strong trunks of trees,
which, joined in the form of a V, present their open side down stream.
These are the sturgeon-traps. The marine visitors swim up stream into
the snare, and on and on into the ever-narrowing trap--for it is not
their custom to turn back--until they find themselves in the
death-chamber from which there is no release.
The voices of this sublime region are superhuman. A perpetual universal
tumult; so monotonous, so nearly akin to silence and yet so distinct--as
if it uttered the name of God. How the great river dances over the
granite shores, how it scourges the rocky walls, bounds against the
island altars, dives rattling into the whirlpool, pervades the cataract
with harmony!
The echo from the mighty cliffs raises this eternal voice of the waters
into an unearthly melody, like organ notes and thunder dying away. Man
is silent, as if afraid to hear his own language amidst this song of the
Titans: sailors communicate by signs, and the fishermen's superstition
forbids talking here under a penalty. The consciousness of danger impels
all to silent prayer.
At any time the passage between these dark precipices, towering on
either hand, might give the sensation of being ferried along under the
walls of one's own tomb; but what must it be when that supreme terror of
the sailor, the Bora, sweeps down! A continuous and ever-increasing
gale, which at certain seasons makes the Iron Gate impassable.
If there were only one cliff it would be a protection from the wind; but
the draught of air confined between the two is as capricious as the wind
in the streets of a town; at each corner it takes a new departure, now
it stops suddenly, then bursts out of a corner as from an ambush, seizes
the ship, carries away the steering-gear, throws the whole towing-beam
into the water, then shifts again, and drives the wooden vessel before
it as though it were going down-stream--the water throwing up clouds of
spray as blinding and fine as the sand of the desert in a simoom.
At such times the sighing church-music of the gale swells to the thunder
of the Last Judgment, in which is mingled the death-cry of departing
spirits.
At the time to which this history refers there were no steamers on the
Danube. Between Galatz and the junction with the Main, over nine
thousand horses were employed in towing ships up-stream; on the Turkish
Danube sails were also used, but not on the Hungarian branch. Besides
these a whole fleet of smugglers' boats traded between the two
countries, propelled only by strong arms. Salt-smuggling was in full
swing. On the Turkish side the same salt was sold for five gulden, which
cost six and a half on the Hungarian shore. It was brought by contraband
back from Turkey to Hungary, and sold here for five and a half gulden.
So every one profited by this comfortable arrangement.
The only one not satisfied was the government, which for its own
protection established custom-houses along the frontier, in which the
male population of the neighboring villages had to keep guard armed
with guns. Each village supplied watchmen, and each village had its own
smugglers. While the young men of the place were on guard, the old ones
carried the salt, and so both trades were kept in the family. But the
government had another important object in its strict watch on the
frontier--security from the plague.
The terrible Eastern plague!
In these days we know nothing of it, for it is a hundred and fifty years
since a vain widow in Semlin brought an infected shawl, and fell dead as
she went to church in it. But we have to thank the regulations which
shut the door against it for this immunity. For each contact with a new
people has endowed us with a new disease. From China we received scarlet
fever, from the Saracens small-pox, from Russia influenza, from South
America yellow fever, and from the Hindoos cholera. But the plague comes
from Turkey.
Therefore, along the whole bank, the opposite neighbors can only
communicate with each other on condition of observing strict preventive
measures, which must add considerable interest to their daily life.
If the plague breaks out in Brussa, everything living or dead is
officially declared infected: whoever has been in contact with it comes
under the same ban, and must be in quarantine for ten or twenty days. If
the cable of a left-bank ship touches the cable of a right-bank vessel,
the whole crew of the former is unclean, and she must lie for ten days
in the middle of the stream; for the plague might pass along the ropes
from one to the other, and be communicated to the whole crew.
And all this is carefully watched. On each ship sits an official called
a "purifier." A terrible person, whose duty it is to keep an eye on
every one, what he handles, what touches him; and if a passenger has
been in contact with any person, or any material of hair, wool, or hemp
on the Turkish side (for these substances carry infection), even with
the hem of his garment, the health-officer must declare him under
suspicion, and on arrival at Orsova must drag him from the arms of his
family and deliver him over to quarantine.
Woe to the purifier if he should conceal a case! For the slightest
neglect, fifteen years' imprisonment is the penalty.
It would appear, however, that smugglers are not liable to the plague,
for they have no purifier on board, and if the disease should break out
a hundred times over in Brussa, they would still ply day and night
between the two banks. We must remember, however, that St. Procopius is
their patron. Only the Bora disturbs their retail trade; for the swift
current through the Iron Gate drives the rowing-boats toward the
southern shore. Of course smuggling is done by tow-boats too, but that
belongs to wholesale traffic, costs more than friendly business, and so
is not for poor people: in them not only salt, but also tobacco and
coffee are smuggled across the frontier.
The Bora has swept the Danube clear of vessels, and has thereby so
raised public morality and obedience to law, that for the last few days
there has been no occasion for forgiveness of sins. Every vessel has
hastened into harbor, or cast anchor in mid-stream, and the watchmen can
sleep in peace as long as this wind makes the joints of their wooden
huts creak. No ship can travel now, and yet the corporal of the Ogradina
watch-house has a fancy that ever since day-break, amidst the blustering
wind and roaring waters, he can detect the peculiar signal tones which
the speaking-trumpet sends for many miles, and which are not drowned
even by the voice of the thunder; the haunting, mournful blasts which
issue from the long wooden tube.
Is some vessel declaring its approach, so that no other ship may meet it
in such weather in the narrow channel of the Iron Gate? Or is it in
danger and calling for help?
This ship approaches.
It is an oaken vessel of ten to twelve thousand measures burden: deeply
laden it would appear, for the waves wash over the bulwarks on each
side.
The massive hull is painted black, with a white bow, which ends in a
long upstanding spiral beak plated with shining tin. The upper deck is
shaped like a roof, with narrow steps up to it, and a flat bridge
leading from one side to the other. The forward part of the raised deck
ends in a double cabin, containing two rooms, with doors to right and
left. The third wall of the cabin shows two small windows with green
painted shutters, and in the space between them the maidenly form of the
martyred St. Barbara is painted on a gold ground, with a pink dress,
light-blue mantle, red head-dress, and a white lily in her hand.
In the small space between the cabins and the thick coils of rope on the
prow of the ship, stands a long green wooden trough filled with earth,
in which lovely blooming carnations and stocks are planted. A three-foot
iron railing shuts in the little garden, and on its spikes hang garlands
of wild flowers. In the middle burns a lamp in a red glass globe, near
to which is a bundle of dried rosemary and consecrated willow-catkins.
On the forepart of the vessel stands the mast, to whose center rings the
tow-rope is attached; a three-inch cable, by which thirty-two horses on
the bank are trying to move the heavy ship up-stream. At other times
sixteen horses would have sufficed here, and on the upper reaches twelve
would be enough, but in this part and against such a wind even the
thirty-two find it hard work. The horn signals are for the leader of the
team-drivers; the human voice would be powerless here: even if the call
reached the shore, no one could understand it amidst the confused
echoes.
But the language of the horn is intelligible even to horses; from its
now drawling, now abrupt, warning, or encouraging tones, man and beast
understand when to hasten or slacken their speed, or when to stop
altogether.
For in this narrow ravine the lot of the vessel is very uncertain; it
has to struggle with gusts of furious wind, variable currents, its own
weight, and the rocks and whirlpool which must be avoided. Its fate lies
in the hands of two men. One is the pilot who steers; the other is the
captain, who amidst the roar of the elements signals his orders to the
towing-team by blasts on the horn. If the signal is misunderstood the
ship either runs on to a rock, glides into the rapids, goes to pieces
on the southern shore, or strands on some newly formed sand-bank, and
sinks with every soul on board.
The steersman is a six-foot weather-beaten sailor with a very red face,
whose color on both cheeks comes from a network of veins with which the
white of the eye is also transfused. He is always hoarse, and his voice
knows only two variations, either a loud bellow or a low growl. Probably
this is what obliges him to take double care of his throat. Prevention
by means of a red comforter tightly wound round his neck, and cure by
means of a brandy-flask occupying a permanent position in his coat
pocket.
The captain is a man of about thirty, with fair hair, dreamy blue eyes,
and a long mustache, the rest of his face clean shaven. He is of middle
height, and gives an idea of delicacy; with this impression his voice
accords, for when he speaks softly it is like a woman's.
The steersman is called Johann Fabula; the name of the captain is
Michael Timar.
The official "purifier" sits on the edge of the rudder bench; he has
drawn a hood over his head, so that only his nose and mustache appear:
both are red. History has not recorded his name. At present he is
chewing tobacco.
One of the ship's boats, manned by six rowers, has taken out a line from
the bow, and the united efforts of the oarsmen materially assist the
towing of the vessel.
At the door of the double cabin sits a man of fifty, smoking a Turkish
chibouque. His features are Oriental, with more of the Turkish than the
Greek type; his dress, with the striped kaftan and red fez, is like that
of a Servian or Greek. It will not escape an attentive observer that the
shaven part of his face is light in contrast to the rest, which is the
case with a person who has lately removed a thick beard. This is
Euthemio Trikaliss, under which name he appears in the way-book. He is
the owner of the cargo, but the ship itself belongs to a merchant of
Komorn called Athanasius Brazovics.
Out of one of the cabin windows looks the face of a young girl, and so
becomes a neighbor of St. Barbara. One might fancy it was another sacred
picture. The face is not pale but white--the inherent whiteness of
marble or natural crystal. As an Abyssinian is born black, and a Malay
yellow, so is this girl born white. No other tint disturbs the delicate
snow; on this face neither the breath of the wind nor the eye of man
calls up a blush. She is certainly only a child, hardly more than
thirteen; but her figure is tall and slender, her face calm as if hewn
out of alabaster, with severely antique lines, as if her mother had
looked always at the Venus of Milo. Her thick black hair has a metallic
gleam like the plumage of the black swan; but her eyes are dark-blue.
The long delicate eyebrows almost meet over the brow, which gives her
face a curious charm; it is as if these arching brows formed a black
aureole round the brow of a saint.
The girl's name is Timéa.
These are the passengers of the "St. Barbara."
When the captain lays his speaking-trumpet aside, and has tried with the
lead what water the ship has under her, he has time to chat with the
girl as he leans against the iron railing round the picture.
Timéa understands only modern Greek, which the captain can speak
fluently. He points out to her the beauties of the scenery, its grim,
cruel beauties: the white face, the dark-blue eyes, remain unchanged,
and yet the girl listens with fixed attention.
But it seems to the captain as if these eyes gave their thoughts not so
much to him as to the stocks which grow at St. Barbara's feet. He breaks
off one and gives it to the child, that she may listen to what the
flowers tell.
The steersman sees this, away there by the tiller, and it displeases
him. "You would do better," he growls in a voice like the rasping of a
file, "instead of plucking the saint's flowers for that child, to burn a
holy willow-wand at the lamp, for if the Lord drives us on to these
stone monsters, even His own Son won't save us. Help, Jesu!"
This aspiration would have been uttered by Johann Fabula, even if he
were alone; but as the purifier sat close by, there followed this
dialogue:
"Why must the gentry pass the Iron Gate in such a storm?"
"Why?" answered Johann Fabula, who did not forget his laudable habit of
aiding the collection of his thoughts by a gulp out of the wicker
brandy-flask. "Why? For no other reason but being in a hurry. Ten
thousand measures of wheat are in our hold. In the Banat the crops
failed; in Wallachia there was a good harvest. This is Michaelmas; if we
don't make haste, November will be upon us, and we shall be frozen in."
"And why do you think the Danube will freeze in November?"
"I don't think--I know. The Komorn calendar says so. Look in my berth,
it hangs by my bed."
The purifier buried his nose in his hood, and spat his tobacco juice
into the Danube.
"Don't spit into the water in such weather as this--the Danube won't
bear it. But what the Komorn calendar says is as true as Gospel. Ten
years ago it prophesied that frost would set in in November; so I
started at once to get home with my ship--then too I was in the 'St.
Barbara'--the others laughed at me. But on the 23d of November cold set
in, and half the vessels were frozen in, some at Apathin, and others at
Foldvar. Then it was my turn to laugh. Help, Jesu! Hard over,
he--e--e--!!"
The wind was now dead ahead. Thick drops of sweat ran down the
steersman's cheeks while he struggled to get the tiller over, but he
asked for no help. Then he rewarded himself with a pull at his bottle,
after which his eyes looked redder than ever.
"Now if the Lord will only help us to pass that stone pier," groaned he
in the midst of his exertions. "Pull away, you fellows there! If only we
can get by this point!"
"There's another beyond."
"Yes, and then a third, and a thirteenth, and we must keep our
mass-money ready in our mouths, for we are walking over our open coffins
all the time."
"Hark ye, my good friend," said the purifier, taking his plug out of
his mouth, "I fancy your ship carries something besides wheat."
Master Fabula looked askance at the purifier under his hood, and
shrugged his shoulders. "What's that to me? If there's contraband on the
ship, at any rate we sha'n't stop in quarantine, and we shall get on
pretty quick."
"How so?"
The steersman made a circle with his thumb behind his back, on which the
health-officer burst out laughing. Could he possibly have understood
this pantomime?
"Now, look you," said Johann Fabula, "since I was here last, the course
of the river has altered; if I don't let her go a bit free we shall get
into the new eddy which has formed under the 'Lovers' Rock.' Do you see
that devilish monster which keeps swimming close to us? That's an old
sturgeon--he must be at least five hundred-weight. If this beast keeps
up with us, he'll bring us ill-luck. Help, Lord! If only he would come
near enough for me to get the grappling-iron into him! The skipper is
always sneaking up to the Greek girl instead of blowing his horn to the
riders. She brings us misfortune--since she has been on board, we've had
nothing but north wind; there's something wrong about her--she's as
white as a ghost, and her eyebrows grow together like a witch's. Herr
Timar, blow to the teamsmen, ho--ho--ho!"
But Timar did not touch the horn, and went on telling legends of the
rocks and water-falls to the white maiden.
Beginning from the Iron Gate up to Clissera, each valley, each cave on
both banks, every cliff, island, and every eddy in the stream has its
history: a fairy tale, a legend, or an adventure with brigands, of which
books, or sculptured inscriptions, or national songs, or fisherfolks'
tradition tell the story. It is a library in stone, the names of the
rocks are the lettered back of the volumes, and he who knows how to open
them may read a romance therein.
Michael Timar had long been at home in this library. With the vessel
committed to his charge he had often made the passage of the Iron Gate,
and every stone and island was familiar to him.
Possibly he had another object with his legends and anecdotes besides
the satisfaction of the girl's curiosity. When a highly strung creature
has to pass through a great danger, which makes even a strong man's
heart quake, then those who know the danger try to turn the attention of
the ignorant person into the kingdom of marvels. Was it perhaps thus?
Timéa listened to the story of the hero Mirko with his beloved, the
faithful Milieva; how they fled to the peaks of the Linbigaja Rock out
in the Danube; how there he alone defended the precipitous approach to
his refuge, against all the soldiers of his pursuer Hassan; how they
lived on the kids brought by the eagles to their nest on the cliff,
cared not for the roar of the breakers round the base of their island,
and felt no fear of the white surges thrown up by the compressed force
of the narrowed current. Mariners call these woolly wave-crests the
"Lovers' Goats."
"It would be better to look ahead than astern," growled the steersman,
and then exerted his voice in a loud call, "Haha! ho! skipper, what's
that coming down on us?"
The captain looked round, and saw the object pointed out by the pilot.
The ship was now entering the Tatalia Pass, where the Danube is only two
hundred fathoms wide, and has a rapid incline. It looks like a mountain
torrent, only that this torrent is the Danube. And besides, the stream
is here divided in two by a mass of rock whose top is covered with
bushes. The water forks in two arms on the western side, of which one
shoots under the steep precipice of the Servian bank, while the other
discharges through an artificial channel a hundred yards wide, by which
the large vessels pass up and down. In this part it is far from
desirable that two ships should meet, for there is barely room for them
to pass in safety. To the northward lie hidden rocks where a ship might
strike, and to the southward is the great whirlpool formed by the
junction of the two branches; if this should seize a vessel, no human
power could save her.
So that the danger which the steersman had announced by his question was
a very real one.
Two ships meeting in the Tatalia Pass with the river so high and under
such a pressure of wind!
Michael Timar asked for his telescope, which he had lent to Timéa to
look at the place where Mirko had defended the beautiful Milieva.
At the western curve of the river a dark mass was visible in the stream.
Michael looked through his glass, and then called to the steersman, "A
mill!"
"Holy Father! then we are lost."
A water-mill was driving down on them; probably the storm had loosened
its chains from the bank. Obviously it was without pilot or oarsman, who
must have fled to the shore; so it drifted blindly on, sweeping away the
mills it met on its way, and sinking any cargo-boats which could not get
out of its road.
How could they escape between Scylla and Charybdis?
Timar said not a word of this to Timéa, but gave her back the glass, and
told her where to look for the eagles' nest whose ancestors had fed the
lovers. Then he threw off his coat hastily, sprung into the barge where
the rowers were, and made five of them get into the small boat with him;
they were to bring the light anchor and thin cable with them, and cast
off.
Trikaliss and Timéa did not understand his orders, as he spoke
Hungarian, which neither of them knew.
The captain shouted to the steersman, "Keep her steady; go ahead!" In a
few moments Trikaliss also could see what was the danger. The drifting
mill came floating swiftly down the brawling stream, and one could see
with the naked eye the clattering paddle-wheel, whose width occupied the
whole fairway of the channel. If it touched the laden ship both must go
down.
The boat with the six men still struggled up against the current. Four
of them rowed, one steered, and Timar stood in the bow with folded arms.
What was their insane design? What could they do in a little boat
against a great mill? What are human mind and muscles against stream and
storm?
If each were a Samson, the laws of hydrostatics would set at naught
their strength. The shock with which they touch the mill will recoil on
the skiff; if they grapple it they will be dragged away by it. It is as
if a spider would catch a cockchafer in its web.
The boat, however, did not keep in the center, but tried to reach the
southern point of the island.
So high were the waves that the five men disappeared again and again in
the hollows between, then the next moment they danced on the foamy
crest, tossed hither and thither by the willful torrent, seething under
them like boiling water.
CHAPTER II.
THE WHITE CAT.
The oarsmen consulted in the boat what was to be done.
One advised cutting through the side of the mill below the water-line
with an ax, so as to sink it: but that would do no good; the current
would drive the wreck down on to the ship.
A second thought they ought to grapple the mill with hooks, and give it
a list away, so as to direct it toward the whirlpool: but this counsel
was also rejected, for the eddies would drag the boat down too.
Timar ordered the man at the tiller to keep straight for the point of
the island where the Lovers' Rock lies.
When they approached the rapids he lifted the heavy anchor and swung it
into the water without shaking the boat, which showed what muscular
strength the delicate frame contained. The anchor took out a long coil
of rope with it, for the water is deep there. Then Timar made them row
as quickly as possible toward the approaching mill. Now they guessed his
design--he meant to anchor the mill. Bad idea, said the sailors; the
great mass will lie across the fairway, and stop the ship; besides, the
cable is so long and slight that the heavy fabric will part it easily.
When Euthemio Trikaliss saw from the vessel Timar's intention, he
dropped his chibouque in a panic, ran along the deck and cried to the
steersman to cut the tow-rope, and let the ship drift down-stream.
The pilot did not understand Greek, but guessed from the old man's
gestures what he wanted.
With perfect calmness he answered as he leaned against the rudder,
"There's nothing to grumble at; Timar knows what to do." With the
courage of despair Trikaliss drew his dagger out of his girdle in order
to cut the rope himself; but the steersman pointed toward the stern, and
what Trikaliss saw there altered his mind.
From the Lower Danube came a vessel toward them: an accustomed eye can
distinguish it from afar. It has a mast whose sails are furled, a high
poop, and twenty-four rowers.
It is a Turkish brigantine.
As soon as he caught sight of it, Trikaliss put his dagger back in his
sash; if he had turned purple at what he saw ahead, now he was livid.
He hastened to Timéa, who was looking through the glass at the peaks of
Perigrada. "Give me the telescope!" he exclaimed in a hoarse voice.
"Oh, how pretty that is!" said Timéa, as she gave up the glass.
"What?"
"On the cliffs there are little marmots playing together like monkeys."
Euthemio directed the telescope toward the approaching vessel, and his
brows contracted; his face was pale as death.
Timéa took the glass from his hand and looked again for the marmots on
the rocks. Euthemio kept his arm round her waist.
"How they jump and dance and chase each other; how amusing!" and Timéa
little knew how near she was to being lifted by the arm that held her,
and plunged over the bulwarks into the foaming flood.
But what Euthemio saw on the other side brought back into his face the
color it had lost.
When Timar arrived within a cast of the mill, he took a coil of the
anchor-rope in his right hand; a hook was fastened to its end. The
rudderless mass came quickly nearer, like some drifting antediluvian
monster--blind chance guided it; its paddle-wheel turned swiftly with
the motion of the water, and under the empty out-shoot the mill-stone
revolved over the flour-bin as if it was working hard.
In this fabric devoted to certain destruction, there was no living thing
except a white cat, which sat on the red-painted shingle roof and mewed
piteously.
When he got close to the mill, Timar swung the rope and hook suddenly
round his head, and aimed it at the paddle-wheel.
As soon as the grappling-iron had caught one of the floats, the wheel,
driven by water-power, began to wind up the rope gently, and so give the
mill a gradual turn toward the Perigrada Island; completing by its own
machinery the suicidal work of casting itself on the rocks.
"Didn't I say Timar knew what he was about?" growled Johann Fabula;
while Euthemio in joyful excitement exclaimed, "Bravo! my son," and
pressed Timéa's hand so hard that she was frightened and even forgot the
marmots.
"There, look!"
And now Timéa also noticed the mill. She required no telescope, for it
and the ship were so near together that in the narrow channel they were
only separated by about sixty feet.
Just enough to let the diabolical machine get safely past.
Timéa thought neither of the danger nor of the deliverance, only of the
forsaken cat.
When the poor animal saw the floating house and its inhabitants so near
to it, it leaped up and began running up and down the roof-ridge, and to
measure with its eye the distance between the mill and the ship, whether
it dared jump.
"Oh, the poor little cat!" cried Timéa, anxiously, "if we could only get
near enough for it to come over to us."
But from this misfortune the ship was preserved by its patron saint, and
by the anchor-rope, which, wound up by the paddle-wheel, got shorter
and shorter, and drew the wreck nearer the island and further from the
vessel.
"Oh, the poor pretty white cat!"
"Don't be afraid," Euthemio tried to console her; "when it passes the
rock the cat will spring ashore, and be very happy living with the
marmots."
Only unluckily the cat, keeping on the hither side of the roof, could
not see the island.
When the "St. Barbara" had got safely past the enchanted mill, Timéa
waved her handkerchief to the cat, and called out first in Greek, and
then in the universal cat's language, "Quick, look, jump off,
puss-s-s-s;" but the animal, frantic with terror, paid no heed.
At the very moment when the stern of the ship had passed the mill, the
latter was suddenly caught by the current, swung round so that the
grappled wheel broke, and the liberated mass shot like an arrow down the
stream. The white cat sprung up to the ridge.
"Ah!"
But the mill rushed on its fate.
Below the island is the great whirlpool.
It is one of the most remarkable eddies ever formed by the river
giants--on every map it is marked by two arrows meeting in a corner. Woe
to the boat which is swept in the direction of either arrow! Round the
great funnel the water boils and rages as in a seething caldron, and in
the middle of the circle yawns the bare abyss below. This whirlpool has
worn a hole in the rock a hundred and twenty feet deep, and what it
takes with it into this tomb, no one ever sees again: if it should be a
man, he had better look out for the resurrection. And into this place
the current carried the mill. Before it reached there it sprung a leak
and got a list over; the axle of the wheel stood straight on end; the
white cat ran along to the highest point and stood there humping its
back; the eddy caught the wooden fabric, carried it round in wide
circles four or five times, turning on its own axis, creaking and
groaning, and then it disappeared under the water. With it the white
cat.
Timéa shuddered and hid her face in her shawl.
But the "St. Barbara" was saved.
Euthemio pressed the hands of the returning oarsmen--Timar he embraced.
Timar might have expected that Timéa would say a friendly word; but she
only asked, pointing to the gulf with a disturbed face, "What is become
of the mill?"
"Chips and splinters!"
"And the poor cat?" The girl's lips trembled, and tears stood in her
eyes.
"It's all up with her."
"But the mill and the cat belonged to some poor man?" said Timéa.
"Yes; but we had to save our ship and our lives, or else we should have
been wrecked, and the whirlpool would have drawn us into the abyss, and
only thrown up our bones on the shore."
Timéa looked at the man who said this, through the prism of tear-filled
eyes.
It was a strange world into which she gazed through these tears. That
it should be permissible to destroy a poor man's mill in order to save
one's own ship, that you should drown a cat so as not to get into the
water yourself!--she could not understand it. From this moment she
listened no more to his fairy stories, but avoided him as much as
possible.
CHAPTER III.
A DANGEROUS LEAP WITH A MAMMOTH.
Indeed Timar had but little time for story-telling; for he had hardly
got his breath after the exertions of his perilous achievement, before
Euthemio gave him the glass and pointed where he was to look.
"Gunboat--twenty-four oars--brigantine from Salonica."
Timar did not put down the telescope till the other vessel was hidden
from him behind the point of the Perigrada Island.
Then suddenly he let it fall, and, putting the horn to his lips, blew
first three, then six sharp blasts, at which the drivers whipped up
their horses.
The rocky island of Perigrada is surrounded by two branches of the
Danube. The one on the Servian side is that by which cargo-ships pass
up; it is safer and cheaper, for half the number of horses suffice. By
the Roumanian shore there is also a narrow channel, with just room for
one vessel, but here you must use oxen, of which often a hundred and
twenty are harnessed. The other arm of the river is again narrowed by
the little Reskival Island, lying across the stream. (Now this island
has been blown up in part, but at the time of our story the whole still
existed.) Through the narrows between the two islands the river shoots
like an arrow; but above, it lies between its rocky walls like a great
lake. Only this lake has no smooth surface, for it is always in motion,
and never freezes in the very hardest winter. Its bottom is thickly sown
with rocks; some are under water, while other uncouth monsters project
many feet above it.
This is the most dangerous part of the whole voyage. To this day,
experienced seamen, English, Turks, Italians, at home on all seas,
adventure themselves with much anxiety in this rock-strewn channel. Here
the majority of shipwrecks occur. Here in the Crimean War the splendid
Turkish man-of-war "Silistria" was lost. She had been ordered to
Belgrade, and might have given a new turn to affairs if she had not
received a thrust in the ribs from one of the Reskival rocks, so
enthusiastic in their peace policy that they obliged her to stay where
she was.
Yet this lake, with its dangerous bottom, has a passage through it which
but few ships know, and still fewer care to use.
This short cut enables mariners to cross from the channel on the Servian
side to the Roumanian shore. The latter channel is divided by a ledge of
rock from the Upper Danube, and you can only enter it at Szvinicza, and
come out at Szkela-Gladova.
This is the dangerous leap with a floating mammoth.
The captain blows first three, and then six blasts on his horn; the
drivers know at once what it means, the leader of the team has
dismounted--with good reason too--and they all begin with cries and
blows to hurry on the horses. The vessel goes swiftly against the
stream.
The horn blows nine times.
The drivers flog the horses furiously: the poor beasts understand the
call and the blows, and tug till the rope is nearly strained to
breaking. Five minutes of such effort are more exhausting than a whole
day's labor.
Now twelve blasts of the horn sound in rapid succession. Men and horses
collect the last remnant of their strength. Every moment one fancies
they must break down. The towing-rope, a three-inch cable, is as taut as
a bow-string, and the iron bolt round which the rope is wound is burning
hot with the friction. The captain stands by with a sharp ax in his
hand.
When the vessel gained its greatest impetus, with a single blow he
severed the cable at the bow.
The tense rope flew whistling like a giant fiddle-string into the air;
the horses of the towing-team fell down in a heap, and the leader broke
its neck--his rider had wisely dismounted. The ship, relieved of the
strain, altered its course suddenly, and began, with its bow to the
northern shore, to cut obliquely across the river.
Sailors call this bold maneuver the "Cross-cut."
The heavy bulk is now propelled neither by stream nor oars; even the
current is against it. Merely the after effect of the shock it has
received drives it over to the other bank.
The calculation of this impulse, with the distance to be traversed and
the resistance which lessens the speed, would be a credit to any
practical engineer. Common sailors have learned it by rule of thumb.
From the moment when Timar cut the tow-rope, the lives of all on board
were in the hands of the steersman.
Johann Fabula showed now what he could do. "Help, Lord Christ!" he
muttered, but he did not keep his hands in his lap. Before him the ship
rushed with winged speed into the lake formed by the Danube. Two men
were now required at the tiller, and even these could hardly bridle the
monster in its course.
Timar stood on the prow and sounded with the lead, in one hand holding
the line; the other he stretched up, and showed the pilot with his
fingers what water they had.
The steersman knew the rocks they were passing over just as well as he
could have told exactly how much the river had risen in the last few
weeks. In his hands the helm was safe; if he had made a single false
movement, if only by an inch, the vessel would have received a shock
which would stop her for a moment, and then she and all on board would
have been driven head over heels into the Perigrada whirlpool, where the
ship and the beautiful white girl would have joined the mill and the
beautiful white cat.
Safely past the shallows of the Reskival rapids! Yet this is a bad
place. The speed is less, the effect of the motive power already
paralyzed by the force of the stream, and the bottom sown with sharp
rocks.
Timéa leaned over the bulwarks and looked down into the water. Through
the transparent waves, the bright-colored rocks, a huge mosaic of green
and yellow and red, looked quite close. Between them shot silvery fishes
with red fins. She was fascinated.
Deep silence fell over the scene; each knew that he passed over his
grave, and would owe it to God's mercy if he did not find his monument
down below. Only the girl felt no emotion of fear.
The vessel had arrived in a bay of rocks. Sailors have given them the
name of "gun-stones"; perhaps because the sound of the breakers reminds
one of the cracking of musketry fire.
Here the principal branch of the Danube concentrates itself in a deep
bed. The sunken rocks are too far under water to be dangerous. Below, in
the dark-green depths, one may see the slow and indolent forms of the
dwellers of the sea--the great sturgeon and the hundred-pound pike, at
whose approach the bright shoals of small fish scatter in haste.
Timéa gazed at the play of the aquatic population; it was like a
bird's-eye view of an amphitheater.
Suddenly she felt her arm seized by Timar, who dragged her from the
bulwarks, pushed her into the cabin, and shut the door violently.
"Look out! Halloo!" shouted the crew as with one voice.
Timéa could not imagine what was happening that she should be so roughly
treated, and ran to look out of the cabin window.
It was only that the ship had passed safely through the "gun-rocks," and
was about to enter the Roumanian channel; but from the little bay the
water rushes so furiously into the canal that a regular water-fall is
formed, and this is the dangerous moment of the "Leap."
When Timéa looked out of the cabin window, she only saw that Timar stood
at the bow with a grappler in his hand. Then suddenly a deafening noise
arose, a huge foam-crowned mountain of water struck the fore part of the
vessel, splashed its spray right against the window, and blinded Timéa
for a moment. When she looked out again, the captain was no longer to be
seen.
There were great cries outside. She rushed out of the door and met her
father. "Are we sinking?" she cried.
Timéa had seen that: the big wave had washed him away before her eyes.
But her heart beat no faster when she heard it.
Curious! When she saw the white cat drowned, she was in despair, and
could not refrain from tears, and now when the water had swallowed up
the captain, she did not even say "Poor fellow!"
Yes, but the cat had cried so pitifully, and this man defies the whole
world; the cat was a dear little animal, the captain only a great rough
man. And then the cat could not help itself; but he is strong and
clever, and can certainly save himself. That's the only good of a man.
After the last leap the ship was safe, and swam in the smooth water of
the canal. The sailors ran with grappling-irons to the boat to seek the
captain. Euthemio held a purse up as a prize for the rescue of Timar. "A
hundred ducats for him who rescues the captain!"
"Keep your hundred ducats, good sir!" cried the voice of the man in
question from the other end of the ship. "I'm coming."
Then they saw him climbing up the stern by the rudder-chains. No fear of
his being lost!
As if nothing had happened, he began giving orders. "Let go!"
The three hundred-weight anchor was thrown over, and the ship brought up
in the middle of the channel, so as to be hidden by the cliffs from the
upper reaches of the river.
"And now ashore with the boat," Timar ordered three oarsmen.
"Change your clothes," advised Euthemio.
"Waste of time," answered Timar. "I shall soon be wet again; now I am
thoroughly soaked. We have no time to spare."
The last words he whispered into Euthemio's ear.
The man's eyes glittered as he agreed. The captain sprung into the boat
and rowed himself, so as to get quicker to the post-house on the bank,
where towing-teams could be engaged. He collected hastily eighty oxen.
Meanwhile, a new towing-rope was attached to the vessel, the oxen
harnessed, and before half an hour had passed, the "St. Barbara" was on
her way again through the Iron Gate, and on the opposite side of the
stream.
When Timar returned on board, his exertions had dried his clothes.
The ship was saved, perhaps doubly saved, and with it the cargo,
Euthemio, and Timéa.
But what are they to him that he should work so hard? He is only the
captain and supercargo, and receives a scanty salary as such. It can not
matter to him whether the vessel's hold is full of wheat or contraband
tobacco or real pearls; his wages remain the same.
So also thought the "purifier," who, when they reached the Roumanian
canal, resumed his interrupted conversation with the steersman.
"You'll allow, neighbor, that we were never nearer all going to
destruction together than we were to-day."
"There's some truth in that," answered Fabula.
"But why should we try the experiment whether we could get drowned on
St. Michael's day?"
"H'm!" said Johann, and took a short pull at his brandy-flask. "What
salary do you get, sir?"
"Twenty kreutzers a day," answered the purifier.
"Why the devil do you come here to venture your life for twenty
kreutzers a day? I didn't send for you. I get a gulden and my food; so I
have forty kreutzers more reason to venture my life than you. What does
it matter to you?"
The health-officer shook his head, and threw back his hood, so as to be
more easily heard.
"Listen," he said; "it strikes me the brigantine is chasing you, and the
'St. Barbara' is trying to escape."
"H'm!" coughed the steersman, clearing his throat, and becoming suddenly
too hoarse to make a sound.
"Well, it doesn't matter to me," said the purifier, with a shrug. "I'm
Austrian born, and I don't like the Turks. But I know what I know."
"Well, then, will the gentleman listen to what he doesn't know?" said
Fabula, who had suddenly recovered his voice. "Certainly the gunboat is
chasing us, and that's why we are showing him our heels. For, look you,
they wanted to take the white-faced maiden into the sultan's harem, but
her father would not consent; he preferred to escape with her from
Turkey, and now the object is to reach Hungarian territory as quickly as
possible--there the sultan can't touch her. Now that's all about it, so
no more questions, but go to St. Barbara's picture, and light the lamp
again if the water has extinguished it; and don't forget to burn three
consecrated willow-twigs, if you're a good Christian."
The purifier drew himself up slowly, and looked for his tinderbox, and
then he growled in his beard--
"_If_ I am an orthodox Catholic? But they say you are only a Papist on
board, and a Calvinist directly you set foot on shore; that you pray in
the ship, and can hardly wait for dry land before you begin cursing and
swearing. And they say too that your name is Fabula, and that Fabula
means just the same as a pocketful of lies. But of course I believe all
you have told me, so you need not be angry."
"You're quite right there; but now you be off, and don't you come back
till I call you."
The twenty-four rowers in the gunboat required three hours to get from
the point where first the "St. Barbara" was seen to the Perigrada
Island, where the Danube divides into two arms. The cliffs of the island
masked the whole bend, and on board the brigantine nothing of what had
passed behind them could be seen.
Even below the island the gunboat had met with floating wreckage, which
the eddy had thrown to the surface. This was part of the sunken mill,
but could not be distinguished from the remains of a vessel. When the
brigantine had passed the island a reach of a mile and a half lay open
before her; neither in the stream nor by the bank was any large craft to
be seen; near the shore were only barges and rowing-boats.
The man-of-war went a little higher, cruised about in the river, and
then returned to the shore. There the Turkish first-lieutenant inquired
of the watchmen about a cargo-vessel passing by. They had seen nothing,
for the ship had not got so far. Presently the brigantine overtook the
"St. Barbara's" towing-team, and of them also questions were asked. They
were all good Servians, and explained to the Turks where they could find
the "St. Barbara."
"She has gone down at the Perigrada Island with her cargo of fruit and
all her crew; you can see here how the tow-rope parted."
The Turkish brigantine left the Servian drivers, who were all lamenting
because no one was left to pay their wages. (In Orsova they know full
well they will come up with their ship and tow her on.) But the
commander, being a Turk, of course turned about and went down-stream.
When the brigantine got back to the island the sailors saw a board
dancing on the water which did not float away. They fished it out: a
rope was fastened to it by an iron hook, for the board was a float from
the mill-wheel. Then they heaved up the rope, which had an anchor at its
other end. This also was got in, and on its cross-piece, painted in
great letters, there was the name "St. Barbara."
Now the whole catastrophe was quite clear. Her towing-rope had broken,
she cast her anchor, but it could not hold her, she drifted into the
whirlpool, and now her timbers float on the surface, but her crew rests
below in the deep pool.
Mashallah! We can not follow her there.
CHAPTER IV.
A STRICT SEARCH.
The "St. Barbara" had escaped two dangers--the rocks of the Iron Gate
and the Turkish brigantine; two remained, the Bora and the quarantine in
Orsova.
Above the bay of the Iron Gate, the powerful stream is confined by its
steep banks in a chasm only a hundred fathoms wide, through which the
pent-up current forces its way, in parts with a fall of twenty-eight
feet.
Up above the mountain peaks, three thousand feet in air, the eagles
circle in majestic flight across the narrow strip of sky visible, whose
pure azure, seen from the awful depths below, looks like a glass vault,
and further yet rise more and higher peaks.
It is a sight, I trow, to call up spirits from hell. The impotent
vessel, which has neither hands nor feet, nor yet fins, which, like an
overladen nutshell, floats upward in this narrow channel against wind
and stream; and in it a handful of men, trusting in their intelligence
and their strength. Here, too, even the Bora can not harm them, for the
double range of cliffs keeps off the wind. The steersman and the
towing-team have easier work now.
But the Bora was not asleep. It was already afternoon. The chief
steersman had given over the tiller to his deputy, and had gone to the
galley, which was in the stern. There he was busy preparing a "thieves'
roast," of which the recipe is to spit on a long skewer a piece of beef,
a piece of ham, and a piece of pork alternately, and then turn the
skewer above an open fire till the meat is cooked.
All at once the narrow strip of sky visible between the almost touching
cliffs grew dark. The Bora will not be defied.
Suddenly it drives down before it a storm which overcasts the blue sky,
so that it is pitch dark in the valley. Up above masses of cloud; dark
rocks on either hand. Now and then a dazzling flash darts through the
heights, followed by a short abrupt thunderclap, as if the narrow gorge
could only contain one chord of the awful concert; then again the
lightning shoots into the Danube just in front of the ship, and by its
fiery rays for an instant the whole rocky cathedral looks like the
flaming gulf of hell, and the thunder rolls, with a crash as of a world
destroyed, from one end of the resounding Titan's hall to the other.
Rain falls in torrents, but the vessel must go on.
It must get on, that it may have left Orsova before night.
They can only see by the flicker of the lightning. Even with the horn
they dare not signal, for it might be heard on the Roumanian side. But
inventive man has found a way out of this difficulty.
The captain goes into the bow, gets out his flint and steel, and begins
to strike out sparks. This fire can not be extinguished by rain; it can
be seen by the drivers through the darkness, and as often as the steel
strikes a spark they know at once what to do; they also make signals
from the bank by sparks. This is the secret telegraph of sailors and
smugglers at the Iron Gate. And this silent language has been brought to
perfection by the shore population on each side of the river.
Timéa liked the tempest. She had drawn her Turkish hood over her head,
and looked out of the cabin window. "Are we in a cavern?" she asked the
captain.
"No," answered Timar, "but at the door of a tomb. That high peak, which
glows in the lightning flashes like a mountain of fire, is the grave of
St. Peter, the 'Gropa lui Petro.' And the two other monsters near it are
the 'Two Old Women.'"
"What old women?"
"According to the legend, a Hungarian and a Wallachian woman quarreled
as to which of their two countries could claim the tomb of St. Peter.
The apostle could not sleep in his grave for their squabbling, and in
his anger he turned them into stone."
Timéa did not smile at the grotesque legend. She did not see anything
ridiculous in it. "And how do they know that this is the grave of an
apostle?" asked she.
"Because here many healing herbs grow, which they collect to cure all
sorts of diseases, and send them great distances."
"So they call him an apostle, who even in his grave does good to
others?" Timéa questioned.
"Timéa!" sounded from the cabin the imperious call of Euthemio. The girl
drew back her head from the window, and closed the circular shutter.
When Timar looked round again, he saw only the saint's picture.
The vessel continued her course in spite of the storm.
Suddenly the dark ravine was left behind, and as the two rock walls
trended further apart the gloomy vault overhead disappeared. Just as
rapidly as the Bora had brought up the black thunderclouds, so quickly
had it swept away the storm; and, all at once, the travelers saw
stretched before them the lovely Cserna valley.
The cliffs on both shores were covered to their summits with vineyards
and fruit orchards; the landscape glittered in the glow of the evening
sun; out of the green distance shone while houses, slender spires, and
red roofs, and through the crystal rain-beads gleamed a gorgeous
rainbow.
The Danube had lost its uncanny aspect. In its wider bed it could spread
itself out comfortably; and on the western reaches of its sea-green
mirror the travelers saw the reflection of Orsova on its island--for
them the fourth, and greatest, bugbear.
The day had already sunk into twilight when the "St. Barbara" arrived at
Orsova.
"More wind to-morrow than even to-day," grumbled the steersman, looking
at the red sky.
There the evening clouds were piled like an avalanche, in all shades of
fiery and blood red, and if the glowing mist-veil parted through the
rent, the sky was not blue but emerald-green. Below, mountain and
valley, forest and field, gleamed in the sunset reflex with radiance
which hurt the eye, unable to find a shady point of rest. The Danube
rushing on beneath, like a fiery Phlegethon, and in its midst an island
with towers and massive buildings, all glowing as if part of a huge
furnace, through which every creature, coming from the pestilential east
to the frontier of the healthy west, must pass as through purgatory.
But what most fixed the attention of the crew under this stormy sunset
was a black-and-yellow striped boat, which was being rowed from the
shore to the ship.
The Szkela is the double gate through which the neighboring inhabitants
of both sides of the Danube speak, bargain, and do business together.
The "St. Barbara" had cast anchor before the island, and awaited the
approaching boat, in which were three armed men--two with muskets and
bayonets--besides two rowers and the steersman.
Euthemio paced anxiously up and down the small space in front of the
cabin. Timar approached him and whispered, "The searcher is coming."
Trikaliss drew from his leathern pouch a silk purse, and took out two
_rouleaux_, which he pressed into Timar's hand. In each were a hundred
ducats.
Before long the boat was alongside, and the three armed men came on
board. One is the overseer of taxes, the inspector, whose office it is
to search the cargo for anything contraband or a prohibited importation
of arms; the other two are custom-house officials, who render armed
assistance, and serve as a check on the inspector to see if he carries
out the search properly.
The purifier is the official spy, who reports whether the two officers
have properly controlled the inspector. Then the latter three form a
tribunal, which takes the evidence of the purifier as to whether he has
detected the passengers in any infectious communication. This is all
very systematically arranged, so that one organ should control the
other, and each be mutually under inspection.
As a legal fee for these functions the chief has to receive a hundred
kreutzers, each of the customs officials fifty, and the purifier also
fifty--which certainly is a moderate fee enough.
As soon as the inspector reaches the deck, the purifier comes toward
him: the former scratches his ear and the latter his nose. No contact
takes place.
Then the inspector turns to the captain, and both the other officials
ground their arms. Still three paces apart! One can't tell whether the
man has not got the plague.
The examination begins.
"Where from?"
"Galatz."
"Name of ship's owner?"
"Athan Brazovics."
"Owner of cargo?"
"Euthemio Trikaliss."
"Where are the ship's papers?"
The reception of these is carefully arranged. A pan of live coals is
brought, and strewn with juniper-berries and wormwood: the aforesaid
papers are held over it and well smoked, then taken by the inspector
with a pair of tongs, read from as great a distance as possible, and
afterward returned. Nothing wrong, apparently, with the ship's papers.
The pan is carried away, and in its place a jug of water is brought. It
is a capacious earthenware pot, with a mouth through which the largest
fist can pass. It serves to facilitate the transmission of the tax. As
the oriental plague is more easily communicated by coins than by
anything else, the sailors coming from the Levant must throw the money
into a jug of water, in order that the western health-officer may take
it out cleansed: just as at the Szkela every one must fish the money he
receives out of a basin.
Timar thrust his clinched fist into the water, and brought it out open.
Then the inspector puts his hand in, draws it out as a clinched fist,
and transfers it to his pocket. He does not need to look at it by the
sunset light to see what manner of money it is. He knows it by the size
and weight. Even a blind man knows the feel of ducats. He does not
change a muscle.
After him come the custom-house officials. These also with serious faces
fish up their fee from the bottom of the jug.
Now for the turn of the purifier. His countenance is stern and
forbidding. It hangs on a single word from his lips, whether the ship
may have to lie ten or twenty days in quarantine with all her
passengers. There are cold-blooded men like that who have only an eye to
duty.
The inspector demands, in a surly, dictatorial tone, that the entrance
to the lower deck be opened. His desire is obeyed. They all three go
down; but none of the crew may follow them. When they are alone, the
three strict servants of the law grin at each other. The purifier
remains on deck, and only laughs in his sleeve.
They unfasten one of the many sacks, in which certainly there is only
wheat. "Well, I hope it's moldy enough," remarks the inspector.
"Probably there is only wheat in the other sacks, and very likely even
more worm-eaten."
A document is now drawn up describing the search: one of the armed
officials has the writing materials, and the other the form to be filled
in. All is accurately set down. Then the inspector writes something on a
bit of paper, which he folds and seals with a wafer, on which he presses
the official seal. He writes no address on the note.
Then, after they have rummaged in every hole and corner where nothing
suspicious is hidden, the three searchers rise to the light of day once
more. At least to moonlight; for the sun has set, and through the
hurrying clouds the moon ever and anon peeps down, and then vanishing,
plays hide-and-seek with the world.
The inspector calls for the captain and gives him to understand--still
in a severe official manner--that nothing suspicious has been found on
board: then he requires the purifier, in the same manner, to declare the
condition of the ship's health.
With an appeal to his oath of fidelity, the purifier bears witness that
every person on board, as well as the cargo, is free from infection.
A certificate that the papers are in order is prepared, and the receipts
for the fees are handed over. A hundred kreutzers to the inspector, two
fifties to the customs officers, and fifty to the health-officer. Not a
kreutzer is wanting. These receipts are delivered to the owner of the
cargo, who has never left his cabin the whole time--he is at supper. He
also must countersign the receipts. From these signatures and
indorsements, the shipowner and the honorable officials in question
mutually learn that the captain gave away as many kreutzers as he
received, and that not one remained sticking to his fingers.
Kreutzers! Well, yes; but about the gold?
The thought may well have passed through Timar's head, how would it be
if of the fifty ducats which this dirty lot were to fish out of the jug
he were only to put in forty (a fabulous sum to such fellows)? No
creature would know that he had kept back ten. Indeed he might easily
retain half of the whole sum, for who is there to control it? Those for
whom the money is intended are quite enough rewarded with half.
Another thought possibly answered thus. "What you are doing is without
doubt bribery. You don't corrupt them with your own money, but Trikaliss
gives it because his interests imperatively require it. You hand over
the gold, and are as innocent of the bribery as the water-jug. Why he
wants to bribe the inspector you do not know. Whether the ship carries
contraband goods, whether he is a political refugee, or the persecuted
hero of a romantic adventure, who in order to assist his escape strews
gold in handfuls, what does it matter to you? But if one single gold
piece sticks to your fingers, you become an accomplice in all which
burdens another's conscience. Keep none of it."
The inspector gave permission for the vessel to proceed, in token of
which a red-and-white flag with a black eagle on it was hoisted to the
masthead. Then, after thus officially certifying that the ship from the
Levant was quite free of infection, the inspector, without any previous
ordeal by water, pressed the captain's hand and said to him: "You come
from Komorn? Then you know Herr Katschuka, chief of the commissariat
department? Be good enough to give him this note when you get home.
There is no address on it--not necessary, you won't forget his name; it
sounds like a Spanish dance. Take him the letter as soon as ever you get
there. You won't be sorry."
Then he clapped the captain most graciously on the shoulder, as if to
make him his debtor for life, and the whole four left the ship and
returned to Szkela in their black-and-yellow boat.
The "St. Barbara" could now continue her voyage, and if all her sacks
from the keel to the deck had been filled with salt or Turkish tobacco,
and all her passengers covered with small-pox or leprosy from top to
toe, no one could stop her any more on the Danube.
Now, however, there was on board neither contraband goods nor contagion,
but--something else. Timar put the unaddressed note into his pocket-book
and wondered what it contained.
This was what was written--
"BROTHER-IN-LAW,--I recommend to you the bearer of this
letter. He is a man of sterling worth."
CHAPTER V.
THE OWNERLESS ISLAND.
The towing-team left behind on the Servian bank crossed over the same
night in ferry-boats to the Hungarian side with their severed hawser,
spreading everywhere the news that the tow-rope had parted of itself at
the dangerous Perigrada Island, and the ship had gone down with every
soul on board. In the morning there was no longer a sign of the "St.
Barbara" in the harbor of Orsova. If by chance the commandant of the
Turkish brigantine had had an idea of rowing up the channel from the
Iron Gate to Orsova, he would not have found what he sought; and above,
as far as Belgrade, only half the Danube belonged to him: on the
Hungarian side he had no jurisdiction, but the fortress at New Orsova
belonged to him.
At two o'clock in the morning the "St. Barbara" left Orsova. After
midnight the north wind generally stops; the favorable time must be
utilized, and the crew had received a double ration of brandy to keep
them in a good humor.
The departure was quite silent: from the walls of the New Orsova fort
sounded the long call of the Turkish sentries. The horn gave no signal
till the Allion point had disappeared behind the new mountain-chain.
At the first blast Timéa came from her cabin, where she had slept for a
few hours, and went, wrapped in her white burnoose, to the bow to look
for Euthemio, who had never lain down all night, nor entered his cabin,
nor even--which was more remarkable--smoked at all. He was not allowed
to light any fire on board the ship, so as to avoid attracting attention
to the vessel at the Orsova fortress.
Perhaps Timéa felt that she had to make up for a fault, for she
addressed Timar, and asked him about the wonders of both shores.
The instinct of her childish heart whispered to her that she owed this
man a debt of gratitude.
Dawn found the ship near Ogradina. The captain drew Timéa's attention to
a monument eighteen hundred years old. This was "Trajan's Tablet," hewn
in the precipitous cliff, held by two winged genii and surrounded by
dolphins. On the tablet is the inscription which commemorates the
achievements of the godlike emperor. If the peaks of the great
"Sterberg" have vanished from the Servian shore, there follows a fresh
rock corridor, which confines the Danube in a ravine five hundred
fathoms wide. This mountain hall goes by the name of "Kassan." Cliffs of
two to three thousand feet high rise right and left, their curves lost
in opal-colored mist. From one precipice a stream falls a thousand feet
out of a cave, like a delicate silver streak, dissolved in spray before
it reaches the river. The two rock faces run on unbroken, only in one
part the mountain is split, and through the rift laughs the blooming
landscape of an alpine valley, with a white tower in the background. It
is the tower of Dubova: there is Hungary.
Timéa never turned her gaze from this spectacle until the ship had
passed, and the mountains had closed over the exquisite scene, hiding
the deep chasm in their shadows.
"I feel," she said, "as if we were going through a long, long prison,
into a land from which there is no return."
The precipices grow higher, the surface of the Danube darker, and, to
complete the wild and romantic panorama, there is visible on the
northern face a cave whose mouth is surrounded by an earthquake with
embrasures for cannon.
"That is Veterani's Cavern," said the captain. "There, more than a
century ago, three hundred men and five cannon held out for forty days
against a whole Turkish army." Timéa shook her head. But the skipper
knew more still about the cavern.
"Forty years ago our people defended that cave in a bloody struggle
against the Turks; the Osmanli lost over two thousand men among the
rocks."
Timéa drew together her delicate eyebrows and threw the narrator an
icy-cold glance, so that all his eloquence died in his throat. She hid
her mouth with her burnoose, turned from Timar, went into the cabin, and
did not reappear till evening. She only looked through the little window
at the toppling crags on the bank, the massive watch-towers now
deserted, the wooded cliffs of the Klissura valley, and the rock-colossi
projecting from the stream, as they swept by her. She did not even ask
for the history of the octagonal castle-donjon, with three small ones
beside it inside a bastion. And yet she would have heard the fate of the
lovely Cecilia Rozgonyi, the danger of King Sigismund, and the defeat of
the Hungarians. This ruin is the Galamboczer Tower.
From first to last this double shore is a petrified history of two
nations, mutually shadowed by a mad vagary of fate with the lust of
conquest, which makes them fly at each other's throats directly a war
begins.
It is a long crypt containing the bones of many a hundred thousand
heroes.
Timéa did not come out that day or the next. She sketched little views
in her book, which she could hold quite steady on the smoothly gliding
vessel.
Three days passed before the "St. Barbara" arrived where the Morava
falls into the Danube.
At the junction lies Semendria. On the thirty-six towers of this
fortress have waved the banners sometimes of the Blessed Virgin and anon
of the Crescent, and their circular brown walls are sprinkled with the
blood of many nations. On the other shore of the Morava stand only the
bare walls of the forsaken "Veste Kulics," and beyond the Ostrovaer
Island frown down from a peak the ruins of the castle of Rama, now only
a monument.
But this is not the moment to stand gazing at them--no one is inclined
to indulge in melancholy reflections on the vanished greatness of fallen
nations, for there is more pressing work on hand.
As soon as the Hungarian plains open out, the north wind storms down on
the ship with such force that the towing-horses can not make head
against it, and the wind drives the vessel toward the opposite shore.
"We can get no further," is the general opinion.
Trikaliss exchanges a few private words with Timar, who goes to the
pilot. Master Fabula makes the tiller fast and leaves it. Then he calls
the rowers on board, and signs to the shore to stop the team. Here
neither oars nor towing are of use. The ship is above the Orsova Island,
which stretches a long pointed tongue into the stream: its northern side
is steep and rugged, overgrown with old willows.
The task now is to get over to the south of the island, where the "St.
Barbara" can lie in a harbor protected from the north wind, as well as
from the curious eyes of men; for the wider stream which circles round
the island toward Servia is not used by sailors, being full of
sand-banks and fords.
It is a work of skill to approach: cutting the cable is no use, for the
ship could not carry any way against such a wind. The only solution is
hauling to the anchor.
The vessel casts anchor in mid-stream: the towing-rope is brought on
board; to its end a second anchor is attached and placed in the boat.
The rowers go toward the island till the whole length of the cable is
out, then cast anchor and return to the ship. Now they weigh the first
anchor, and four men haul on the cable made fast to the windlass. Heavy
work!
When the vessel is close up to the anchor, they put the other in the
boat, row forward, cast anchor again, and haul up as before. So by the
sweat of their brow they made their way up-stream step by step. It took
them half a day of hard labor to work the heavy cargo-ship from the
middle of the Danube to the point of the great island. A fatiguing day
for those who had to work, and wearier still to look on at. The vessel
had left the frequented branch, where, at any rate, one saw ruins from
time to time, where one met other ships, or floated by long lines of
clattering mills: it now passed through the unfrequented channel, where
the view was hidden on the right by a long ugly island, on which only
poplars and willows seemed to grow, nowhere a human habitation to be
seen, and on the left the water was covered by a thick sea of reeds,
among which the only sign of _terra firma_ was a group of slender,
silver-leaved poplars.
In this quiet uninhabited spot the "St. Barbara" was brought up. And now
appeared a new calamity--the food was exhausted. When leaving Galatz,
they had reckoned on the usual halt at Orsova for the purpose of
shipping provisions; but after starting so suddenly at night, they found
there was nothing on board when they reached the island of Orsova but a
little coffee and sugar, and in Timéa's possession a box of Turkish
sweets and preserved fruits, which, however, she would not open, because
it was intended as a present.
"Never mind," said Timar; "somebody must live on one shore or the other.
There are lambs and kids everywhere, and one can get anything for
money."
Another misfortune set in. The anchored ship was so rolled about by the
wind-driven waves of the river, that Timéa got seasick and frightened.
Perhaps there was some house where she and her father could spend the
night.
Timar's sharp eyes discovered that above the tops of the poplars rising
from the reeds a faint smoke hovered in the air. "There must be a house
there. I will go and see who lives in it."
There was a small skiff on board, which the captain used on sporting
expeditions, at times when the ship was delayed by foul winds, and he
had leisure for wildfowl-shooting. He lowered it into the water, took
his gun, his game-bag, and a landing-net--one never knows what may come
in one's way, a bird or a fish--and went toward the bed of rushes,
rowing and steering with one and the same oar. Being an experienced
marsh-sportsman, he soon found the one opening in the reeds through
which it was possible to penetrate, and recognized by the vegetation the
depth of the channel.
Where the great leaves and snowy cups of the water-lily float on the
surface, there is deep water which scours the weeds and mud away; in
other places duckweed forms a green carpet on the top, and on this
floating velvet cowers the poisonous water-fungus in the form of a
turnip-radish, blue and round, and swelled like a puff ball--deadly
poison to every living thing. When Timar's oar struck one of these
polyp-like fungi, the venomous dust shot out like a blue flame. The
roots of this plant live in a fetid slime which would suffocate man or
beast who should fall into it; nature has given this vegetable murderer
a habitat where it is least accessible. But where the cardinal-flower
spreads its clubbed suckers, and where the beautiful bells of the
water-violet sway among the rushes, there is gravel, which is not always
under water. And where the manna tendrils begin to form a thicket, in
pressing through which the sailor finds the brim of his hat full of
little seeds--the food of the poor, manna of the wilderness--there must
be higher ground, so that only the root of the plant is submerged.
The boatman who does not know these vegetable guides might lose himself
in the reed-beds, and not get out all day.
When Timar had worked his way through the brake, which formed a
labyrinth of flesh-colored flower-clusters, he saw before him what he
sought--an island.
No doubt this was a new alluvial formation, of which no trace was to be
found on the latest maps.
In the bed of the right arm of the Danube lay long ago a great bowlder,
at whose base the sluggish current had deposited a sand-bank.
During some winter flood, the ice-floes tore from the Ostrova Island a
spit of land bearing earth, stones, and a small wood. This mingled
deluge of ice, gravel, and trees flung itself on the sand-bank near the
bowlder. Repeated inundations spread over it year by year layers of mud,
and enlarged its circumference by fresh deposits of pebbles: from the
moldering tree-trunks sprung a luxuriant vegetation as quickly as the
natural creations of the New World; and so arose a nameless island, of
which no one had taken possession, over which was no landlord, no king,
no authority, and no church--which belonged to no country and no
diocese. In Turco-Servian territory there are many such paradises,
neither plowed nor sown, not even used for pasture. They are the home of
wild flowers and wild beasts, and God knows what besides.
The northern shore plainly proclaims its genesis. The gravel moraine is
heaped there like a barricade, often in pieces larger than a man's head;
between are tufts of rushes and rotten branches; the shallows are
covered with green and brown river-shells; on the marshy parts round
holes are washed out, in which, at the sound of approaching footsteps,
hundreds of crabs rush to hide. The shore is covered along its whole
length with prickly willow, which the ice-floes shave off every winter
close to the root.
Here Timar drew his boat ashore and tied it to a tree. Pressing forward,
he had to push his way through a thicket of huge willows and
poplars--overthrown in many places by repeated storms--and there the
fruitful bramble forms a thorny undergrowth, and tall valerian, shooting
upward from the weather-beaten soil, mixes its aromatic scent with the
wholesome smell of the poplar.
On a level depression where are neither trees nor bushes, luxuriant
umbelliferous plants rise amid the grass over a swamp--hemlock and
"Sison Amonum," smelling of cinnamon. In an isolated tuft like a
vegetable aristocrat glitter the fiery blossoms of the veratrum; among
the grass the forget-me-not spreads rankly, and the medicinal comfrey
with red flowers full of honey. No wonder if in the hollows of the old
trees there are so many wild bees' nests. And among the flowers rise
curious green, brown and red capsules, the ripe seed-vessels of bulbous
plants which bloom in spring.
On this flowery region follows more forest; but here the willows and
poplar are mixed with wild apple-trees, and white-thorn forms the
underwood. The island is higher here.
Timar stopped and listened. No sound. There can be no wild beasts on
this island. The floods have exterminated them, and the place is only
inhabited by birds.
Even among birds the lark and the wood-pigeon do not come here: it is no
dwelling for them. They seek places where men live and sow and cultivate
grain. But two creatures live here which betray the presence of man--the
wasp and the blackbird; both of which come after the ripe fruit which
they passionately love. Where the great wasps' nests hang from the
trees, and where the blackbird's alluring whistle sounds in the hedges,
there must be fruit. Timar followed the blackbird. After he had pushed
through the prickly whitethorn and the privet-bushes which tore his
clothes, he stood transfixed with admiration.
What he saw before him was a paradise.
A cultivated garden of five or six acres, with fruit-trees, not planted
in rows, but in picturesquely scattered groups, whose boughs were
weighed down by their sweet burden. Apple and pear-trees covered with
glittering red and yellow fruit, plums of all colors looking as if the
shining crop were turned to roses and lilies, the fallen surplus lying
unnoticed on the ground. Beneath, a regular plantation formed of
raspberry, currant, and gooseberry bushes, with their red, yellow, and
green berries; and the spaces between the large trees filled by the
hanging branches of the Sidonian apple or quince.
There was no path through this labyrinth of fruit-trees--the ground
underneath was covered with grass.
But where you can see through, a flower-garden beckons you on. It is
also a collection of wonderful field blossoms not to be found in an
ordinary garden: the roots of blue campanula, swallow-wort, with its
fleecy seed-vessels from which a sort of silk is collected, the spotted
turban-lily, alkermes, with its scarlet berries, the splendid butterfly
orchis--all of these raised to the rank of garden-flowers, bear witness
to the presence of man. And this is further betrayed by the dwelling
from which the smoke comes.
It also is a fantastic little refuge. Behind it stands a great rock, in
which is an excavation, where the hearth must be, and another hole for
the cellar. At the top is a chimney, from which a blue cloud arises. A
building of stone and clay tiles is stuck on to the cliff; it has two
rooms, each with a window. One window is smaller, and one room lower
than the other; both are roofed with rushes; each has a wooden porch,
forming a veranda, with fanciful ornaments made of little bits of wood.
Neither stone, clay, nor wood-work can be distinguished, so thickly is
it covered on the south side with vines, out of whose frost-bitten
leaves thousands of red and gold bunches peep out. On the northern side
it is overgrown with hops, whose ripe clusters hide even the pinnacle of
the great rock with their greenish gold; and on its highest point tufts
of house-leek are planted, so that no spot may remain which is not
green.
Here women live.
CHAPTER VI.
ALMIRA AND NARCISSA.
Timar turned his steps toward the creeper-covered cottage. Through the
flower-garden a path led to the house, but so covered with grass that
his steps were not heard, and he could thus get as far as the little
veranda quite noiselessly. Neither far nor near was a human being
visible.
Before the veranda lay a large black dog--one of the noble race of
Newfoundland, generally so sensible and dignified as to forbid undue
familiarity on the part of strangers. The aforesaid quadruped was one of
the finest of the race--a colossal beast, and occupied the whole width
of the door-way.
The sable guardian appeared to be asleep, and took no notice of the
approaching stranger, nor of another creature which left no fool-hardy
impertinence untried in order to tax the patience of the huge animal.
This was a white cat, which was shameless enough to turn somersaults
back and forward over the dog's recumbent form, to strike it on the nose
with her paw, and at last to lay herself before it on her back, and take
one of its webbed paws between her four soft feet and play with it like
a kitten. When the great black porter found its foot tickled, it drew it
back and gave the cat the other paw to play with.
Timar did not think to himself--"Suppose this black colossus seizes me
by the collar, it will go hard with me;" but he thought, "Oh! how
delighted Timéa will be when she sees this white cat."
You could not pass the dog and get in--it barred the whole entrance.
Timar coughed, to announce that some one was there. Then the great dog
raised its head and looked at the new-comer with its wise nut-brown
eyes, which, like the human eye, can weep and laugh, scold and flatter.
Then it laid its head down again, as much as to say, "Only one man; it's
not worth while to get up."
But Timar decided that where a chimney smokes, there's a fire in the
kitchen; so he began from outside to wish this invisible some one
"Good-morning," alternately in three languages--Hungarian, Servian and
Roumanian. Suddenly a female voice answered in Hungarian from within,
"Good-day. Come in then. Who is it?"
"I should like to come in, but the dog's in the way."
"Step over it."
"Won't it bite?"
"She never hurts good people."
Timar took courage and stepped across the powerful animal, which did not
move, but raised its tail as if to wag him a welcome.
Going into the veranda, Timar saw two doors before him: the first one
led to the stone building, the other to the grotto hollowed in the rock.
The latter was the kitchen. There he observed a woman busy at the
hearth.
Timar saw at a glance that she was not preparing a magic potion of
witch's cookery, but simply roasting Indian-corn.
The woman thus occupied was a thin but strong and sinewy figure, with a
dark skin; in her compressed lips lay something severe, though her eye
was soft and inspired confidence. Her sunburned face betokened her age
as not much over thirty. She was not dressed like the peasants of the
district; her clothes were not bright in color, but yet not suited to
towns.
"Now, come nearer and sit down," said the woman, in a singularly hard
voice, which, however, was perfectly quiet; and then she shook the
floury snow-white Indian-corn into a plaited rush-basket, and offered it
to him. Afterward she fetched a jug which stood on the floor, and gave
him elder-wine, this also just freshly made.
Timar sat down on the stool offered him, which was skillfully woven of
various osiers, and of a curious shape. Then the Newfoundland, rising,
approached the guest and lay down in front of him.
The woman threw the dog a handful of the white confectionery, which it
at once began to crack in the proper way. The white cat attempted to do
the same, but the first cracked kernel of the maize stuck in her teeth,
and she did not try it again. She shook the paw with which she had
touched it, and sprung up to the hearth, where she blinked with much
interest at an unglazed pot which was simmering by the fire, and
probably held something more to her taste.
"A magnificent beast," said Timar, looking at the dog. "I wonder it is
so gentle; it has not even growled at me."
"She never hurts good people, sir. If a stranger comes who is honest,
she knows it directly, and is as quiet as a lamb--doesn't even bark;
but if a thief tries to get in, she rages at him as soon as he sets foot
on the island, and woe to him if she gets her teeth in. She is a
formidable creature! Last winter a large wolf came over the ice after
our goats--look, there is his skin on the floor of the room. In a moment
the dog had throttled him. An honest man can sit on her back, she won't
touch him."
Timar was quite satisfied to have such excellent evidence of his
honesty. Who knows, perhaps, if some of those ducats had lost their road
in his pocket, he might have been differently received by the great dog?
"Now, sir, where do you come from, and what do you want of me?"
"First, I must beg you to excuse my having pushed through the thorns and
bushes into your garden. The storm has driven my vessel over to this
bank, so I was obliged to run for shelter under the Ostrova Island."
"Indeed, yes; I can hear by the rustle of the branches that a strong
wind is blowing."
This place was so completely sheltered by the virgin forest, that one
could feel no wind, and only knew by the sound when it blew.
"We must wait for a change of wind before the storm blows over. But our
provisions have run out, so I was forced to seek the nearest house from
which I saw smoke rising, to ask the housewife whether for money and
fair words we could get food for the crew."
"Yes, you can have what you want, and I don't mind being paid for it,
for that's what I live on. We can serve you with kids, maize-flour,
cheese, and fruit; choose what you want. This is the trade which keeps
us; the market-women round about fetch away our wares in boats: we are
gardeners."
Till now Timar had seen no human being except this woman; but as she
spoke in the plural, there must be others besides herself.
"I thank you beforehand, and will take some of everything. I will send
the steersman from the ship to fetch the things; but tell me, my good
lady, what's to pay? I want food for my seven men for three days."
"You need not fetch out your purse; I don't receive payment in money.
What should I do with it, here on this lonely island? At best thieves
would be sure to get in and kill me to get hold of it; but now every one
knows there is no money on the island, and therefore we can sleep in
peace. I only barter. I give fruit, wax, honey, and simples, and people
bring me in exchange grain, salt, clothes, and hardware."
"As they do on the Australian islands?"
"Just the same."
"All right, good lady; we have grain on board, and salt too. I will
reckon up the value of your wares, and bring an equal value in exchange.
Rely upon it, you sha'n't be the loser."
"I don't doubt it, sir."
"But I have another favor to ask. On board my vessel there is a grand
gentleman and his young daughter. The young lady is not accustomed to
the motion, and feels unwell. Could you not give my passengers shelter
till the storm is over?"
"Well, that I can do too, sir. Look, here are two small bed-rooms. We
will retire into one, and in the other any honest man who wants shelter
can have it--rest, if not comfort. If you also would like to stay, you
will have to be contented with the little garret, as both the rooms will
have women in them. There is new hay there, and sailors are not
particular."
Timar puzzled his head as to the position of this woman, who chose her
words so well and expressed herself so sensibly. He could not reconcile
it with this hut, which was more like a cave, and with the residence on
this lonely island in the midst of a wilderness. "Many thanks, good
lady; I'll hurry back and bring up my passengers."
"All right; only don't go back to your boat the same way you came. You
can't bring a lady through those marshes and briers. There's a tolerable
path all along the bank, rather overgrown with grass, it is true, for it
is very little trodden, and turf grows quickly here; but you shall be
conducted to where your boat lies; then when you come back in a larger
one, you can land rather nearer. I will give you a guide now. Almira!"
Timar looked round, to see from what corner of the house or from what
bush this Almira would appear who was to show him the way. But the great
black Newfoundland rose and began to wag her tail, whose strokes made a
noise on the door-post as if an old drum was touched.
"Off, Almira; take the gentleman to the shore," said the woman; on which
the creature growled something to Timar in dog's language, and taking
the edge of his cloak in her teeth, pulled at it, as if to say, Come
along.
"So this is Almira, who is to conduct me. I am much indebted to you,
Miss Almira," Timar said smiling, and took his gun and hat; then saluted
his hostess and followed the dog. Almira led the guest steadily in all
friendship by the hem of his cloak. The way lay through the orchard,
where one had to tread carefully so as not to crush the plums which
covered the ground. The white cat, too, had not remained behind; she
wanted to know where Almira was conducting the stranger, and leaped here
and there in the soft grass.
When they arrived at the edge of the orchard, somewhere above was heard
the call of a musical voice, "Narcissa!"
It was a girl's voice, in which some reproach, but much love and
maidenly shyness, were blended--a sympathetic voice. Timar looked round:
he wanted to know, first, where it came from, and then to whom it
belonged.
He soon discovered who was called, for at the sound the white cat sprung
quickly to one side, and, curling her tail, climbed zigzag up a gnarled
pear-tree, through whose thick foliage Timar saw something like a white
dress glimmering. He had no time for further research, for Almira gave a
few deep sounds which, in quadruped's language, probably meant, "What
business have you to spy about?" and so he was obliged to follow his
leader, if he did not desire to leave a piece of his cloak in her teeth.
Almira led Timar by a soft turf path along the bank to the place where
his boat was made fast. At this moment a couple of snipe rose with their
shrill cry close to the island. Timar's first thought was of the savory
dish they would make for Timéa's supper. In an instant he had shouldered
his gun, and with a well-aimed right and left brought down both snipe.
But the next moment he was himself on the ground. As soon as he had
fired, Almira seized him by the collar, and like lightning pulled him
down. He tried to rise, but soon felt that he had to do with an
overpowering adversary who was not to be trifled with. Not that Almira
had hurt him, but she held him by the collar, and would not allow of his
getting up.
Timar tried every conceivable means to soften her, called her Miss
Almira, his dear friend, and explained to her sport and its usages;
where the devil had she heard of a dog that retrieves a sportsman? she
should rather go after the snipe in the rushes: but he talked to deaf
ears.
He was at last relieved from this dangerous situation by the woman of
the island, who had run up at the report of the gun, and called Almira
by name from afar, on which the dog let go her hold.
"Oh, my God!" she lamented, hastening over the stones to the point of
danger. "I forgot to tell you not to shoot, because Almira was sure to
attack you. She gets in a fury when a shot is fired. Well, I was stupid
not to tell you."
"Never mind, good woman," said Timar, laughing. "Almira would really
make a capital gamekeeper. But look, I have shot a couple of snipe; I
thought they would be a help toward the supper that you will set before
your guests."
"I will fetch them; get into your boat, and when you come back, just
leave your gun at home, for, believe me, if the dog sees you with a gun
on your arm, she will take it away from you. You can't joke with her."
"So I find. A powerful, grand animal that! Before I had time to defend
myself, I was on the ground: I can only thank Heaven that she did not
bite my head off."
"Oh, she never bites any one; but if you defend yourself, she seizes
your arm in her teeth, as if it were in irons, and then holds you fast
till we come and call her off. _Auf Weidersehen!_"
In less than an hour the larger boat had landed its passengers safely at
the island. All the way from the vessel to the shore, Timar talked to
Timéa of Almira and Narcissa, to make the poor child forget her sickness
and her fear of the water. As soon as she set foot on shore, her
seasickness vanished.
Timar went on in front to show the way; Timéa followed, leaning on
Euthemio's arm; and two sailors and the steersman carried behind them on
a stretcher the equivalent of the barter in sacks. Almira's bark was
heard a long way off. These were the sounds of welcome by which the dog
acknowledged the approach of good friends. Almira came half-way, barked
at the whole party, then had a little talk to the sailors, the
steersman, and Timar; then trotting to Timéa, tried to kiss her hand.
But when the dog came to Euthemio, it was quiet, and began to sniff at
him from the soles of his feet upward, never leaving his heels. It
snuffed continually, and shook its head violently, rattling its ears
till they cracked. It had its own opinion on this subject.
The mistress of the island settlement awaited the strangers at the
door, and as soon as they appeared between the trees, called in a loud
voice, "Noémi!"
At this summons some one appeared from inside the garden. Between two
tall thick raspberry hedges, which, like green walls, almost closed in
an arch at the top, came a young girl. Face and form those of a child
just beginning to develop, dressed in a white chemise and petticoat, and
carrying in her upturned overskirt fruit freshly plucked.
The figure coming out of the green grove is idyllic. The delicate tints
of her face seem to have been borrowed from the complexion of the white
rose when she is grave, and take that of the red rose when she blushes,
and that up to the brow. The expression of the clear-arched brow is
personified sweet temper, in complete accord with the innocent look of
the expressive blue eyes; on the tender lips lies a mixture of devoted
regard and modest shyness. The rich and luxuriant golden-brown hair
seems to be curled by nature's hand; a lock thrust back gives a view of
an exquisite little ear. Over the whole face gentle softness is spread.
It is possible that a sculptor might not take each feature as a model,
and perhaps if the face were hewn in marble one might not think it
beautiful; but the head and the whole figure, just as they are, shine
with a loveliness which charms at the first glance, and inthralls more
every moment.
From one shoulder the chemise has dropped, but, that it may not remain
uncovered, there sits a white cat, rubbing her head against the girl's
cheek. The delicate feet of the maiden are naked--why should she not go
barefoot? She walks on a carpet of richest velvet. The spring turf is
interspersed with blue veronica and red geranium.
Euthemio, his daughter, and Timar, stopped at the entrance of the
raspberry arcade to await the approaching figure.
The child knew of no more friendly reception to give the guests than to
offer them the fruit she had in her lap. They were beautiful
red-streaked Bergamot pears. She turned first to Timar. He chose the
best, and gave it to Timéa.
Both girls shrugged their shoulders impatiently. Timéa because she
envied the other one the white cat on her shoulder, but Noémi because
Timar had given the fruit to Timéa.
"Oh, you rude thing!" cried the mistress to her from the cottage; "could
you not put the fruit in a basket, instead of offering it in your apron?
Is that the proper way?"
The little thing grew red as fire, and ran to her mother; the latter
whispered a few words into her ear, so that the others might not
overhear, then kissed the child on the forehead, and said aloud, "Now go
and take from the sailors what they have brought, carry it into the
store-room, and fill the sacks with corn-flour, the pots with honey, and
the baskets with ripe fruit: of the kids, you can choose two for them."
"I can't choose any," whispered the girl; "they must do it themselves."
"Foolish child!" said the woman with a kind reproof; "if it were left to
you, you would keep all the kids and never let one be killed. Very
well, let them choose for themselves, then no one can complain. I will
look after the cooking."
Noémi called the sailors, and opened the food and fruit stores, which
were each in a different cave and shut off by a door. The rock which
formed the summit of the island was one of those wandering blocks,
called "erratic" by geologists--an isolated bowlder, a monolith, which
must once have been detached from a distant mountain, some limestone
formation from the Dolomites, out of a moraine. It was full of large and
small caves, which the first person who took possession of it had
adapted to his own purposes: the largest with the natural chimney for
the kitchen, the highest, as a dove-cote, the others for summer and
winter storehouses. He had settled on the heaven-sent rock, and, like
the wild birds, built his nest there.
The child managed the barter with the crew well and honestly. Then she
gave each his glass of elder-wine to wet the bargain, begged for their
custom when they passed again, and went back to the kitchen.
Here she did not wait to be told to lay the table. She spread a fine
rush mat on the small table in the veranda, and placed on it four
plates, with knives and forks and pewter spoons. And the fifth person?
She will sit at the cat's table. Near the steps to the veranda stands a
small wooden bench; in the center is placed an earthenware plate with a
miniature knife and fork and spoon, and at each end a wooden platter,
one for Almira, the other for Narcissa. They require no _couvert_. When
the three guests and the mistress of the house have sat down and helped
themselves from the dish, it goes to the cat's table, where Noémi serves
her friends. She conducts the division with great fairness--the soft
pieces to Narcissa, the bones to Almira--and helps herself last. They
must not touch their food till she has cooled it for them, however much
Almira may cock her ears, and the cat snuggle up to her mistress's
shoulder. They must obey the girl.
The island woman wished, according to the good or bad Hungarian custom,
to show off before her guests, and especially to prove to Timar that her
larder was independent of his game. She had cooked the two snipe with
oatmeal, but whispered to Timar that that was only food for ladies; for
the gentlemen she had some good fried pork. Timar attacked it bravely,
but Euthemio touched none of it, saying he had no appetite, and Timéa
rose suddenly from the table. But that was natural: she had already cast
many inquisitive glances toward the party at the other table; there was
nothing remarkable in her rising suddenly and going over to sit by
Noémi. Young girls soon make friends. Timéa did not know Hungarian, nor
Noémi Greek; but between them was Narcissa, to whom both languages were
the same.
The white cat seemed to understand perfectly when Timéa said "Horaion
galion" to it, and stroked its back with a soft white hand: then it
crept from Noémi's lap to Timéa's, raised its head to her face and
gently rubbed its white head against her white cheeks, opened its red
mouth, showed its sharp teeth, and blinked at her with cunning eyes;
then sprung on her shoulder, crawled round her neck, and clambered to
Noémi and back again.
Noémi was pleased that the strange young lady liked her favorite so
much, but bitterness mingled with her pleasure when she saw how much the
stranger had fallen in love with the cat, kept and kissed it; and still
more painful was it to realize how easily Narcissa became untrue to her,
how willingly it accepted and replied to the caresses of its new friend,
and took no notice when Noémi called it by name to come back to her.
"Horaion galion" (pretty pussy) pleased it better. Noémi grew angry with
Narcissa, and seized her by the tail to draw her back. Narcissa took
offense, turned her claws on her mistress, and scratched her hand.
Timéa wore on her wrist a blue enameled bracelet in the form of a
serpent. When Narcissa scratched her mistress, Timéa drew off the
elastic bracelet, and wanted to put it on Noémi's arm, obviously with
the intention of comforting her in her pain; but Noémi misunderstood,
and thought the stranger wanted to buy Narcissa with it. But she was not
for sale.
"I don't want the bracelet! I won't sell Narcissa! Keep the bracelet!
Narcissa is mine. Come here, Narcissa!" and as Narcissa would not come,
Noémi gave her a little box on the ear, on which the frightened animal
made a jump over the bench, puffing and spitting, climbed up a nut-tree,
and looked angrily down from thence.
As Timéa and Noémi at this moment looked into each other's eyes, each
read there a dreamy presentiment. They felt like a person who shuts his
eyes for a moment, and in that short time dreams whole years away; yet,
when he awakes, has forgotten it all, and only remembers that the dream
was very long. The two girls felt in that meeting of looks that they
would some day mutually encroach on each other's rights, that they would
have something in common--a grief or a joy--and that, perhaps, like a
forgotten dream, they would only know that each owed this grief or joy
to the other.
Timéa sprung up from beside Noémi and gave the bracelet to the
housewife: then she sat down by Euthemio and leaned her head on his
shoulder.
Timar interpreted the gift. "The young lady gives it to the little girl
as a remembrance--it is gold."
As soon as he said that it was of gold, the woman threw it, frightened,
from her hand, as if it were a real snake. She looked anxiously at
Noémi, and was not even able to articulate "Thank you."
Then Almira suddenly drew attention to herself. The dog had sprung
quickly from its bed, had uttered a low howl with its head up, and now
began to bark with deafening noise. In the sound lay something of the
lion's roar; it was a vehement, defiant tone, as if calling to the
attack, and the dog did not run forward, but remained by the porch,
planted its paws on the ground, and then threw up the earth with its
hind feet.
The woman turned pale. A figure appeared between the trees on the
footpath.
"The dog only barks in that way at one man," she murmured. "There he
comes. It is he!"
CHAPTER VII.
THE VOICES OF THE NIGHT.
The new arrival is a man of youthful appearance; he wears a blouse and
trousers, round his neck a red cotton handkerchief, and on his head a
Turkish fez.
He has a handsome face. If he sat quietly to an artist, every one would
say of his portrait that it was the ideal of a hero; but when he is in
motion, the first thought must be--that is a spy. His features are
regular, the thick hair curly, the lips finely chiseled, the eyes deeply
black; but the wrinkles round them and their restless fire, the upturned
corners of the mouth, and the ever-twitching brows, betray the soul of a
slave to his own appetites.
Almira barked furiously at the new-comer, who came swinging along with
defiant nonchalance, like one who knows that it is other people's duty
to protect him. Noémi told the dog to lie down, but it gave no heed; she
caught the creature's ears in both hands and drew it back: the dog
whined and growled at the discomfort, but did not cease barking. At last
Noémi put her foot on its head and pressed it to the ground. Then Almira
gave in, lay down growling, and let the girl's foot lie on her great
black head, as if that were a burden she could not shake off.
The stranger came whistling and humming up to them. From afar he called
out--"Ah! you have still got that confounded big brute; you haven't had
her poisoned? I shall have to get rid of her in the end. The stupid
beast!" When the young man got near Noémi, he stretched out his hand
with a familiar smile toward the girl's face, as if he would have
pinched her cheek; but she drew her face quickly away.
"Well, my dear little _fiancée_, are you still so shy? How you have
grown since I saw you!"
Noémi looked at the speaker with her head thrown back. She wrinkled her
forehead, curled her lips, and threw a defiantly penetrating glance at
him; even her complexion changed, the rose tint on her cheeks turned
livid. Evidently she could look odious if she chose.
The new-comer, however, quite unabashed, continued, "How pretty you have
grown!"
Instead of answering she said to the dog, "Down, Almira!"
The stranger behaved as though he were quite at home under the veranda,
where his first act was to kiss the hand of the woman of the house. He
greeted Timar with friendly condescension, made a polite bow to Euthemio
and Timéa, and then opened the flood-gates of his eloquence.
"Good-evening, dear mother-in-law! Your obedient servant, captain! Sir
and mademoiselle, you are welcome. My name is Theodor Krisstyan; I am
chevalier and captain, the future son-in-law of this worthy lady. Our
fathers were bosom friends, and betrothed Noémi to me in their
life-time, so I come every year to see my sweetheart in her summer
abode, in order to judge how my bride is growing. Uncommonly delighted
to find you here: you, sir--if I am not mistaken, your name is Timar--I
have had the pleasure of meeting before? The other gentleman, I fancy--"
"Understands nothing but Greek," interrupted Timar, thrusting his hands
well into his pockets, as if he wanted to make it impossible for the
stranger to shake hands over the joy of meeting. He, who from his
calling was always traveling, might very likely have met him before.
Theodor Krisstyan did not feel inclined to occupy himself any more with
Timar, but looked at life from the practical side. "It is just as if you
had expected me; a beautiful supper, an unused place, pork, just my weak
point. Thanks, dear mamma, thanks, gentlemen and young lady; I will pay
my respects to the supper--so many thanks!"
Not that a single person of those addressed had asked him to sit down
and partake; but as though accepting their invitation, he seated himself
in Timéa's empty place and began to enjoy the pork; offering it
repeatedly to Euthemio, and seeming much astonished that any Christian
should neglect such a delicious dish.
Timar rose from the table and said to the hostess, "The
gentleman-passenger and the young lady are tired. They want rest more
than food. Would you be so good as to show them their beds?"
"That shall be done at once," said the woman. "Noémi, go and help the
young lady to undress."
Noémi rose and followed her mother and the two guests into the
back-room. Timar also left the table, at which the new-comer remained
alone, and gobbled down with wolfish hunger every eatable left:
meanwhile, he talked over his shoulder to Timar, and threw to Almira the
bare bones with his fork.
"You must have had a devilish bad journey, sir, with this wind. I can't
think how you got through Denin Kafoin and the Tatalia Pass. Catch,
Almira! and don't be cross with me any more, stupid brute! Do you
remember, sir, how we once met in Galatz?--there, that's for you too,
you black beast!"
When he looked round, he found that neither Timar nor Almira was there.
Timar had gone to the attic to sleep, where he soon made himself a couch
of fragrant hay, while Almira had crept into some cranny in the great
mass of rock.
He turned his chair round, but not till he had drained the last drop
from the wine-jug and the glasses of the other guests. Then he cut a
splinter from the chair he was sitting on, and picked his teeth with it,
like a person who has thoroughly deserved his supper.
Night had set in; travelers weary of knocking about want no rocking.
Timar had stretched himself on the soft sweet hay very comfortably, and
thought that to-night he would sleep like a king. But he deceived
himself. It is not easy to fall asleep after hard work, which has been
mingled with varied emotions. Successive shapes besieged his bed like a
chaotic panorama: a confusion of pursuing forms, threatening rocks,
water-falls, ruined castles, strange women, black dogs, white cats; and
amid it all a howling tempest, blasts of the horn, cracking of whips,
showers of gold, laughing, whispering, and screaming human voices.
And all at once people began to speak in the room below. He recognized
the voices, the hostess and the last comer talking together. The garret
was separated from the other room only by a thin floor, and every word
was audible, as if it had been whispered in the listener's ear. They
spoke in suppressed tones, only now and then the man raised his voice.
"Well, Mother Therese, have you much money?" began the man.
"You know very well that I have none. Don't you know that I only barter
and never take money?"
"That's very stupid. I don't like it. And what's more, I don't believe
it."
"It is as I say. Whoever comes to buy my fruit brings me something for
my own use. What should I do here with money?"
"I know what you could do, you could give it to me. You never think of
me. When I marry Noémi you can't give her dried plums for a dowry; but
you don't care about your daughter's happiness. You ought to help me,
that I may get a good situation. I have just received my nomination as
first dragoman at the embassy; but I have no money to get there, for my
purse has been stolen, and now I shall lose my situation."
The woman answered in a calm tone, "That any one has given you any place
that you could lose I don't believe; but I do believe you have a place
you can't lose. That you have no money, I believe that; but that it was
stolen from you I don't believe."
"Well, don't then. And I don't believe you have no money; you must have
some. Smugglers land here sometimes, and they always pay well."
"Speak loud, of course! Yes, it is true, smugglers often land on the
island; but they don't come near my hut, or if they do, they buy fruit
and give me salt in exchange. Will you have some salt?"
"You are laughing at me. Well, and such visitors as you have to-night?"
"I don't know whether they are rich or not."
"Ask them for money! Demand it! Don't make a solemn face! You must get
money somehow; don't try to take me in with this ridiculous Australian
barter. Get ducats if you want to keep the peace with me; you know if I
say a single word at the right place it's all up with you."
"Softly, you wretched man!"
"Ay! now you want me to whisper. Well, shut my mouth then, be kind to
me, Therese--let me have a little money."
"But I tell you there is none in the house! Don't worry me! I have not a
farthing, and don't want any; there is a curse on anything which is
gold. There, all my chests and boxes are here; look through them, and if
you find anything, take it."
It appeared that the man was not slow to take advantage of this
permission, for soon he was heard to exclaim, "Ah! What is this? A gold
bracelet."
"Yes; the strange lady gave it to Noémi. If you can make use of it, take
it."
"It's worth some ten ducats--well, that's better than nothing. Don't be
angry, Noémi; when you are my wife I will buy you two bracelets, each
thirty ducats in weight, and with a sapphire in the middle--no, an
emerald. Which do you prefer, a sapphire or an emerald?" He laughed at
his sally, and as no one answered his question, he continued, "But now,
Mother Therese, prepare a bed for your future son-in-law, your dear
Theodor, so that he may dream sweetly of his beloved Noémi!"
"I can not give you a bed. In the next room and in the garret are our
guests; you can't sleep here in our room, that would not be
proper--Noémi is no longer a child. Go out and lie down on the bench."
"Oh, you hard-hearted, cruel Therese. You send me to the hard bench--me,
your beloved future son-in-law!"
"Noémi, give your pillow--there, take it! And here's my coverlet.
Good-night."
"Yes, if there were not that accursed great dog out there--the fierce
brute will devour me."
"Don't be afraid, I will chain her up. Poor beast! she is never tied up
except when you are on the island."
Frau Therese had some trouble to entice Almira out of her hole; the poor
dog knew well enough what awaited her in these circumstances, and that
she would now be chained up, but she was used to obedience, and allowed
her mistress to fasten the chain.
But this made her all the more furious against him who was the cause of
her confinement. As soon as Therese had gone back to her room, and
Theodor remained alone outside, the dog began to bark madly, and danced
about on the small space left free to her by the chain, now and then
making a spring, to see whether she could succeed in breaking the collar
or the chain, or rooting up the tree-trunk to which the chain was
fastened.
But Theodor teased her again. He thought it amusing to enrage an animal
which could not reach him, and foamed with fury at its impotence. He
went closer, leaving only a step between himself and the point the chain
permitted the dog to reach; then he began to creep toward her on all
fours and make faces at her. He brayed at her like a donkey, put his
tongue out, spat in her face, and imitated the dog's bark. "Bow-wow! You
would like to eat me, wouldn't you? Bow-wow! There's my nose; bite it
off if you can. You're a lovely dog--you horrid beast! Bow-wow! Break
your chain and come wrestle with me; snap at my finger, there it is
before your nose; only don't you wish you may get it?"
At the moment of her greatest fury, Almira suddenly stopped. She barked
no more; she understood. It is the wise one that gives in, thought she.
She stretched her head up as if to look down on that other four-legged
beast in front of her, then turned and scratched as dogs do, backward,
with her hind feet, whirling up dust and sand, so that the other brute
got his eyes and mouth full of it, which made him beat a retreat,
breaking out in the human bark--curses, to wit. But Almira retired with
her chain into the hole near the elder-tree and came out no more; she
ceased to bark, but a hot panting could be heard for a long time.
Timar heard it too. He could not sleep; he had left the trap-door open
to get some light. The moon shone, and when the dog was silenced, deep
stillness lay over the scene; a wonderful calm, rendered more fantastic
by the isolated voices of the night and the solitude. The rattle of
carriages, the clatter of mills, human voices--none of these struck the
ear. This is the kingdom of swamps, islets, and shallows. From time to
time a deep note sounds through the night--the boom of the bittern, that
hermit of the marsh. Flights of night-birds strike long-drawn chords in
the air, and the breathing wind stirs in the poplars, as it sighs
through their quivering leaves. The seal cries in the reeds like the
voice of a weeping child, and the cockchafer buzzes on the white wall of
the hut. All around lies the dark brake, in which fairies seem to hold a
torch-light dance; under the decayed trees will-o'-the-wisps wander,
pursuing each other. But the flower-garden is flooded by the full
radiance of the moon, and night-moths hover on silvery peacock wings
round the tall mallows. How exquisite, how divine is this solitude! the
whole soul is absorbed in its contemplation.
If only no human tones were mingled with these voices of the night!
But there below in the two little divisions of the hut lie other
sleepless people, whom some evil spirit has robbed of their slumber, and
who add their deep sighs to the other voices. From one room Timar heard
the sigh, "Oh, thou dear Christ!" while from the other "Oh, Allah!"
resounded.
They can not sleep; what is there down below which keeps people awake?
While Timar tried to collect his thoughts, an idea flashed through his
mind which induced him to leave his couch, throw on the coat he had had
over him, and descend the ladder to the ground.
At the same moment, some one in one of the rooms below had had the same
thought. And when Timar, standing at the corner of the house, uttered
the name of "Almira" under his breath, another voice from the door
opening into the veranda called Almira's name too, as if one were the
ghostly echo of the other.
The speakers approached each other with surprise.
The other person was Therese. "You have come down from your bed?" she
asked.
"Yes; I could not sleep."
"And what did you want with Almira?"
"I will tell you the truth. The thought struck me, whether that . . .
man had poisoned the dog, because she became so suddenly silent."
"Just my idea. Almira!" At the call the dog came out of the hole and
wagged her tail.
"No; it's all right," said Therese. "His bed on the veranda is
undisturbed. Come, Almira, I will set you free."
The great creature laid her head on her mistress's lap, and allowed her
to take off the leather collar, sprung round her, licked her cheeks, and
then turned to Timar, raised one of the shaggy paws, and placed it as a
proof of doggish respect in his open hand. Then the dog shook herself,
stretched herself out, and, after a roll on both sides, lay quiet on the
soft grass. She barked no more; they could be thoroughly satisfied that
that man no longer remained on the island.
Therese came nearer to Timar. "Do you know this man?"
"I once met him in Galatz. He came on board and behaved so that I could
not make up my mind whether he was a spy or a smuggler. At last I got
rid of him, and that concluded our acquaintance."
"And how came you by the notion that he might have poisoned Almira?"
"To tell you the truth, every word spoken down below is audible in the
garret, and as I had lain down I was forced to hear all the conversation
between you."
"Did you hear how he threatened me? If I could not satisfy him, it would
only cost him a single word, and we should be ruined?"
"Yes; I heard that."
"And what do you think about us? You believe that some great, nameless
crime has banished us to this island outside the world? that we drive
some dubious trade, of which one can not speak? or that we are the
homeless heirs of some dishonored name, who must hide from the sight of
the authorities? Say, what do you think?"
"Nothing, my dear lady; I don't trouble my head about it. You have given
me hospitable shelter for a night, and I am grateful. The storm is over;
to-morrow I shall go on my way, and think no more of what I saw and
heard on this island."
"I do not want you to leave us so. Without your desire you have heard
things which must be explained to you. I do not know why, but from the
first moment when I saw you, you inspired me with confidence, and the
thought troubles me that you should leave us with suspicion and
contempt: that suspicion would prevent both you and me from sleeping
under this roof. The night is quiet, and suitable to the story of the
secrets of a hard life. You shall form your own judgment about us; I
will conceal nothing, and tell you the whole truth, and when you have
heard the history of this lonely island and this clay hut, you won't
say, 'To-morrow I go away and think no more of it,' but you will come
back year by year, when your business brings you near us, and rest for a
night under this peaceful roof. Sit down by me on the doorstep, and
listen to the story of our house."
CHAPTER VIII.
THE HISTORY OF THE ISLANDERS.
"Twelve years ago we lived in Pancsova, where my husband held a
municipal office. His name was Bellovary; he was young, handsome, and
honest, and we loved each other dearly. I was then two-and-twenty and he
was thirty.
"I bore him a daughter, whom we called Noémi. We were not rich, but well
off; he had his post, a pretty house, and a splendid orchard and meadow.
I was an orphan when we married, and brought him some money; we were
able to live respectably.
"My husband had a friend, Maxim Krisstyan, of whom he was very fond. The
man who has just been here is his son, who was then thirteen, a dear,
handsome, clever boy. When my little daughter was still a baby, the
fathers already began to say they would make a pair, and I was glad when
the boy took the little thing's hand and asked her, 'Will you be my
wife?' at which the child laughed merrily.
"Krisstyan was a grain dealer without having ever learned regular
business, but was like the speculators in a small way, who catch hold of
a rope behind the great wholesale dealers, and go blindly in their wake.
If the speculation succeeds, well and good; if not, they are ruined. As
he always won, he thought there was nothing easier than mercantile
transactions. In the spring he went round to see the crops, and made
contracts with the large dealers for the grain to be delivered to them
after the harvest. He had a regular customer in the wholesale merchant
of Komorn, Athanasius Brazovics, who made large advances to him every
spring for grain which he was to deliver in autumn at the price settled
in advance, on board ship. This was a lucrative affair for Krisstyan;
but I have often thought since that it was not so much trade as a game
of chance, when one sells what does not yet exist. Brazovics advanced
large sums to Krisstyan, and as the latter had no real property,
security was required of him. My husband went surety for him gladly--was
he not a landowner and Krisstyan's friend? Krisstyan led an easy life;
while my good man sat for hours bent over his desk, the other was at the
café, smoking his pipe and chatting with tradespeople of his own sort.
But at last God's scourge alighted on him. The year 1819 was a terrible
year; in the spring the crops looked splendid over the whole country,
and every one expected cheap prices. In the Banat a merchant was lucky
if he could make a contract for delivery of grain at four gulden a
measure. Then came a wet summer--for sixteen weeks it rained every day;
the corn rotted on its stem. In places reputed as a second Canaan,
famine set in, and in autumn the price of grain rose to twenty gulden a
measure: and even so there was none to be had, for the landowners kept
it for seed."
"I remember it well," Timar interrupted. "I was then just beginning my
career as a ship's captain."
"Well, in that year, it happened that Maxim could not fulfill the
contract he had concluded with Athanasius Brazovics; the difference he
had to cover made an enormous sum. What did he do then? He collected his
outstanding debts, got loans from several credulous people, and
disappeared in the night from Pancsova, taking his money with him, and
leaving his son behind.
"He could easily do it; his whole property consisted of money, and he
left nothing for which he cared. But what is the good of all the money
in the world if it can make a man so bad as to care for nothing else?
His debts and liabilities rested on the shoulders of those who had been
his good friends, and stood security for him, and among these was my
husband.
"Then came Athanas Brazovics, and required from the sureties the
fulfillment of the contract. It was true that he had advanced money to
the absconding debtor, and we offered to pay it back: we could have sold
half our property, and so met the obligation. But he would not hear of
it, and insisted on the fulfillment of the contract; it was not how much
money he had lost, but what sums we were bound to pay him. Thus he made
five-fold profits; his contract gave him the right to do so. We begged
and entreated him to be content with smaller gain--for it was only a
question of more or less gain, not of loss--but he was inflexible; he
required from the sureties the satisfaction of his claims in full. What
is the use, say I, of faith and religion, and all Christian and Jewish
churches, if it is permitted to make such a demand?
"The affair came before the court; the judge gave sentence that our
house, our fields, our last farthing, should be distrained, sealed and
put up to auction.
"But what is the use of the law, a human institution, if it can be
possible that people should be brought to beggary by a debt of which
they have never had a groschen, and fall into misery for the benefit of
a third, who rises laughing from the ground?
"We tried everything to save ourselves from utter ruin. My husband went
to Ofen and Vienna to beg an audience. We knew the artful deceiver who
had escaped with his money was living in Turkey, and begged for his
extradition, that he might be brought here to satisfy those who had
presented claims against him; but we were told that there was no power
to do so. Then what is the use of the emperor, the ministers, the
authorities, if they are not in a position to extend protection to their
subjects in distress? After this fearful blow, which brought us all to
beggary, my poor husband one night sent a bullet through his head. He
would not look on the misery of his family, the tears of his wife, the
pale, starved face of his child, and fled from us into the grave.
"But what is a husband good for, if, when he falls into misfortune, he
knows no other outlet than to quit the world himself, and leave wife and
child alone behind?
"But the horrors were not yet at an end. I was a beggar and homeless;
now they tried to make me an infidel. The wife of the suicide begged her
pastors in vain to bury the unhappy man. The dean was a strict and holy
man, for whom the laws of the Church were the first thought. He denied
my husband a decent burial, and I had to look on while the dear form of
my adored one was carried by the knacker's cart to be hastily buried in
a corner of a church-yard. What are the clergy for, if they can not
relieve us of such misery as that? What is the whole world about?
"Only one thing was left; they drove me to kill myself and my child,
both at once. I wrapped a shawl round the child at my breast, and went
with it to the river bank.
"I was alone. Three times I went up and down to see where the water was
deepest. Then something plucked my dress and drew me back. I looked
round. Who was it? The dog here--of all living beings the only friend
left to me.
"It was on the shore of the Ogradina Island that this happened. On this
island we had a beautiful fruit-garden and a little summer-house; but
there too the official seal had been affixed to every door, and I could
only go through the kitchen and out under the trees. Then I sat down by
the Danube and began to reflect. What, am I, I, a human being, a woman,
to be worse than an animal! Did one ever see a dog drown its young and
then kill itself? No, I will not kill either myself or my child; I will
live and bring it up. But how? Like the wolves or the gypsy woman, who
have no home and no food. I will beg--beg of the ground, the waters, the
wilderness of the forest; only not of men--never!
"My poor husband had told me of a little island which had been formed
some fifty years ago in the reed-beds near Ogradina; he often went
shooting there in autumn, and spoke much of a hollow rock in which he
had sought shelter from bad weather. He said, 'The island has no master;
the Danube built it up for no one; the soil, the trees, the grass which
grow on it belong to no one.' If it is ownerless, this island, why
should not I take possession of it? I ask it of God, I ask it of the
Danube. Why should they refuse it? I will raise fruit there. How? and
what fruit? I do not know, but necessity will teach me.
"A boat remained to me which the officer had not noticed, and which,
therefore, had not been seized. Noémi, Almira and I got into it, and I
rowed myself over to the ownerless island. I had never used an oar
before, but necessity taught me.
"When I touched this piece of ground, a wonderful feeling took
possession of me: it was as if I had forgotten what had happened to me
out in the world. I was surrounded by a pleasant silence and rest, which
softened my heart.
"After I had explored pasture, grove, and meadow, I knew what I should
do here. In the field bees were humming, in the woods hazel-nuts were
hanging, and on the surface of the river floated water-chestnuts. Crabs
basked on the shore, edible snails crept up the trees, and in the marshy
thickets manna was ripening. Kind Providence, Thou hast spread a table
before me! The grove was full of wild fruit--seedlings; the blackbirds
had brought seeds from the neighboring island, and already the wild
apples grew rosy on the trees, and the raspberry bushes bore a few
belated berries.
"Yes, I knew what I would do on the island. I alone would make of it a
Garden of Eden. The work to be done here could be managed by a single
person, one woman, and then we should live here like the first man in
Paradise.
"I had found the rock with its natural grottoes, in the largest of which
a layer of hay was spread, which must have served as a bed to my poor
husband. I had a widow's right to it; it was my legacy. I hushed my
child to sleep there, made it a couch in the hay, and covered it with my
large shawl. Then I told Almira to stay there and watch over Noémi till
I came back, and rowed across to the large island again. On the veranda
of my old summer-house there was an awning spread out, which I took
down; it would serve as a tent or roof, and perhaps later on be used for
winter clothing. I packed in it what food and vegetables I could see,
and made a bundle as large as I could carry on my back. I had come to
the house in a four-horse wagon richly laden; with a bundle on my back I
left it; and yet I had been neither wicked nor a spendthrift. But what
if even that bundle were stolen goods? It is true that the contents were
my own; but that I should carry them off, was it not theft? I hardly
knew: notions of right and wrong, the legal or the illegal, were
confused in my head. I fled with the bundle like a thief out of my own
home. On my way through the garden I took a cutting of each of my
beautiful fruit-trees, and shoots from the figs and bushes, picked up
some seeds from the ground and put them in my apron; then I kissed the
drooping branches of the weeping willow under which I had so often dozed
and dreamed. Those happy dreams were gone forever. I never went back
there. The boat took me safely along the Danube.
"While I rowed back two things fretted me. One was that there were
noxious inhabitants on the island--snakes; probably some in that grotto:
the thought filled me with horror and alarm for Noémi. The other anxiety
was this. I can live for years on wild honey, water-nuts, and manna
fruit; my child lives on her mother's breast; but how shall I feed
Almira? The faithful creature can not live on what nourishes me; and yet
I must keep her, for without Almira as a protector I should die of
fright in this solitude. When I had dragged my bundle to the grotto, I
saw before me the still quivering tail of a large snake, and not far off
lay its head, bitten off; Almira had eaten what lay between the head and
tail. The clever beast lay before the child, wagging her tail and
licking her lips, as if to say, I have made a good meal. Thenceforward
she made war on snakes; they were her daily food. In the winter she
scratched them out of their holes. My friend--for so I grew to call the
dog--had found her own livelihood, and freed me from the objects of my
dread.
"Oh, sir, it was an indescribable feeling, our first night alone
here--no one near but my God, my child, and my dog. I can not call it
painful--it was almost bliss. I spread the linen awning over us all
three, and we were only awoke by the twitter of the birds. Now began my
work--savages' work, for before sunrise I must collect manna, called by
Hungarians 'Dew-millet.' Poor women go out into the swamp, where this
bush with its sweet seeds luxuriates; they hold up their dress in both
hands, shake the bush, and the ripe seeds fall into their lap. That is
the bread from heaven for those whom no one feeds. Sir, I lived two
whole years on that bread, and thanked daily on my knees Him who cares
for the birds of the air. Wild fruit, honey, nuts, crabs, wild fowls'
eggs, water-chestnuts preserved for winter use, land snails, dried
mushrooms, formed my food. Praised be the Lord who so richly provides
the table of His poor! And during the whole time I labored for the
object I had set before me. I grafted the wild stocks with the cuttings
I had brought, and planted in the cultivated soil fruit-trees, vines,
and walnut-seeds. On the south side I sowed cotton-plant and silky
swallow-wort, whose products I wove on a loom made of willow-wood, and
made clothes for us. From rushes and reeds I made hives, in which I
housed swarms of wild bees, and even in the first year I could begin a
trade in wax and honey. Millers and smugglers often came here; they
helped me with the hard labor, and never did me any harm. They paid me
for provisions by their work; they knew already that I never took money.
When the fruit-trees began to bear, then I lived in luxury, for in this
alluvial soil all trees flourish, to that it is a pleasure to see them.
I have pears which ripen their fruit twice in a year; all the young ones
make fresh shoots at St. John's day, and the others bear every year. I
have learned their secrets, and know that in the hands of a good
gardener there should be no failure nor over-crop. Animals understand
the language of man, and I believe that trees too have ears and eyes for
those who tend them kindly and listen to their private wishes; and they
are proud to give them pleasure in return. Oh, trees are very sensible!
a soul dwells in them. I consider that man a murderer who cuts down a
noble tree.
"These are my friends. I love them, and live in and by them. What they
yield me year by year is fetched away by the people of the villages and
mills round, who give me in exchange what I need for my housekeeping. I
have no use for money, I have a horror of it--the accursed money, which
drove me out of the world and my husband out of life: I don't want ever
to see it again.
"But I am not so foolish as to be unprepared for some years of failure,
which make vain the work of man. There might be late frosts or
hail-storms, which would destroy the blessings of the season; but I am
prepared for such bad times. In the cellar of my rock and in its airy
crevices I store away whatever durable wares I possess--wine in casks,
honey in pots, wool and cotton in bales, in sufficient quantity to keep
us from want for two years. You see I have some savings, though not in
money; I may call myself rich, and yet for twelve years not a single
coin has passed through my hands. For I have lived on this island twelve
years, sir, with the other two, for I count Almira as a person. Noémi
declares we are four; she counts Narcissa, too--silly child!
"Many people know of our existence, but treachery is unknown here. The
artificial barrier which exists between the frontiers of the two
countries has made the people about here very reserved. No one meddles
in a stranger's affairs, and every one instinctively keeps secret what
he knows. No intelligence from here ever reaches Vienna, Ofen, or
Stamboul. And why should they inform against me? I am in nobody's way,
and do no harm; I grow fruit on my bit of desert land, which has no
master. God the Lord and the royal Danube gave it to me, and I thank
them for it daily. I thank Thee, my God! I thank Thee, my King!
"I hardly know if I have any religion; it is twelve years since I saw a
priest or a church. Noémi knows nothing about it. I have taught her to
read and write: I tell her of God, and Jesus, and Moses, as I knew them.
Of the good, all-merciful, omnipresent God--of Jesus, sublime in His
sufferings, and divine in His humanity--and of Moses, that leader of a
people to liberty, who preferred to wander hungry and thirsty in the
wilderness rather than exchange freedom for the flesh-pots of
slavery--Moses who preached goodness and brotherly love--of these as I
picture them to myself. But of the relentless God of vengeance, the God
of the chosen people--a God calling for sacrifices, and dwelling in
temples--of that privileged Christ asking for blind faith, laying heavy
burdens on our shoulders, followed by a crowd of worshipers--and of the
avaricious, revengeful, selfish Moses of whom books and preachers
tell--of these she knows nothing.
"Now you know who we are, and what we are doing here, you shall learn
with what we are threatened by this man.
"He is the son of the man for whom my husband stood surety, who drove
him to suicide, on whose account we have fled from human society into
the desert. He was a boy of thirteen when we lost our all, and the blow
fell on him also, for his father had forsaken him.
"Indeed, I do not wonder that the son has turned out such a wretch.
Abandoned by his own father, thrust out like a beggar into the world,
cast on the compassion of strangers, deceived and robbed by the one on
whom his childish trust was placed, branded in his earliest youth as the
son of a rogue, is it surprising if he was forced to become what he is?
"And yet I hardly know what to think of him; but what I do know is
enough. The people who come to the island can tell a great deal about
him. Not long after his father had escaped, he also started from Turkey,
saying he was going to look for his father. Some maintained that he had
found him, others that he had never been able to trace him. According to
one report he robbed his own father and squandered the money he stole,
but no one knows for certain. From him nothing can be learned, for he
tells nothing but lies. As to where he has been, and what he has done,
he relates romances, in whose invention he is so well versed, and which
he presents so skillfully, that he staggers even those who have actual
knowledge of the facts, and makes them doubt the testimony of their own
eyes. You see him here to-day and there to-morrow. In Turkey, Wallachia,
Poland, and Hungary he has been met. In all these countries he is by way
of knowing every person of distinction. Whomsoever he meets he takes in,
and whoever has once been deceived by him may be sure it will happen
again. He speaks ten languages, and whatever countryman he pretends to
be, he is accepted as such. He appears now as a merchant, then a
soldier, again as a seafaring man; to-day a Turk, to-morrow a Greek. He
once came out as a Polish count, then as the betrothed of a Russian
princess, and again as a quack doctor, who cured all maladies with his
pills. What his real profession may be no one knows. But one thing is
certain, he is a paid spy. Whether in the service of the Turks,
Austrians, or Russians, who can tell? Perhaps he is in the pay of all
three and more besides--he serves each, and betrays all. Every year he
comes several times to this island. He comes in a boat from the Turkish
shore, and goes in the same boat from here to the Hungarian bank. Of
what he does there I have no idea; but I am inclined to believe that he
inflicts the torture of his presence on me for his own amusement. I
know, too, that he is an epicure and a sensualist: he finds good food
here, and a blooming young girl whom he loves to tease by calling her
his bride. Noémi hates him; she has no idea how well founded is her
abhorrence.
"Yet I do not think that Theodor Krisstyan visits this island only for
these reasons; it must have other secrets unknown to me. He is a paid
spy, and has a bad heart besides; he is rotten to the core, and ripe for
any villainy. He knows that I and my daughter have only usurped the
island, and that by law I have no claim to it, and by the possession of
this secret he lays us under contribution, vexes and torments us both.
"He threatens that if we do not give him what he wants, he will inform
against us both in Austria and Turkey, and as soon as these governments
know that a new piece of land has been formed in the midst of the
Danube, which is not included in any treaty, a dispute about its
jurisdiction will commence between the countries, and until its
conclusion all the inhabitants will be warned off, as happened in the
case of Allion Castle and the Cserna River.
"It would only cost this man a word to annihilate all that I have
brought to perfection by my twelve years' labor; to turn this Eden,
where we are so happy, back into a wilderness, and thrust us out anew,
homeless, into the world. Yes, and more still. We have not only to fear
discovery by the imperial officials, but discovery by the priest. If the
archbishops, the patriarchs, archimandrite, and deans learned that a
girl is growing up here who has never seen a church since she was
baptized, they would take her away by force and put her in a convent.
Now, sir, do you understand those sighs which kept you awake?"
Timar gazed at the full disk of the moon, which was beginning to sink
behind the poplars. "Why," thought he to himself, "am I not a man of
influence?"
"So this wretch," continued Therese, "can throw us into poverty any day.
He need only give information in Vienna or Stamboul that here on the
Danube a new territory exists, and we should be ruined. No one here
would betray us--he alone is capable of it. But I am prepared for the
worst. The whole foundation of this island is solely and entirely formed
by the rock: it alone stems the force of the Danube current. In the year
when Milos made war against the Serbs, some Servian smugglers hid three
barrels of blasting powder in the bushes near here, and no one has ever
fetched them away. Perhaps those who hid them were taken prisoners by
the Turks, or killed. I found them, and have concealed them in the
deepest cavity of this great rock. Sir, if they try to drive me from
this island, now ownerless, I shall thrust a burning match into the
powder, and the rock and all upon it will be blown into the air. In the
next spring, after the ice has melted, no one would find a trace of the
island. And now you know why you could not sleep well here."
Timar leaned his head on his hand and looked away.
"There is one more thing I ought to say," said Frau Therese, bending
close to Timar, that he might hear her low whisper--"I fancy this man
had another reason for coming here and vanishing again, besides his
having gambled away his money in some low pot-house, and wanting to get
more out of me. His visit was either on your account, or that of the
other gentleman. Be on your guard, if either of you dreads the discovery
of a secret."
The moon disappeared behind the poplars, and it began to dawn in the
east. Blackbirds commenced their song; it was morning. From the Morova
Island long-drawn trumpet-calls sounded, to awake the seafaring folk.
Steps were audible in the sand; a sailor came from the landing-place
with the news that the vessel was ready for departure, the wind had gone
down, and they could proceed. The guests came out of the little
dwelling: Euthemio Trikaliss and his daughter, the beautiful Timéa, with
her dazzling pale face.
Noémi also was up and boiling fresh goat's milk for breakfast, with
roasted maize instead of coffee, and honey for sugar. Timéa took none,
but let Narcissa drink the milk instead, who did not despise the
stranger's offer, to Noémi's great vexation.
Trikaliss asked Timar where the stranger had gone who came last evening?
Timar told him he had left in the night. At this intelligence his face
fell.
Then they all took leave of their hostess. Timéa was out of sorts, and
still complained of feeling unwell. Timar remained behind, and gave
Therese a bright Turkish silk scarf as a present for Noémi; she thanked
him, and said the child should wear it. Then they took the path leading
to the boat, and Therese and Almira accompanied them to the shore. But
Noémi went up to the top of the rock: there, sitting on soft moss and
stonecrop, she watched the boat away.
Narcissa crept after her, cowered in her lap, and crept with bending
neck into her bosom. "Be off, faithless one! that is how you love me.
You leave me in the lurch, and make up to the other girl, just because
she is pretty and I am not. Go! I don't love you any longer!" and then
she caught the coaxing cat with both hands to her breast, pressed her
smooth chin on the white head of the little flatterer, and gazed after
the boat. In her eye glittered a tear.
CHAPTER IX.
ALI TSCHORBADSCHI.
The following day the "St. Barbara" continued her voyage with a fair
wind up the Hungarian Danube. Until evening nothing remarkable occurred,
and all went to bed early; they agreed that the previous night no one
had been able to sleep. But this night also was to be a wakeful one for
Timar. All was quiet on board the ship, which lay at anchor--only the
monotonous splash of the wavelets against the vessel broke the
stillness; but amidst the silence it seemed to him as if his neighbor
was busy with important and mysterious affairs. From the neighboring
cabin, which was only divided from his by a wooden partition, came all
sorts of sounds; the clank of money, a noise as of drawing a cork and
stirring with a spoon, as of one clasping his hands and performing his
ablutions in the darkness, and then again those sighs, as in the
previous night, "Oh, Allah!"
At last there was a gentle knocking at the partition. Trikaliss
called--"Come to me here, sir."
Timar dressed quickly and hastened into the cabin. There were two beds,
and between them a table. The curtains were closed in front of one, and
on the other lay Euthemio. On the table stood a casket and two small
glasses. "What are your orders, sir?" asked Timar.
"I have no orders--I entreat."
"You want something?"
"I shall not want anything long. I am dying; I want to die--I have taken
poison. Don't give the alarm--sit down and listen to what I have to tell
you. Timéa will not wake. I have given her opium to send her into a
deep sleep, for she must not wake up now. Don't interrupt; what you
would say is useless, but I have much to tell you, and only one short
hour left, for the poison acts quickly. Make no vain attempts to save
me. I hold the antidote in my hand--if I repented of my deed it rests
with me to undo it. But I will not--and I am right--so sit down and
listen.
"My true name is not Euthemio Trikaliss but Ali Tschorbadschi. I was
once governor of Candia, and then treasurer in Stamboul. You know what
is passing in Turkey now. The Ulemas and governors are rising against
the sultan, because he is making innovations. At such times men's lives
are of little value. One party murders by thousands those who are not
its allies, and the other party burns by thousands the houses of those
in power. No one is high enough to be safe from his rulers or his
slaves. The Kaimakan of Stamboul had at least six hundred respectable
Turks strangled there, and then was stabbed by his own slave in the
Mosque of St. Sophia. Every change cost human blood. When the sultan
went to Edren, twenty-six important men were arrested, and twenty of
them beheaded, while the other six were stretched on the rack. After
they had made false accusations against the great men of the country in
order to save themselves, they were strangled; then those were arrested
against whom they had borne witness, and these suspected nobles
disappeared without being heard of again. The sultan's secretary, Waffat
Effendi, was sent to Syria, and murdered by the Druses. The Pasha Pertao
was invited to dinner by the governor of Edren, Emin Pasha: when the
meal was over, black coffee was brought, and he was told that the sultan
commanded him to take poison in it. Pertao only asked that he might be
allowed to mix the poison he had with him in the coffee, as it was more
certain; then he blessed the sultan, performed his ablutions, prayed and
died. Even in these days every Turkish noble carries poison in his
signet-ring, to have it at hand when his turn comes.
"I knew in good time when my turn was coming. Not that I was a
conspirator, but for two reasons I was ripe for the sickle; these
reasons were my money and my daughter.
"The treasury wanted my treasures and the seraglio my daughter. Death is
easy, and I am ready for it; but I will not let my daughter go into the
harem, nor myself be made a beggar. I determined to upset the
calculations of my enemies and fly with my daughter and my property; but
I could not go by sea, for the new galleys would have overtaken me. I
had kept a passport for Hungary in readiness for a long time; I
disguised myself as a Greek merchant, shaved off my long beard, and
reached Galatz by by-roads. From there I could go no further by land; I
therefore hired a vessel and loaded it with grain which I bought: in
this way I could best save my wealth. When you told me the name of the
ship's owner I was very glad, for Athanas Brazovics is a connection of
mine; Timéa's mother was a Greek of his family. I have often shown
kindness to this man, and he can return it now. Allah is great and
wise--no man can escape his fate. You guessed I was a fugitive, even if
you were not clear whether you had a criminal or a political refugee on
board--still you thought it your duty as commander of the vessel to
help the passenger intrusted to you in his speedy escape. By a miracle
we traversed safely the rocks and whirlpools of the Iron Gate; by
fool-hardy audacity we eluded the pursuit of the Turkish brigantine; by
lucky chance we escaped quarantine and the search at the
custom-house--and after we had left every bugbear behind, I stumbled
over a straw under my feet into my grave.
"That man who followed us last evening to the unknown island was a spy
of the Turkish Government. I know him, and he certainly recognized me;
no one could have traced me except himself. He has hurried on in front,
and at Pancsova they are ready to receive me. Don't speak--I know what
you mean; you think it is Hungarian territory, and that governments
grant no extradition of political refugees.
"But they would not pursue me as a political criminal, but as a
thief--unjustly--for what I took was my own, and if the State has claims
on me, there are my twenty-seven houses in Galatz, by which they can be
satisfied; but in spite of that they will cry after me 'Catch thief!'
"I pass for one who has robbed the treasury, and Austria gives up
escaped thieves to Turkey if the Turkish spies succeed in tracing them.
This man has recognized me and sealed my fate."
Heavy drops of perspiration stood on the speaker's brow. His face had
turned as yellow as wax.
"Give me a drink of water that I may go on, for I have still much to
tell you. I can not save myself, but by dying I can save my daughter and
her property. Allah wills it, and who can flee from His presence? So
swear to me by your faith and your honor that you will carry out my
instructions. First, when I am dead, do not bury me on shore--a
Mussulman does not require Christian burial, so bury me like a sailor;
sew me up in a piece of sail-cloth, fasten at my head and feet a heavy
stone, then sink me where the Danube is deepest. Do this, my son, and
when it is done, steer steadily for Komorn, and take care of Timéa!
"Here in this casket is money--about a thousand ducats; the rest of my
property is in the sacks packed as grain. I leave on my table a note
which you must keep. I declare therein that I have contracted dysentery
by immoderate enjoyment of melons, and am dying of it; further, that my
whole possessions were only these thousand ducats. This will serve you
as a security that no one may accuse you of having caused my death or
embezzled my money. I give you nothing; what you do is of your own kind
heart, and God will reward you: He is the best creditor you can have.
And then take Timéa to Athanas Brazovics and beg him to adopt my
daughter. He has a daughter himself who may be a sister to her. Give him
the money--he must spend it on the education of the child; and give over
to him also the cargo, and beg him to be present himself when the sacks
are emptied. There is good grain in them, and it might be changed. You
understand?"
The dying man looked in Timar's face, and struggled for breath. "For--"
Again speech failed him. "Did I say anything? I had more to say--but my
thoughts grow confused. How red the night is! How red the moon is in the
sky! Yes; the Red Crescent--" A deep groan from Timéa's bed attracted
his attention and gave another turn to his thoughts. He raised himself
anxiously in his bed, and sought with a trembling hand for something
under his pillow, his eyes starting from their sockets. "Ah, I had
almost forgotten--Timéa! I gave her a sleeping-draught--if you do not
wake her up in time she will sleep forever. Here in this bottle is an
antidote. As soon as I am dead, take it and rub her brow, temples, and
chest, until she awakes. Ah! how nearly I had taken her with me! but no,
she must live. Must she not? You vow to me by all you hold sacred, that
you will wake her, and bring her back to life--that you will not let her
slumber on into eternity?"
The dying man pressed Timar's hand convulsively to his breast: on his
distorted features was already imprinted the last death-struggle. "What
was I talking of? What had I to tell you? What was my last word? Yes;
right--the Red Crescent!"
Through the open window the half-circle of the waning moon shone
blood-red, rising from the nocturnal mists. Was the dying man in his
delirium thinking of this? Or did it remind him of something?
"Yes--the Red Crescent," he stammered once more; then the death-throes
closed his lips--one short struggle, and he was a corpse.
CHAPTER X.
THE LIVING STATUE.
Timar remained alone with the dead body, with a person sunk in a
death-like stupor, and with a buried secret. The silent night covered
them, and the shades whispered to him, "See! if you do not do what has
been committed to you--if you throw the corpse into the Danube, and do
not wake the slumberer, but let her sleep on quietly into the other
world--what would happen then? The spy will have already given evidence
in Pancsova against the fugitive Tschorbadschi; but if you anticipate
him and the land at Belgrade instead, and lay information there, then,
according to Turkish law, a third of the refugee's property would fall
to you; otherwise it would belong to no one. The father is dead, the
girl, if you do not rouse her, will never wake again; thus you would
become at one stroke a rich man. Only rich people are worth anything in
this world--poor devils are only fit for clerks."
Timar answered the spirits of the night--"Well, then, I will always
remain a clerk;" and, in order to silence these murmuring shadows, he
closed the shutters. A secret anxiety beset him when he saw the red moon
outside; it seemed as if all these bad suggestions came from it, as well
as an explanation of the last words of the dying man about the Red
Crescent.
He drew back the curtain from Timéa's berth.
The girl lay like a living statue; her bosom rose and fell with her slow
breathing--the lips were half open, the eyes shut; her face wore an
expression of unearthly solemnity. One hand was raised to her loosened
hair, the other held the folds of her white dress together on her
breast.
Timar approached her as if she were an enchanted fairy whose touch might
cause deadly heart-sickness to a poor mortal. He began to rub the
temples of the sleeper with the fluid from the bottle. In doing so, he
looked continually in her face, and thought to himself, "What, should I
let you die, you angelic creature? If the whole ship were filled with
real pearls, which would be mine after your death, I could not let you
sleep away your life. There is no diamond in the world, however
precious, that I should prefer to your eyes when you open them."
The lovely face remained unchanged, in spite of the friction on brow and
temples; the delicate meeting eyebrows did not contract when touched by
a strange man's hand. The directions were that also over the heart the
antidote must be applied. Timar was obliged to take the girl's hand, in
order to draw it away from her breast: the hand made no smallest
resistance; it was stiff and cold, as cold as the whole form--beautiful
and icy as marble.
The shadows whispered--"Behold this exquisite form! a lovelier has never
been touched by mortal lips; no one would know if you kissed her."
But Timar answered himself in the darkness, "No--you have never stolen
anything of another's in your life. This kiss would be a theft." And
then he spread the Persian quilt, which the girl had thrown off in her
sleep, over her whole person up to her neck, and rubbed above the heart
of the sleeper with wetted fingers, while, in order to resist
temptation, he kept his eyes fixed on the maiden's face. It was to him
like an altar-picture--so cold, yet so serene.
At last the lids unclosed, and he met the gaze of her dark but dull
eyes. She breathed more easily, and Timar fell her heart beat stronger
under his hand; he drew it away. Then he held the bottle with the strong
essence for her to smell. Timéa awoke, for she turned her head away from
it, and drew her brows together. Timar called her gently by name.
The girl started up, and with the cry "Father!" sat up on her bed,
gazing out with staring eyes. The Persian quilt fell down from her lap,
the night-dress slipped from her shoulders. She looked more like a Greek
marble than a sentient being.
"Timéa!" and as he spoke he drew the fine linen over her bare shoulders.
She did not answer. "Timéa!" cried Timar, "your father is dead." But
neither face nor form moved, nor did she notice that her night-dress had
left her bosom uncovered. She seemed totally unconscious.
Timar rushed into the other cabin, returned with a coffee-pot, and began
in feverish haste, and not without burning his fingers, to heat some
coffee. When it was ready, he went to Timéa, took her head on his arm
and pressed it to him, opened her mouth with his fingers, and poured
some coffee in. Hitherto he had only had to contend with passive
resistance; but as soon as Timéa had swallowed the hot and bitter
decoction of Mocha, she pushed Timar's hand with such strength that the
cup fell; then she drew the quilt over her, and her teeth began to
chatter.
"Thank God! she lives; for she is in a high fever," sighed Timar, "And
now for a sailor's funeral."
CHAPTER XI.
A BURIAL AT SEA.
On the ocean this is managed very easily: the body is sewed up in a
piece of sail-cloth, and a cannon-ball is suspended to the feet, which
sinks the corpse in the sea. Corals soon grow over the grave. But on a
Danube craft, to throw a dead person into the river is a great
responsibility. There are shores, and on the shores villages and towns,
with church bells and priests, to give the corpse his funeral-toll and
his rest in consecrated ground. It won't do to pitch him into the water,
without a "By your leave," just because the dead man wished it.
But Timar knew well enough that this must be done, and it caused him no
anxiety. Before the vessel had weighed anchor, he said to his pilot that
there was a corpse on board--Trikaliss was dead.
"I knew for certain," said Johann Fabula, "that there was bad luck on
the way when the sturgeon ran races with the ship--that always betokens
a death."
"We must moor over there by the village," answered Timar, "and seek out
the minister to bury him. We can not carry the body on in the vessel--we
should be under suspicion as infected with plague."
Herr Fabula cleared his throat violently, and said, "We can but try."
The village of Plesscovacz, which was nearest at hand, is a wealthy
settlement; it has a dean, and a fine church with two towers. The dean
was a tall, handsome man, with a long curling beard, eyebrows as broad
as one's finger, and a fine sonorous voice. He happened to know Timar,
who had often bought grain from him, as the dean had much produce to
sell.
"Well, my son," cried the dean, as soon as he saw him in the court-yard,
"you might have chosen your time better. The church harvest was bad, and
I have sold my crops long ago." (And yet there was threshing going on in
yard and barn.)
"But this time it is I who bring a crop to market," Timar answered. "We
have a dead man on board, and I have come to beg your reverence to go
over there, and bury the corpse with the usual ceremonies."
"Oh, but my son, that's not so easy. Did this Christian confess? Has he
received the last sacraments? Are you certain that he was not a heretic?
For if not, I can not consent to bury him."
"I know nothing about it. We don't carry a father-confessor on board,
and the poor soul left the world without any priestly assistance--that
is the lot of sailors. But if your reverence can not grant him a
consecrated grave, give me at any rate a written certificate that I may
have some excuse to his friends why I was not in a position to show him
the last honors; then we will bury him ourselves somewhere on the
shore."
The dean gave him a certificate of the refusal of burial; but then the
peasant threshers began to make a fuss. "What! bury a corpse within our
boundaries which has not been blessed? Why, then, as certain as the Amen
to the Pater Noster, the hail would destroy our crops. And you need not
try to bestow him on any other village. Wherever he came from, nobody
wants him, for he's sure to bring a hail-storm this season before the
vintage is over--the farmer's last hope; and then next year a vampire
will rise from a corpse so buried, which will suck up all the rain and
the dew!"
They threatened to kill Timar if he brought the body ashore. And in
order that he might not bury it secretly on the bank, they chose four
stout fellows, who were to go on board the ship and remain there till it
had passed the village boundaries, and then he could do what he liked
with the dead man.
Timar pretended to be very angry, but allowed the four men to go on
board. Meanwhile, the crew had made a coffin and laid the body in it:
there was nothing more to do but to nail the lid down.
The first thing that the captain did was to go and see how Timéa was.
The fever had reached its highest point; her forehead was burning, but
her face still dazzling white. She was unconscious, and knew nothing of
the preparations for the burial.
"Yes, that will do," said Timar, and fetched a paint-pot and busied
himself in marking Euthemio Trikaliss's name and date of death in
beautiful Greek letters on the coffin-lid. The four Servian peasants
stood behind and spelled out what he wrote.
"Now, then, you paint a letter or two while I see to my work," said
Timar to one of the gazers, and handed him the brush. The man took it
and painted on the board an X, which the Servians use like S, to show
his skill.
"See what an artist you are!" Timar said, admiringly, and got him to
draw another letter. "You are a clever fellow. What is your name?"
"Joso Berkics."
"And yours?"
"Mirko Jakerics."
"Well, God bless you! Let us drink a glass of Slivovitz." They had
nothing against the proposition. "I am called Michael; my surname is
Timar--a good name, and sounds just the same in Hungarian, Turkish, or
Greek--call me Michael."
"Egbogom Michael."
Michael ran constantly into the cabin to see after Timéa. She was still
very feverish, and knew no one. But that did not discourage Timar: his
idea was that whoever travels on the Danube has a whole chemist's shop
at hand, for cold water cures all maladies. His whole system consisted
in putting cold compresses on head and feet, and renewing them as soon
as they got hot. Sailors had already learned this secret before
Priessnitz the hydropath. The "St. Barbara" floated quietly all day
up-stream along the Hungarian bank. The Servians soon made friends with
the crew, helped them to row, and in return had a thieves' roast offered
them from the galley.
The dead man lay out on the upper deck; they had spread a white sheet
over him--that was his shroud. Toward evening Michael told his men that
he would go and lie down for a spell--he had had no sleep for two
nights; but that the vessel might as well go on being towed till it was
quite dark, and then they could anchor. He had no sleep that night
either. Instead of going into his own cabin, he stole quietly into
Timéa's, placed the night-lamp in a box, that its light might not
disturb her, and sat the whole time by the sick girl's bed listening to
her delirious fancies and renewing her compresses. He never shut his
eyes. He heard plainly when the anchor went down and the ship was
brought up; and then how the waves began to plash against the sides! The
sailors tramped about the deck for some time, then one by one they
turned in. But at midnight he heard a dull knocking. That sounds,
thought he, like hammering in nails whose heads have been covered with
cloth to muffle the sound. Before long he heard a noise like the fall of
some heavy object into the water, then all was still.
Michael remained awake, and waited till it was light and the vessel had
started again. When they had been an hour on their way, he came out of
the cabin. The girl slept quietly, the fever had ceased.
"Where is the coffin?" was the first question.
The Servians came up with a defiant air. "We loaded it with stones and
threw it into the water, so that you might not bury it anywhere ashore
and bring bad luck on us."
"Rash men! what have you done? Do you know that I shall be arrested and
have to render an account of my vanished passenger? They will accuse me
of having put him out of the way. You must give me a certificate in
which you acknowledge what you did. Which of you can write?"
Naturally, not one of them knew how to write.
"What! You, Berkics, and you, Jakerics, did you not help me to paint the
letters on the coffin?"
Then they came out with a confession that each only knew how to write
the one letter which he had painted on the lid, and that, only with the
brush and not with a pen.
"Very well; then I shall take you on to Pancsova. There you can give
evidence verbally to the colonel in my favor; he will find your tongues
for you."
At this threat suddenly every one of them had learned to write; not only
those two, but the others as well. They said they would rather give a
certificate at once than be taken on to Pancsova. Michael fetched ink,
pen, and paper, made one of these skillful scribes lie on his stomach on
the deck, and dictated to him the deposition in which they all declared
that, out of fear of hail-storms, they had thrown the body of Euthemio
Trikaliss into the Danube while the crew slept, and without their
knowledge or aid.
"Now, sign your names to it, and where each of you lives, so that you
may be easily found if a commission of inquiry is sent to make a
report."
One of the witnesses signed himself "Ira Karakassalovics," living at
"Gunerovacz," and the other "Nyegro Stiriapicz," living at "Medvelincz."
And now they took leave of each other with the most serious faces in
the world, without either Michael or the four others allowing it to be
seen what trouble it cost them not to laugh in each other's faces.
Michael then put them all ashore.
Ali Tschorbadschi lay at the bottom of the Danube, where he had wished
to be.
CHAPTER XII.
AN EXCELLENT JOKE.
In the morning when Timéa awoke she felt no more of her illness; the
strength of youth had won the victory. She dressed and came out of the
cabin. When she saw Timar forward she went to him and asked, "Where is
my father?"
"Fraülein, your father is dead."
Timéa gazed at him with her great melancholy eyes; her face could hardly
become paler than it was already. "And where have they put him?"
"Fraülein, your father rests at the bottom of the Danube."
Timéa sat down by the bulwarks and looked silently into the water. She
did not speak or weep; she only looked fixedly into the river.
Timar thought it would lighten her heart if he spoke words of
consolation to her. "Fraülein, while you were ill and unconscious, God
called your father suddenly to himself. I was beside him in his last
hour. He spoke of you, and commissioned me to give you his last
blessing. By his wish I am to take you to an old friend of his, with
whom you are connected through your mother, who will adopt you and be a
father to you. He has a pretty young daughter, a little older than you,
who will be your sister. And all that is on board this vessel belongs to
you by inheritance, left to you by your father. You will be rich; and
think gratefully of the loving father who has cared for you so kindly."
Timar's throat swelled as he thought, "And who died to secure your
liberty, and killed himself in order to endow you with the joys of
life."
And then he looked with surprise into the girl's face. Timéa had not
changed a feature while he spoke, and no tear had fallen. Michael
thought she was ashamed to cry before a stranger, and withdrew; but the
maiden did not weep even when alone. Curious! when she saw the white cat
drowned, how her tears flowed! and now, when told that her father lies
below the water, not a drop falls.
Perhaps those who break out in tears at some small emotion brood
silently over a deep grief?
It may be so. Timar had other things to do than to puzzle his head over
psychological problems. The towers of Pancsova began to rise in the
north, and down the stream came an imperial barge, straight for the "St.
Barbara," with eight armed Tschaikists, their captain, and a provost.
When they arrived they made fast to the side without waiting for
permission, and sprung on deck. The captain approached Timar, who was
waiting for him at the door of the cabin. "Are you in command of this
vessel?"
"At your service."
"On board this ship, under the false name of Euthemio Trikaliss, there
is a fugitive treasurer from Turkey--a pasha with stolen treasures."
"On board this vessel travels a Greek corn-merchant, of the name of
Euthemio Trikaliss, not with stolen treasures but with purchased grain.
The vessel was searched at Orsova, and here are the certificates. This
is the first; be so good as to read it, and see if all is not as I say.
I know nothing of any Turkish pasha."
"Where is he?"
"If he was a Greek, with Abraham; if a Turk, with Mohammed."
"What! is he dead, then?"
"Certainly he is. Here is the second paper, containing his will. He died
of dysentery."
The officer read the document, and threw side glances at Timéa, who
still sat in the place where she had heard of her father's death. She
understood nothing; the language was strange to her.
"My six sailors and the steersman are witnesses of his death."
"Well, that is unlucky for him, but not for us; if he is dead he must be
buried. You will tell us where, and we shall have the body exhumed; we
have a man who can recognize it, and prove the identity of Trikaliss
with Ali Tschorbadschi, and then we can at any rate lay an embargo on
the stolen property. Where is he buried?"
"At the bottom of the Danube."
"Oh! this is too much. Why there?"
"Gently now. Here is the third paper, prepared by the Dean of
Plesscovacz, in whose parish the decease of Trikaliss took place, and
who not only refused him a consecrated burial, but forbid me to bring
the body ashore; the people insisted on our throwing it overboard."
The captain clinched his hand angrily on the hilt of his sword. "The
devil! these confounded priests! Always the most trouble with them. But
at any rate you can tell me where he was thrown into the river?"
"Let me tell you everything in proper order, Herr Captain. The
Plesscovaer sent four watchmen on board, who were to prevent our landing
the corpse; in the night, when we were all asleep, they threw the
coffin, which they had loaded with stones, into the Danube without the
knowledge of the crew. Here is the certificate delivered to me by the
culprits; take it, search them out, take their evidence, and then let
each have his well-merited punishment."
The captain stamped with his foot, and burst into angry laughter.
"Well, that is a fine story. The discovered fugitive dies, and can not
be made responsible; the priest won't bury him, the peasants shove him
into the water, and hand in a certificate signed with two names which no
man ever possessed, and two places which never existed in this world.
The refugee disappears under the water of the Danube, and I can neither
drag the whole Danube from Pancsova to Szendre, nor get hold of the two
rogues, by name Karakassalovics and Stiriapicz. If the identity of the
fugitive is not proved, I can not confiscate the cargo. You have done
that very cleverly, skipper. Cleverly planned indeed! And everything in
writing. One, two, three, four documents. I bet if I wanted the
baptismal certificate of that lady there, you would produce it."
"At your orders." That Timar certainly could not produce, but he could
put on such an innocent, sheepish face, that the captain shook with
laughter and clapped him on the shoulder.
"You are a splendid fellow, skipper. You have saved the young lady's
property for her; for without her father I can do nothing to either her
or her money. You can proceed, you clever fellow!"
With that he turned on his heel, and the last Tschaikiss, who had not
swung round quick enough, got such a box on the ear that the poor devil
all but fell into the water; and then he gave the word for departure.
When he was down below in the boat, he cast one searching look back; but
the skipper was still looking after him with the same sheepish face.
The cargo of the "St. Barbara" was saved.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE FATE OF THE "ST. BARBARA."
The "St. Barbara" could now pursue her way unmolested; and Timar had no
worse misfortunes than the daily disputes with the leader of the
towing-team. On the great Hungarian plains the voyage up the Danube
becomes extremely wearisome; there are no rocks, no water-falls or old
ruins, nothing but willows and poplars, which border both sides of the
river. Of these there is nothing interesting to relate.
Timéa frequently did not come out of her cabin during a whole day, and
not a word did her lips utter. She sat alone, and often the food they
set before her was brought out again untouched. The days grew shorter,
and the bright autumn weather turned to rain; Timéa now shut herself
entirely into her cabin, and Michael heard nothing of her except the
deep sighs which at night penetrated to his ear through the thin
partition. But she was never heard to weep; the heavy blow which had
fallen on her had perhaps covered her heart with an impenetrable layer
of ice. How glowing must that love be which could melt it!
Ah, my poor friend, how came you by that thought? Why do you dream
waking and sleeping of this pale face? Even if she were not so
beautiful, she is so rich, and you are only a poor devil of a fellow.
What is the good of a pauper like you filling all his thoughts with the
image of such a rich girl? If only it were the other way, and you were
the rich one and she poor! And how rich is Timéa? Timar began to reckon,
in order to drive himself to despair, and turn these idle dreams out of
his head. Her father left her a thousand ducats in gold and the cargo,
which, according to the present market prices, must be worth, say, ten
thousand ducats--perhaps she has ornaments and jewels besides--and might
be counted in Austrian paper-money of that date as worth a hundred
thousand gulden; that in a Hungarian provincial town is a very rich
heiress. And then Timar asked himself a riddle whose solution he could
not guess.
If Ali Tschorbadschi had a fortune of eleven thousand ducats, that would
not weigh more than sixteen pounds; of all metals, gold has the smallest
volume in proportion to its weight. Sixteen pounds of ducats could be
packed in a knapsack, which a man could carry on his back a long way,
even on foot. Why was the Turk obliged to change it into grain and load
a cargo-ship with it, which would take a month and a half for its
voyage, and have to struggle with storms, eddies, rocks, and
shallows--which might be delayed by quarantine and custom-houses--when
he could have carried his treasure with him in his knapsack, and by
making his way cautiously on foot over mountain and river, could have
reached Hungary safely in a couple of weeks?
The key to this problem was not to be found.
And another riddle was connected with this one. If Ali's treasure
(whether honestly come by or not) only consists of eleven or twelve
thousand ducats altogether, why does the Turkish Government institute a
pursuit on such a large scale, sending a brigantine with four-and-twenty
rowers, and spies and couriers after him? What would be a heap of money
for a poor supercargo is for his highness the Padischa only a trifle;
and even if it had been possible to lay an embargo on the whole cargo,
representing a value of ten or twelve thousand ducats, by the time it
had passed through the fingers of all the informers, tax-collectors, and
other official cut-purses, there would be hardly enough left for the
sultan to fill his pipe with.
Was it not ridiculous to set such great machinery in motion in order to
secure so small a prize?
Or was it not so much the money as Timéa that was the object? Timar had
enough romance about him to find this a plausible assumption, however
little it agreed with a supercargo's one-times-one multiplication table.
One evening the wind dispersed the clouds, and when Timar looked out of
his cabin window he saw on the western horizon the crescent moon.
The "red moon!"
The glowing sickle seemed to touch the glassy surface of the Danube. It
looked to Timar as if it really had a human face, as it is depicted in
the almanacs, and as if it said something to him with its crooked mouth.
Only that he could not always understand--it is a strange language.
Moonstruck people perhaps comprehend it, for they follow it; only they,
as well as the sleep-walkers, remember nothing of what was said when
they awake. It was as if the moon answered Timar's questions. Which?
All. And the beating of his heart? or his calculations? All.
Only that he could not put these answers into words.
The red crescent dipped slowly toward the water, and sent its reflected
rays along the waves as far as the ship's bows, as if to say, "Don't you
understand now?" At last it drew its horns gently below the surface,
saying plainly, "I shall return to-morrow, and then you will know."
The pilot was in favor of making the most of the light of the after-glow
to go on further, until it grew dark. They were already above Almas, and
not far from Komorn; in those parts he knew the channel so well that he
could have steered the vessel safely with his eyes shut. As far up as
the Raab Danube, there was no more danger to fear.
And yet there was something! Off Fuzito a soft, dull thud was heard; but
at this thud the steersman cried "Halt!" in a fright, to the
towing-team.
Timar also grew pale, and stood petrified for a moment. For the first
time during the whole voyage dismay was depicted in his features. "We
have struck a snag!" he cried to the steersman.
And that great strong man entirely lost his head, left the rudder, and
ran crying like a little child across the deck to the cabin.
We have touched a snag! Yes, that was so. When the Danube is in flood it
makes breaches in the bank, the uprooted trees fall into the current,
and are carried to the bottom by the weight of the soil clinging to
their roots; if a cargo-ship drawn by horses touches such a tree-trunk,
it pierces the hull. From shallows and rocks the steersman can guard his
vessel, but against a tree-trunk lying in ambush under water, neither
knowledge, experience nor skill is of any avail. Most of the shipwrecks
on the Danube are from this cause.
"It is all up with us!" howled the pilot and the sailors. Every one left
his post and ran for his bundle and his chest, to get them into the
boat.
The vessel swung across the stream, and the forepart began to sink. It
was useless to think of saving it--absolutely impossible. The hold was
filled with sacks of grain; before they could shift these in order to
get at the leak and stop it, the vessel would long ago have gone down.
Timar broke in the door of Timéa's cabin.
"Fraülein, put on your cloak quickly, and take the casket which stands
on the table; our ship is sinking, we must save ourselves." As he spoke
he helped her into her warm kaftan, and gave her directions to get into
the boat; the pilot would help her. He himself ran back into his cabin
to get the box which held the ship's papers and cash. But Johann Fabula
was not thinking of helping Timéa; he flew into a rage when he saw the
girl. "Didn't I say this milk-face, this witch with the meeting
eyebrows, would bring us all to destruction? We ought to have thrown her
overboard."
Timéa did not understand what he said, but she shrunk from his bloodshot
eyes, and preferred to go back to her cabin, where she lay down, and saw
the water rush through the door and mount gradually to the level of the
edge of her bed. She thought to herself that if the water washed her
away, it would carry her down-stream, to where her father was lying at
the bottom of the Danube, and then they would again be united.
Timar was wading up to his knees in water before he had collected all he
wanted from his cabin and packed them in a box, which he took on his
shoulder and then hurried to the boat.
"And where is Timéa?" he cried, not seeing her there.
"The devil knows!" growled the pilot. "I wish she had never been born."
Timar flew back into Timéa's cabin, now up to his waist in water, and
took her in his arms. "Have you the casket?"
"Yes," whispered the girl.
He asked no more, but hurried with her on deck, and carried her in his
arms into the boat, where he put her on the middle seat. The fate of the
"St. Barbara" was being decided with awful rapidity. The ship was going
down stern first, and in a few minutes only the upper deck and the mast,
with the dangling tow-rope, were visible above water.
"Shove off!" Timar said to the rowers, and the boat moved toward the
shore.
"Where is the casket?" Timar asked the girl, when they had already gone
some distance.
"Here it is," answered Timéa, showing him what she had brought away.
"Miserable girl! that is the box of sweetmeats, not the casket." In
fact, Timéa had brought the box of Turkish sweets, meant as a present to
her new sister, and had totally forgotten the casket which held her
whole fortune. That was left behind in the submerged cabin. "Back to the
ship!" Timar cried to the pilot.
"Surely nobody has got such a mad notion as to look for anything in a
sunken ship," grumbled Fabula.
"Back!--no words--I insist!"
The boat returned to the vessel. Timar asked no one's help, but sprung
himself to the deck and down the steps to the cabin.
Timéa looked after him with her great dark eyes as he vanished under the
surface, as if to say--"And you too go before me into the watery grave."
Timar reached the bulwarks, but had to be very careful, because the
vessel had a list toward the side where Timéa's cabin door was. He had
to hold on by the timbers of the roof, so as not to slip altogether
under water. He found the door, luckily, not shut by the waves; for it
would have been a long job to get it open. It was quite dark inside, the
water had filled it almost to the ceiling; he groped to the table, the
casket was not there; perhaps she had left it on the bed. The water had
floated the bed to the roof, and he had to draw it down; but the casket
was not there either. Perhaps it had been knocked over by the rush of
water. He felt about vainly with his hands, stooping under water. His
feet were more fortunate, for he stumbled over the object sought for;
the casket had fallen to the ground. He lifted it, and tried while
holding it to climb up to the other side, where he need not hold on with
both hands.
The minute that Timar was under water seemed to Timéa an eternity.
He was a full minute under water. He had held his breath the whole time,
as if to try an experiment how long a man could do without breathing.
When Michael's head appeared above the water she heaved a deep sigh,
and her face beamed when Timar gave her the rescued casket, but not on
its account.
"Well, captain!" exclaimed the steersman, as he helped Timar into the
boat, "that's thrice you've got soaked for the love of these eyebrows.
Thrice!"
Timéa asked Michael in a whisper, "What is the Greek for the word
thrice?" Michael translated it. Then Timéa looked at him long, and
repeated to herself in a low voice "Thrice."
The boat approached the shore in the direction of Almas.
Against the steely mirror in the twilight a long line was visible, like
a distressful note of exclamation or a pause in life. It was the topmast
of the "St. Barbara."
CHAPTER XIV.
THE GUARDIAN.
At six in the evening the ship's crew had left the sunken craft, and by
half past seven Timar with Timéa was in Komorn. The post-cart driver
knew Brazovics' house very well, and galloped his four bell-decked
horses with unmerciful cracks of the whip through the little streets up
to the square, as he had been promised a good _trinkgeld_ if he brought
his passengers quickly to their destination.
Michael lifted Timéa from the country wagon and told her she was now at
home. Then he took the casket under his cloak and led the girl up the
steps.
The house of Athanas Brazovics was of two stories--a rarity in Komorn;
for in remembrance of the destructive earthquakes by which the town had
been visited in the last century, people usually only built on the
ground-floor. The lower story was occupied by a large café, which served
the resident tradespeople as a casino; the whole upper floor was
inhabited by the family of the merchant. It had two entrances from the
street, and a third through the kitchen.
The owner was generally not at home at this hour, as Timar knew; he
therefore led Timéa straight to the door through which the women's rooms
were reached. In these reigned fashionable luxury, and in the anteroom
lounged a man-servant. Timar asked him to fetch his master from the
café, and meanwhile led Timéa to the ladies.
He was certainly hardly got up for company, as may be imagined when one
remembers what he had gone through, and the number of times he had been
soaked; but he was one of those who belonged to the house, who could
come in at any time and in any dress: they looked upon him as "one of
our people." In such a case one gets over the strict rules of etiquette.
The announcement revives the old habit of the mistress, as soon as the
door of the anteroom is open, of putting her head through the parlor
door to see who is coming. Frau Sophie has kept this habit ever since
her maid-servant days. (Pardon, that slipped out by accident.) Well,
yes, Herr Athanas raised her from a low station; it was a love-match, so
no one has a right to reproach her.
It is therefore not as idle gossip, but only as a characteristic touch,
that I mention that Frau Sophie even as "gracious lady" could not get
rid of her early habit. Her clothes always fitted her as if they had
been given to her by her mistress. From her coiffure an obstinate lock
of hair would always stick out either in the front or at the back; even
her most gorgeous costumes always looked tumbled and creased; and if
nothing else went wrong, there would be invariably a pair of
trodden-down shoes with which she could indulge in her old propensity.
Curiosity and tattle were the ingredients of her conversation, in which
she generally introduced such extraordinary expressions that when she
began to scatter them in a mixed party, the guests (that is, those who
were seated) almost fell off their chairs with laughter. Then, too, she
had the agreeable custom of never speaking low; her voice was a
continuous scream, as if she were being stabbed and wished to call for
assistance.
"Oh, good Lord, it's Michael!" she cried, as soon as she got her head
through the door-way. "And where did you get the pretty fraülein? What
is the casket you have under your arm? Come into the parlor! Look, look,
Athalie, what Timar has brought!"
Michael let Timéa pass, then he entered and politely wished the company
good-evening. Timéa looked round with the shyness of a first meeting.
Besides the mistress of the house there were a girl and a man in the
room. The girl was a fully developed and conscious beauty, who, in spite
of her naturally small waist, did not disdain tight stays; her high
heels and piles of hair made her appear taller than she was; she wore
mittens, and her nails were long and pointed. Her expression was of
artificial amiability; she had somewhat arrogant and pouting lips, a
rosy complexion, and two rows of dazzling white teeth, which she did not
mind showing; when she laughed, dimples formed on chin and cheek, dark
brows arched over the bright black eyes, whose brilliancy was increased
by their aggressive prominence. With her head up and bust thrown
forward, the beautiful creature knew how to make an imposing appearance.
This was Fraülein Athalie.
The man was a young officer, verging on thirty, with a cheerful open
face and fiery black eyes. According to the military regulations of the
period, he had a clean-shaven face, with the exception of a small
crescent-shaped whisker. This warrior wore a violet tunic, with collar
and cuffs of pink velvet, the uniform of the engineers. Timar knew him
too. It was Herr Katschuka, first lieutenant at the fort, and also a
commissariat officer--rather a hybrid position, but so it was.
The lieutenant has the pleasure of taking a portrait of the young lady
before him in chalks; he has already finished one by daylight, and is
trying one by lamplight. The entrance of Timéa disturbs him in this
artistic occupation.
The whole appearance of the slender delicate girl was something
spiritual at this moment--it was as if a ghost, a phantom, had stepped
out of the dusk.
When Herr Katschuka looked up from his easel, his dark-red chalk drew
such a streak across the portrait's brow, that it would be hard for
bread-crumbs to get it out, and he rose involuntarily from his seat
before Timéa.
Every one rose at the sight of the girl, even Athalie. Who can she be?
Timar whispered to Timéa in Greek, on which she hastened to Frau Sophie
and kissed her hand, while the girl herself received a kiss on her
cheek.
Again Timar whispered to her. The girl went with shy obedience to
Athalie, and looked steadily in her face. Shall she kiss her, or fall on
the neck of her new sister? Athalie seemed to raise her head higher
still. Timéa bent to her hand and kissed it--or rather not her hand, but
the kid mitten. Athalie allowed it, her eyes cast a flaming glance on
Timéa's face, and another on the officer, and she curled her lips yet
more.
Herr Katschuka was completely lost in admiration of Timéa.
But neither his nor Athalie's fiery looks called up any emotion on
Timéa's face, which remained as white as if she were a spirit.
Timar himself was not a little confused. How was he to introduce the
girl and relate how he had come by her, before this officer?
Herr Brazovics helped him out of his difficulty. With a great bustle he
burst in at the door. He had just now in the café--to the surprise of
all the regular customers--read aloud from the Augsburg _Gazette_ that
the escaped pasha and treasurer, Ali Tschorbadschi and his daughter, had
fled on board the "St. Barbara," evaded the watchfulness of the Turkish
authorities, and reached Hungary in safety. The "St. Barbara" is his
ship. Tschorbadschi is a good friend of his--even a connection by the
mother's side. An extraordinary event! One can fancy how Herr Athanas
threw his chair back when the servant brought him the news that Herr
Timar had just arrived with a beautiful young lady, and under his arm a
gilt casket.
"So it is actually true!" cried Herr Athanas, and rushed up to his own
apartments, not without upsetting a few of the card-players on his way.
Brazovics was a man of enormous corpulence. His stomach was always half
a step in front of him. His face was copper-colored at its palest, and
violet when he ought to have been rosy: even when he shaved in the
morning his chin was all bristles by the evening, his scrubby mustache
perfumed with smoke, snuff, and various spirits; his eyebrows formed a
bushy wall over his prominent and bloodshot eyes. (A fearful thought,
that the eyes of the lovely Athalie, when she grows old, will resemble
her father's!)
When Herr Brazovics opens his mouth, one understands why Frau Sophie
always screams; her husband, too, can only speak in shouts, but with the
difference that he has a deep bass voice like a hippopotamus.
Naturally Frau Sophie, when she wants to overpower his voice with her
own, raises it to a yell. It was as if they had a wager which could
bring on the other a lung disease or a stroke of apoplexy. It is
doubtful who will win; but Brazovics always stops his ears with wool,
and Frau Sophie invariably has a comforter round her throat.
Athanas rushed, panting with haste, into the ladies' room, where his
voice of thunder had already preceded him. "Is Michael there with the
young lady? Where is the fraülein? Where is Michael?"
Timar hastened to catch him at the door. He might have succeeded in
keeping back the man himself, but the weight of his approaching paunch,
when once set in motion, bore down all obstacles.
Michael made a sign to him that a visitor was present. "Ah, that doesn't
matter! You can speak openly before him. We are _en famille_; the Herr
Lieutenant belongs to the family. Ha! ha! don't get cross, Athalie;
every one knows it. You can speak freely, Michael; it is all in the
papers."
"What is in the papers?" exclaimed Athalie, angrily.
"Well, well, not you; but that my friend Ali Tschorbadschi, my own
cousin, the treasurer, has fled to Hungary with his daughter and his
property on board m
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/31409