CHAPTER XXX

THE GOLDEN HORN

"Johnny, want to see the bazaar?" The speaker was a Greek of the lowest class, depraved and dirty, with a flexibility of limb and cunning of countenance only to be seen in the present representatives of that race who once furnished the sculptor with his glorious ideal of godlike strength and intellectual beauty. I longed to kick him--the climate of Constantinople is provocative of irritation, and I felt that with my bushy beard, my Oriental demeanour, my acquaintance with Turkish habits and proficiency in the language, it was irritating to be called "Johnny," and asked to "see the bazaar," as though I had been the smoothest and ruddiest ensign, disembarked for a day's leave from yonder crowded troop-ship, an innocent lamb frisking in the sun on my way up to the shambles before Sebastopol.

Yes, I was pretty well acclimatised in Turkey now. A year and more had passed over my head since I had left Vienna, the morning after that memorable ball at the Redouten-Saal, and what changes had that year brought forth! Sir Harry Beverley was gathered to his fathers, and an investigation into that worthy gentleman's affairs had explained much that was hitherto incomprehensible in his conduct as to his daughter's marriage and his connection with Ropsley. The latter had played his game scientifically throughout. He was aware that on a proper settlement being made, by marriage or otherwise, for his daughter, Sir Harry would obtain the fee-simple of certain property which, until such an event, he only held in trust for the young lady's benefit; and as these were the sole funds to which the far-seeing Guardsman could look to liquidate Sir Harry's debts to himself, incurred no one knew exactly how, it was his object to expedite as speedily as possible the marriage of my early love. As she was an heiress he would have had no objection to wed her himself, and indeed, as we have already seen, had entered into terms with her father for the furtherance of this object. That scheme was, however, defeated by her own determination, and it had long been apparent to my mind that Constance had only married my old friend Victor to escape from the dreadful alternative of becoming Ropsley's wife: that such an alliance promised but ill for the future happiness of both I could not conceal from myself, and yet so selfish is the human heart, so difficult is it to shake the "trail of the serpent" from off the flowerets of our earthly love, I could not regret as I ought to have done that the two people whom most I cared for in the world, should not be as devoted to each other as is essential to the happiness of those whom the tie of marriage has bound indissolubly together.

Ah! she was Countess de Rohan now, living at Edeldorf in all that state and luxury which she was so well calculated to adorn; and I, what had I done since we parted for ever at the masquerade? Well, I had striven to fulfil her wishes--to rise to honour and distinction, to be worthy of her friendship and esteem. Fame I had gained none, but I had done my duty. Omar Pasha, my kind patron, who had never forgotten the child that sympathised with him at Edeldorf, had expressed himself satisfied with my services; and 'Skender Bey, drunk or sober, never passed me without a cordial grasp of the hand. For more than a year I had shared the fortunes of the Turkish commander and the Turkish army. I had seen the merits of those poor, patient, stanch, unflinching troops, and the shortcomings of their corrupt and venal officers. I knew, none better, how the Turkish soldier will bear hunger, thirst, privation, ill-usage, and arrears of pay without a murmur; how, with his implicit faith in destiny, and his noble self-sacrifice in the cause of God and the Sultan, he is capable of endurance and effort such as put the ancient Spartan to the blush--witness the wan faces, the spectral forms, gaunt, famine-stricken and hollow-eyed, that so doggedly carried out the behests of the tameless defender of Kars. I had seen him starved and cheated that his colonel might gormandise--ay! and, in defiance of the Prophet, drink to intoxication of the forbidden liquid--and I wondered not, as none who knew the nation need wonder, that Russian gold will work its way to the defeat of a Turkish army far more swiftly than all the steel that bristles over the thronging columns of the Muscovite. Keep the Pasha's hands clean, or make it worth his while to be faithful to his country--forbid the northern eagle from spreading his wing over the Black Sea, and you may trust the Turkish soldier that not a Russian regiment ever reaches the gates of Constantinople. All this I had seen, and for long I was content to cast in my lot with this brave people, struggling against the invader; but my own countrymen were in arms scarce two hundred miles off, the siege of Sebastopol was dragging wearily on from day to day--I felt that I would fain be under the dear old English flag, would fain strike one blow surrounded by the kindly English faces, cheered by the homely English tongues. She was more likely to hear of me, too, if I could gain some employment with the English army; and this last argument proved to me too painfully what I had vainly striven to conceal from myself, how little these long months of trials, privations, and excitement had altered the real feelings of my heart. Would it be always so? Alas, alas! it was a weary lot!

"Johnny, want to see the bazaar?" He woke me from my day-dream, but I felt more kindly towards him now, more cosmopolitan, more charitable. In such a scene as that, how could any man, a unit in such a throng, think only of his own individual interests or sufferings?

Never since the days of the Crusaders--ay, scarcely even in that romantic time, was there seen such a motley assemblage as now crowded the wooden bridge that traverses the Golden Horn between bustling, dirty, dissonant Pera, and stately, quiet, dignified Stamboul, those two suggestive quarters that constitute the Turkish capital. On that bridge might be seen a specimen of nearly every nation under the sun--the English soldier with his burly, upright figure, and staid, well-disciplined air; the rakish Zouave, with his rollicking gait, and professed libertinism of demeanour, foreign to the real character of the man. Jauntily he sways and swaggers along, his hands thrust into the pockets of his enormous red petticoat trousers, his blonde hair shaved close _a la Khabyle_, and his fair complexion burnt red by an African sun long before he came here, "en route, voyez-vous," to fill the ditch of the Malakhoff. "Pardon," he observes to a tall, stately Persian, fresh from Astracan, whom he jostles unwittingly, for a Frenchman is never impolite, save when he really _intends_ insult; the fire-worshipper, in his long sad-coloured robes and high-pointed cap, wreathes his aquiline nose into an expression of stately astonishment--for a Persian, too, has his notions of good breeding, and is extremely punctilious in acting up to them. His picturesque costume, however, and dignified bearing, are lost upon the Zouave, for a gilded _araba_ is at the moment passing, with its well-guarded freight, and the accursed Giaour ogles these flowers of the harem with an impudent pertinacity of truly Parisian growth. The beauties, fresh from their bath, attempt, with henna-tinted fingers, to draw their thin veils higher over their radiant features, their bed-gown-looking dresses tighter round their plump forms; an arrangement which by some fatality invariably discloses the beauties of face and figure more liberally than before. Here a Jew, in his black dress and solemn turban, is counting his gains attentively on his fingers; there an Armenian priest, with square cap and long dusky draperies, tells his prayers upon his sandal-wood beads. A mad dervish, naked to the loins, his hair knotted in elf-locks, his limbs macerated by starvation, howls out his unearthly dirge, to which nobody seems to pay attention, save that Yankee skipper in a round hat, fresh from Halifax to Balaklava, who is much astonished, if he would only confess it, and who sets down in his mental log-book all that he sees and hears in this strange country as an "almighty start." Italian sailors, speaking as much with their fingers as their tongues, call perpetually on the Virgin; whilst Greeks, Maltese, and Ionian Islanders scream and gesticulate, and jabber and cheat whenever and however they can. Yonder an Arab from the desert stalks grim and haughty, as though he trod the burning sands of his free, boundless home. Armed to the teeth, the costly shawl around his waist bristling with pistols and sword and deadly yataghan, he looks every inch the tameless war-hawk whose hand is against every man, and every man's hand against him. Preoccupied as he is, though, and ill at ease, for he has left his steed in a stable from whence he feels no certainty that priceless animal may not be stolen ere he returns; and should he lose his horse, what will his very life avail him then? Nevertheless he can sneer bitterly on that gigantic Ethiopian--a slave, of course--who struts past him in all the borrowed importance of a great man's favourite. At Constantinople, as at New Orleans,--in the City of the Sultan as in the Land of the Free--the swarthy skin, the flattened features, and the woolly hair of the negro denote the slave. That is a tall, stalwart fellow, though, and would fetch his price in South Carolina fast enough, were he put up for sale to the highest bidder. Such a lot he need not dread here, and he leads some half-dozen of his comrades, like himself, splendidly dressed and armed, with a confident, not to say bellicose air, that seems to threaten all bystanders with annihilation if they do not speedily make way for his master the Pasha. And now the Pasha himself comes swinging by at the fast easy walk of his magnificent Turkish charger, not many crosses removed from the pure blood of the desert. The animal seems proud of its costly accoutrements, its head-stall embossed with gold, and housings sown with pearls, nor seems inclined to flag or waver under the goodly weight it carries so jauntily. A gentleman of substantial proportions is the Pasha; broad, strong, and corpulent, with the quiet, contented air of one whose habitual life is spent amongst subordinates and inferiors. He is a true Turk, and it is easy to trace in his gestures and demeanour--haughty, grave and courteous--the bearing of the dominant race. His stout person is buttoned into a tight blue frock-coat, on the breast of which glitters the diamond order of the Medjidjie, and a fez or crimson skull-cap, with a brass button in the crown, surmounts his broad, placid face, clean and close shaved, all but the carefully trimmed black moustache. A plain scimitar hangs at his side, and the long chibouques, with their costly amber mouthpieces, are carried by the pipe-bearer in his rear. The cripple asking for alms at his horse's feet narrowly escapes being crushed beneath its hoofs; but in Turkey nobody takes any trouble about anybody else, and the danger being past, the cripple seems well satisfied to lie basking in the sun on those warm boards, and wait for his destiny like a true Mussulman as he is. Loud are the outcries of this Babel-like throng; and the porters of Galata stagger by under enormous loads, shouting the while with stentorian lungs, well adapted to their Herculean frames. Water-carriers and sweetmeat-venders vie with each other in proclaiming the nature of their business in discordant tones; a line of donkeys, bearing on their patient backs long planks swaying to and fro, are violently addressed by their half-naked drivers in language of which the poetic force is equalled only by the energetic enunciation; and a string of Turkish firemen, holloaing as if for their lives, are hurrying--if an Osmanli can ever be said to hurry--to extinguish one of those conflagrations which periodically depopulate Pera and Stamboul.

The blue sparkling water, too, is alive with traffic, and is indeed anything but a "silent highway." Graceful caiques, rowed by their lightly-clad watermen--by far the most picturesque of all the dwellers by the Bosphorus--shoot out in all directions from behind vessels of every rig and every tonnage; the boatmen screaming, of course, on every occasion, at the very top of their voices. All is bustle, confusion, and noise; but the tall black cedars in the gardens of the Seraglio-palace tower, solemn and immovable, into the blue cloudless sky, for there is not a breath of air stirring to fan the scorching noon, and the domes and minarets of Stamboul's countless mosques glitter white and dazzling in the glare. It is refreshing to watch the ripple yonder on the radiant Bosphorus, where the breeze sighs gently up from the sea of Marmora--alas! we have not a chance of it elsewhere; and it is curious to observe the restless white sea-fowl, whom the Turks believe to be the lost souls of the wicked, scouring ever along the surface of the waters, seemingly without stay or intermission, during the livelong day. It is ominous, too; mark that enormous vulture poised aloft on his broad wing, like a shadow of evil impending over the devoted city. There are few places in the world so characteristic as the bridge between Galata[#] and Stamboul.

[#] The suburb of Pera lying next the Bosphorus, a locality combining the peculiarities of our own Smithfield, St. Giles's, and Billingsgate in their worst days. There is another bridge across the Golden Horn, higher up; but its traffic, compared to that of its neighbour, is as that of Waterloo to London Bridge.

And now the traffic is brought to a stand-still, for the huge fabric has to be opened, and swings back on its hinges for the passage of some mighty craft moving slowly on to the inner harbour to refit. It is a work of time and labour: the former article is of considerably less value to our Moslem friends than the latter, and is lavished accordingly; but though business may be suspended for the nonce, noise increases tenfold, every item of the throng deeming the present an opportune moment at which to deliver his, her, or its opinion on things in general. Nimble fingers roll the fragrant cigarette, and dissonant voices rise above the white spiral smoke into the clear bright air. Close behind me I recognise the well-known Saxon expletive adjuring _Johnny_ to "drive on,"--said "Johnny" invariably returning a blessing for a curse, but "driving on," if by that expression is meant activity and progress, as little as may be. Turning round, I confront a florid Saxon face, with bushy beard and whiskers, surmounting a square form that somehow I think I have seen before. "Scant greeting serves in time of strife," and taking my chance of a mistake, I salute my neighbour politely.

"Mr. Manners, I believe? I am afraid you do not recollect me."

"_Major_ Manners, sir; _Major_ Manners--very much at your service," is the reply, in a tone of mild correction. "No; I confess you have the advantage of me. And yet--can it be? Yes, it is--Vere Egerton!"

"The same," I answered, with a cordial grasp of the hand; "but it is strange we should meet here, of all places in the world."

"I always told you I was born to be a soldier, Egerton," said the usher, with his former jaunty air of good-humoured bravado; "and here I am amongst the rest of you. Bless me, how you're grown! I should not have known you had you not spoken to me. And I--don't you think I am altered, eh? improved perhaps, but certainly altered--what?"

I glanced over my friend's dress, and agreed with him most cordially as to the _alteration_ that had taken place in his appearance. The eye gets so accustomed to difference of costume at Constantinople, that it is hardly attracted by any eccentricity of habit, however uncommon; but when my attention was called by Manners himself to his exterior, I could not but confess that he was apparelled in a style of gorgeous magnificence, such as I had never seen before. High black riding-boots of illustrious polish, with heavy steel spurs that would have become Prince Rupert; crimson pantaloons under a bright green tunic, single-breasted, and with a collar _a la guillotine_, that showed off to great advantage the manly neck and huge bushy beard, but at the same time suggested uncomfortable ideas of sore throats and gashing sabre-strokes; a sash of golden tissue, and a sword-belt, new and richly embroidered, sustaining a cavalry sabre nearly four feet long,--all this was more provocative of admiration than envy; but when such a _tout ensemble_ was surmounted by a white beaver helmet with a red plume, something of a compromise between the head-dress of the champion at Astley's and that which is much affected by the Prince Consort, the general effect, I am bound to confess, became striking in the extreme.

"I see," said I; "I admire you very much; but what is it?--the uniform, I mean. Staff corps? Land Transport? What?"

"Land Transport, indeed!" replied Manners, indignantly. "Not a bit of it--nothing half so low. The Bashi-Bazouks--Beatson's Horse--whatever you like to call them. Capital service--excellent pay--the officers a jovial set of fellows; and really--eh now? confess, a magnificent uniform. Come and join us, Egerton--we have lots of vacancies; it's the best thing out."

"And your men?" I asked, for I had heard of these Bashi-Bazouks and their dashing leader. "What sort of soldiers are they?--can you depend upon them?"

"I'd lead them anywhere," replied my enthusiastic friend, whose experience of warfare was as yet purely theoretical. "The finest fellows you ever saw; full of confidence in their officers, and such horsemen! Talk of your English dragoons! why, _our_ fellows will ride up to a brick wall at a gallop, and pull up dead short; pick a glove off the ground from the saddle, or put a bullet in it when going by as hard as they can lay legs to the ground. You should really see them under arms. _My opinion is_, they are the finest cavalry in the world."

"And their discipline?" I continued, knowing as I did something of these wild Asiatics and their predatory and irregular habits.

"Oh, discipline!" answered my embryo warrior; "bother the discipline! we mustn't begin by giving them too much of that; besides, it's nonsense to drill those fellows, it would only spoil their _dash_. They behave very well in camp. I have been with them now six weeks, and we have only had one row yet."

"And was that serious?" I asked, anxious to obtain the benefit of such long experience as my friend's.

"Serious"--replied Manners, thoughtfully; "well, it was serious; pistols kept popping off, and I thought at one time things were beginning to look very ugly, but the chief soon put them to rights. They positively adore him. I don't know whether he punished the ringleaders. However," added he, brightening up, "you must expect these sort of things with Irregulars. It was the first time I ever was shot at, Egerton; it's not half so bad as I expected: we are all dying to get into the field. Hollo! they have shut the bridge again, and I must be getting on. Which way are you going?--to the Seraskerat? Come and dine with me to-day at Messirie's--Salaam!"

And Manners strutted off, apparently on the best of terms with himself, his uniform, and his Bashi-Bazouks. Well! he, too, had embarked on the stormy career of war. It was wonderful how men turned up at Constantinople, on their way to or from the Front. It seemed as if society in general had determined on making an expedition to the East. Dandies from St. James's-street were amusing themselves by amateur soldiering before Sebastopol, and London fine ladies were to be seen mincing about on the rugged stones of Pera, talking bad French to the astonished Turks with a confidence that was truly touching. It was Europe invading Asia once more, and I could not always think Europe showed to advantage in the contrast. A native Turk, calm, dignified, kindly, and polite, is a nobler specimen of the human race than a bustling French barber or a greedy German Jew; and of the two latter classes Pera was unfortunately full even to overflowing. Well, it was refreshing to have crossed the bridge at last--to have left behind one the miserable attempt at Europeanism, the dirt, the turmoil, and the discomfort of Pera, for the quiet calm, the stately seclusion, and the venerable magnificence of Stamboul.