What was that?
Nothing but a large piece of ice, coming before the rest by way of warning. Immediately afterwards heaven discharged, as from slings, its rattling, clattering stones, jagged lumps of ice came plunging down from the sky. Some of them were like birds" eggs, others like transparent nuts, others like the heads of spiked clubs, ten little pieces all glued together, with a murderous lump in the middle of a pound"s weight. The lightning flashed incessantly, sending its messages from one quarter of the heavens to the other, the ice-flogged earth in the distant plain gave forth a sound as if it were about to collapse beneath the falling sky.
"Allah Kerim! Allah Akbar!" exclaimed the freebooters, vainly flying from the pursuant hailstones, which smote them down from every side with frightful velocity. The neighing of the tortured and terrified horses made the din still more terrible, and the boldest were dismayed by the sweeping lightning flashes which plunged down among them with fiery heads, illuminating the dense body of hail which seemed to have dissolved into millions of diamonds and silver bullets in its descent from above.
"There is no deliverance save with the "Lord G.o.d!"" howled the Turks.
And off they plunged whithersoever their horses took them, some in the direction of the forest they had just quitted, where the wind-shattered trees received them, others galloped on still further, and plunged into a stream which the water-spout within an hour had swollen into a raging river. Others again, flying before the hurricane, fell right within its path, were struck down and scattered about miles away. When the tempest had pa.s.sed over, Badrul Beg could only find fifty hors.e.m.e.n. Of these about twenty lay dead on the ground, scattered far and wide, with frightful wounds on their foreheads, twisted limbs and broken legs; in some cases horse and rider had been struck dead together, others had been so buried by the ice that only their hands appeared above the frozen ma.s.s. The whole plain presented the spectacle of a desert strewn over with stones and pebbles of different sizes, but all equally white and cold.
The sons of the Ethiopian palm desert had never seen ice before.
"Lo! what wonders befall in this earth!" said Badrul Beg, in his dismay.
"Who can fight against Heaven? The G.o.d of the Magyars works miracles on their behalf! Allah defend us from the wrath of this strange G.o.d!"
Nevertheless, he was not quite certain whether Kuczuk Pasha would be inclined to believe him if he were to return with a shattered host after letting the women go. How _could_ he believe from mere hearsay a marvel the like of which no true believer had ever heard? But he could have no surer witness than these iron trunks, which he had brought with him to hold the jewels of the captured women, if he filled them with the cold white stones slung by the celestial slings; when he saw those the Pasha must give credence even to a story bordering upon the marvellous.
So he nicely filled four large trunks right up to the brim with ice, and binding them on the backs of two horses, himself trotted after them. For the sake of greater security, he kept the keys of all the boxes himself, and sealed up their locks with sealing-wax.
It took him a couple of days to get back to Grosswardein, for he went a bit out of his way to collect together his scattered soldiers; and a sorry lot they were, with their broken limbs, battered heads, and black and blue bodies. All the time a burning sun shone down upon them from morn to eve, and the water was dripping from under the iron trunks, and exhaling in vapour from above them at the same time. On reaching Grosswardein, he appeared before Kuczuk Pasha with a broken arm and a downcast face, and told him the whole story, the very telling of which made him tremble.
Kuczuk Pasha"s face grew very wrath at this fairy tale, and not a word of it would he believe. Then Badrul Beg had the iron trunks brought forward to corroborate him, that he might see with his own eyes the stones of the celestial slingers.
And lo! when the seals were broken and the locks were opened, there was nothing at all in the trunks. There was not a trace of the celestial stones.
Badrul Beg rent his clothes.
"Merciful Allah!" he cried, "lo! the G.o.d of the Magyars has caused to disappear from the locked boxes the stones with which he stoned my warriors to death!"
"Miserable coward!" thundered Kuczuk Pasha, who did not believe a single word of it all. "I suppose the meaning of it is that those valiant amazons have given you a good drubbing?"
Whereupon they led Badrul Beg forth from his presence, and hung him up in front of the gate, and there he hung till evening. As for the Moors who were with him, they were first decimated, and then the rest had their ears cut off and were sent to Belgrade.
But the women of Debreczen at the very same time returned unharmed to the arms of their dear ones. To the very end of his life Kuczuk Pasha firmly believed that it was they who had drubbed Badrul Beg so roundly, and from henceforth he held them in the greatest respect.
This story is recorded in the archives of the n.o.ble city of Debreczen, and ye who read thereof reflect that G.o.d still exists, and that He is always able to defend His chosen from His high heaven, and now also His arm is not shortened.
II
THE COMPULSORY DIVERSION--AN OLD BARON"S YARN
I wonder, my dear fellows, if any of you know the Countess Stephen Repey, the younger one I mean, not the old lady, that little Creole princess--my little black-eyed cobold, as I call her? Mine indeed, pish!
I don"t mean that, of course. That is only a _facon de parler_. All of us, my dear fellows, as you very well know, have sighed after her enough, at some time or other, but none of you have had, like me, the luck to travel at night with her in the same coach. Well, naturally, her maid was there too. Still it was a great bit of luck all the same. But no more of such luck for me, thank you.
One day, at her castle of Kerekvar, it suddenly occurred to the Countess, quite late in the evening, that the Casino ball at Arad[8] was coming off on the morrow, and she must be there at all hazards. No sooner said than done. The horses were put to at once, and as there was n.o.body with her but me, she said: "I pray you, my dear Baron, be so good as to escort me to Arad."
[Footnote 8: The Cheltenham of Hungary.]
Well, when it came to "dear Baron," what on earth could I say?
"Countess! _ma deesse_, it is very dark; we shall only get upset and break our legs, and how can we dance with broken legs? We shall have to cross the three Koros rivers, the bridge over one of them is sure to be crazy as usual, and in we shall plump. Then at Szalenta we shall have to pa.s.s through the deuce of a wood, full of robbers, and I shall never be able to defend you single-handed against the whole lot of them. And besides, what need is there to hurry? Early to-morrow morning, after a nice cup of tea, you have only to step into your carriage, your four bay horses will fly with us to Arad, and by the evening you will be quite ready with your toilet."
That"s what I said, but you know how it always is, try and persuade a woman not to do a thing, and she"ll insist on doing it all the more. She didn"t want to drive her horses to death, she said, and whoever heard of wanting to rest after a short journey like that. Besides, she loved so to travel by night. What with the stars and the frogs, it was so beautiful, so romantic, and much more such stuff. But bless you, that was a mere pretext. The fact was, she had suddenly got the idea into her darling little noddle, and nothing in heaven or earth could turn her from her purpose.
_Enfin_, I was between two stools. I had either to go with her or remain alone in the castle. Of course I chose the former alternative, especially after she gave me permission to sit opposite to her in the coach.
I enjoyed myself splendidly, I can tell you. The Countess, by degrees, absolutely loaded me with her favours. First of all she put her handbag in my lap, to which she presently added a m.u.f.f; next she hung a reticule upon my arm; finally she entrusted to me a couple of band-boxes, after that she fell asleep. I could have asked anything I liked of her, especially when the coach stumbled and she awoke in terror and began asking for all her belongings one after another, dozing off again when she was quite sure they were all there. Later on, the lady"s-maid began to groan: "O Lord! how my head aches!"--whereupon I also pretended to fall asleep.
Suddenly we all started up in alarm, the coach had suddenly moved sideways, and then come to a dead stop as if it had fallen into a ditch.
My Countess also awoke and asked, stupidly, what was the matter.
The lackey leaped from the box and came to the carriage window.
"Your ladyship, I am afraid we have lost our way."
"Well, what of that?" said the Countess; "we can"t stop here; there"s a road in front of us, I suppose, and we are bound to arrive somewhere if we only follow it."
"Yes, but----"
"Yes, but--what do you mean? The road must lead somewhere, I suppose?"
"Saving your ladyship"s presence, we are in the Szalenta wood."
"Well, the Szalenta wood is no trackless wilderness. We shall get to the end of it in a couple of hours."
"Yes, your ladyship, but the coachman is afraid."
"The coachman! What business has he to be afraid? there"s nothing about that in his contract, is there?"
"He"s afraid of some mischief befalling your ladyship."
"What has the coachman to do with me, I should like to know?"
Here I thought it my duty to intervene.
"Countess, _ma deesse_, this is no joke. This comes, you see, of nocturnal excursions. Here we are camping out in the middle of a forest, and the robbers who abound in this forest will come and take our horses, our money, and our lives. I only wish I had a revolver."
But the little demon only laughed, and, before I could prevent it, she had opened the coach door and leaped out.
"Oh! what a splendid night. How fragrant the forest is; how the glow-worms sparkle in the gra.s.s. Have you no eyes, Baron?"
Eyes, indeed! when I couldn"t see three paces before me for the darkness.
"But surely I see something shining through the trees over there," she continued.