Uel spoke in surprise.
"Yes, son of Jahdai, she is a Christian. Nevertheless send Lael to her.
Again I leave you where I rest myself--with G.o.d--our G.o.d."
Thereupon he went out finally, and between gusts of wind regained his own house. He stopped on entering, and barred the door behind him; then he groped his way to the kitchen, and taking a lamp from its place, raked together the embers smothering in a brazier habitually kept for retention of fire, and lighted the lamp. He next broke up some stools and small tables, and with the pieces made a pile under the grand stairway to the second floor, muttering as he worked: "The proud are risen against me; and now the wind cometh, and punishment."
Once more he walked through the rooms, and ascended to the roof. There, just as he cleared the door, as if it were saluting him, and determined to give him a trial of its force, a blast leaped upon him, like an embodiment out of the cloud in full possession of both world and sky, and started his gown astream, and twisting his hair and beard into lashes whipped his eyes and ears with them, and howled, and s.n.a.t.c.hed his breath nearly out of his mouth. Wind it was, and darkness somewhat like that Egypt knew what time the deliverer, with G.o.d behind him, was trying strength with the King"s sorcerers--wind and darkness, but not a drop of rain. He grasped the door-post, and listened to the crashing of heavy things on the neighboring roofs, and the rattle of light things for the finding of which loose here and there the gust of a storm may be trusted where eyes are useless. And noticing that obstructions served merely to break the flying forces into eddies, he laughed and shouted by turns so the inmates of the houses near might have heard had they been out as he was instead of cowering in their beds: "The proud are risen against me, and the a.s.sembly of violent men have sought after my soul; and now--ha, ha, ha!--the wind cometh and the punishment!"
Availing himself of a respite in the blowing, he ran across the roof and looked over into the street, and seeing nothing, neither light nor living thing, he repeated the refrain with a slight variation: "And the wind--ha, ha!--the wind _is_ come, and the punishment!"--then he fled back, and down from the roof.
And now the purpose in reserve must have revelation.
The grand staircase sprang from the floor open beneath like a bridge.
Pa.s.sing under it, he set the lamp against the heap of kindling there, and the smell of scorching wood spread abroad, followed by smoke and the crackle and snap of wood beginning to burn.
It was not long until the flames, gathering life and strength, were beyond him to stay or extinguish them, had he been taken with sudden repentance. From step to step they leaped, the room meantime filling fast with suffocating gases. When he knew they were beyond the efforts of any and all whom they might attract, and must burst into conflagration the instant they reached the lightest of the gusts playing havoc outside, he went down on his hands and knees, for else it had been difficult for him to breathe, and crawled to the door. Drawing himself up there, he undid the bar, and edged through into the street; nor was there a soul to see the puff of smoke and murky gleam which pa.s.sed out with him.
His spirit was too drunken with glee to trouble itself with precautions now; yet he stopped long enough to repeat the refrain, with a hideous spasm of laughter: "And now--ha, ha!--the wind _is_ come, and the fire, and the punishment." Then he wrapped his gown closer about his form bending to meet the gale, and went leisurely down the street, intending to make St. Peter"s gate.
Where the intersections left openings, the Jew, now a fugitive rather than a wanderer--a fugitive nevertheless who knew perfectly where he was going, and that welcome awaited him there--halted to scan the cloudy floor of the sky above the site of the house he had just abandoned. A redness flickering and unsteady over in that quarter was the first a.s.surance he had of the growth of the flame of small beginning under the grand staircase.
"Now the meeting of wind and fire!--Now speedily these hypocrites and tongue-servers, b.a.s.t.a.r.ds of Byzantium, shall know Israel has a G.o.d in whom they have no lot, and in what regard he holds conniving at the rape of his daughters. Blow, Wind, blow harder! Rise, Fire, and spread--be a thousand lions in roaring till these tremble like hunted curs! The few innocent are not more in the account than moths burrowed in woven wool and feeding on its fineness. Already the guilty begin to pray--but to whom? Blow, O Wind! Spread and spare not, O Fire!"
Thus he exulted; and as if it heard him and were making answer to his imprecations, a column, pinked by the liberated fire below it, a burst of sparks in its core, shot up in sudden vastness like a t.i.tan rushing to seizure of the world; but presently the gale struck and toppled it over toward Blacherne in the northwest.
"That way points the punishment? I remember I offered him G.o.d and peace and good-will to men, and he rejected them. Blow, Winds! Now are ye but breezes from the south, spice-laden to me, but in his ears be as chariots descending. And thou, O Fire! Forget not the justice to be done, and whose servant thou art. Leave Heaven to say which is guiltier; they who work at the deflowerment of the innocent, or he who answers no to the Everlasting offering him love. Unto him be thou as banners above the chariots!"
Now a noise began--at first faint and uncertain, then, as the red column sprang up, it strengthened, and ere long defined itself--Fire, Fire!
It seemed the city awoke with that cry. And there was peering from windows, opening of doors, rushing from houses, and hurrying to where the angry spot on the floor of the cloud which shut Heaven off was widening and deepening. In a s.p.a.ce incredibly quick, the streets--those leading to the corner occupied by the Jew as well--became rivulets flowing with people, and then blatant rivers.
"My G.o.d, what a night for a fire!"
"There will be nothing left of us by morning, not even ashes."
"And the women and children--think of them!"
"Fire--fire--fire!"
Exchanges like these dinned the Jew until, finding himself an obstruction, he moved on. Not a phase of the awful excitement escaped him--the racing of men--half-clad women a.s.sembling--children staring wild-eyed at the smoke extending luridly across the fifth and sixth hills to the seventh--white faces, exclamations, and not seldom resort to crucifixes and prayers to the Blessed Lady of Blacherne--he heard and saw them all--yet kept on toward St. Peter"s gate, now an easy thing, since the thoroughfares were so aglow he could neither stumble nor miss the right one. A company of soldiers running nearly knocked him down; but finally he reached the portal, and pa.s.sed out without challenge. A brief search then for his galley; and going aboard, after replying to a few questions about the fire, he bade the captain cast off, and run for the Bosphorus.
"It looks as if the city would all go," he said; and the mariner, thinking him afraid, summoned his oarsmen, and to please him made haste, as he too well might, for the light of the burning projected over the wall, and, flung back from the cloud overhead far as the eye could penetrate, illuminated the harbor as it did the streets, bringing the ships to view, their crews on deck, and Galata, wall, housetops and tower, crowded with people awestruck by the immensity of the calamity.
When the galley outgoing cleared Point Serail, the wind and the long swells beating in from the Marmora white with foam struck it with such force that keeping firm grip of their oars was hard for the rowers, and they began to cry out; whereupon the captain sought his pa.s.senger.
"My Lord," he said, "I have plied these waters from boyhood, and never saw them in a night like this. Let me return to the harbor."
"What, is it not light enough?"
The sailor crossed himself, and replied: "There is light enough--such as it is!" and he shuddered. "But the wind, and the running sea, my Lord"--
"Oh! for them, keep on. Under the mountain height of Scutari the sailing will be plain."
And with much wonder how one so afraid of fire could be so indifferent to danger from flood and gale, the captain addressed himself to manoeuvring his vessel.
"Now," said the Jew, when at last they were well in under the Asiatic sh.o.r.e--"now bear away up the Bosphorus."
The light kept following him the hour and more required to make the Sweet Waters and the White Castle; and even there the reflection from the cloud above the ill-fated city was strong enough to cast half the stream in shadow from the sycamores lining its left bank.
The Governor of the Castle received the friend of his master, the new Sultan, at the landing; and from the wall just before retiring, the latter took a last look at the signs down where the ancient capital was struggling against annihilation. Glutted with imaginings of all that was transpiring there, he clapped his hands, and repeated the refrain in its past form:
"Now have the winds come, and the fire, and the punishment. So be it ever unto all who encourage violence to children, and reject G.o.d."
An hour afterwards, he was asleep peacefully as if there were no such thing as conscience, or a misery like remorse.
Shortly after midnight an officer of the guard ventured to approach the couch of the Emperor Constantine; in his great excitement he even shook the sacred person.
"Awake, Your Majesty, awake, and save the city. It is a sea of fire."
Constantine was quickly attired, and went first to the top of the Tower of Isaac. He was filled with horror by what he beheld; but he had soldierly qualities--amongst others the faculty of keeping a clear head in crises. He saw the conflagration was taking direction with the wind and coming straight toward Blacherne, where, for want of aliment, it needs must stop. Everything in its line of progress was doomed; but he decided it possible to prevent extension right and left of that line, and acting promptly, he brought the entire military force from the barracks to cooperate with the people. The strategy was successful.
Gazing from the pinnacle as the sun rose, he easily traced a blackened swath cut from the fifth hill up to the eastward wall of the imperial grounds; and, in proof of the fury of the gale, the terraces of the garden were covered inches deep with ashes and scoriac-looking flakes of what at sunset had been happy homes. And the dead? Ascertainment of the many who perished was never had; neither did closest inquiry discover the origin of the fire. The volume of iniquities awaiting exposure Judgment Day must be immeasurable, if it is of the book material in favor among mortals.
The Prince of India was supposed to have been one of the victims of the fire, and not a little sympathy was expended for the mysterious foreigner. But in refuge at the White Castle, that worthy greedily devoured the intelligence he had the Governor send for next day. One piece of news, however, did more than dash the satisfaction he secretly indulged--Uel, the son of Jahdai, was dead--and dead of injuries suffered the night of the catastrophe.
A horrible foreboding struck the grim incendiary. Was the old destiny still pursuing him? Was it still a part of the Judgment that every human being who had to do with him in love, friendship or business, every one on whom he looked in favor, must be overtaken soon or late with a doom of some kind? From that moment, moved by an inscrutable prompting of spirit, he began a list of those thus unfortunate--Lael first, then Uel.
Who next?
The reader will remember the merchant"s house was opposite the Prince"s, with a street between them. Unfortunately the street was narrow; the heat from one building beat across it and attacked the other. Uel managed to get out safely; but recollecting the jewels intrusted to him for Lael, he rushed back to recover them. Staggering out again blind and roasting, he fell on the pave, and was carried off, but with the purse intact. Next day he succ.u.mbed to the injuries. In his last hour, he dictated a letter to the Princess Irene, begging her to accept the guardianship of his daughter, if G.o.d willed her return. Such, he said, was his wish, and the Prince of India"s; and with the missive, he forwarded the jewels, and a statement of the property he was leaving in the market. They and all his were for the child--so the disposition ran, concluding with a paragraph remarkable for the confidence it manifested in the Christian trustee. "But if she is not returned alive within a year from this date, then, O excellent Princess, I pray you to be my heir, holding everything of mine yours unconditionally. And may G.o.d keep you!"
CHAPTER XXIII
SERGIUS AND NILO TAKE UP THE HUNT
We have seen the result of Sergius" interview with the Prince of India, and remember that it was yet early in the morning after Lael"s disappearance when, in company with Nilo, he bade the eccentric stranger adieu, and set forth to try his theory respecting the lost girl.
About noon he appeared southwest of the Hippodrome in the street leading past the cistern-keeper"s abode. Nilo, by arrangement, followed at a distance, keeping him in sight. By his side there was a fruit peddler, one of the every-day cla.s.s whose successors are banes of life to all with whom in the modern Byzantium a morning nap is the sweetest preparation for the day.
The peddler carried a huge basket strapped to his forehead. He was also equipped with a wooden platter for the display of samples of his stock; and it must be said the medlars, oranges, figs of Smyrna, and the luscious green grapes in enormous cl.u.s.ters freshly plucked in the vineyards on the Asiatic sh.o.r.e over against the Isles of the Princes, were very tempting; especially so as the hour was when the whole world acknowledges the utility of lunching as a stay for dinner.
It is not necessary to give the conversation between the man of fruits and the young Russian. The former was endeavoring to sell. Presently they reached a point from which the cistern-keeper was visible, seated, as usual, just within the door pommelling the pavement. Sergius stopped there, and affected to examine his companion"s stock; then, as if of a mind, he said:
"Oh, well! Let us cross the street, and if the man yonder will give me a room in which I can eat to my content, I will buy of you. Let us try him."