"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 sh.o.r.e, 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 Noemi 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 ap.r.o.n; 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 Noemi. 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 G.o.d, 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 n.o.ble 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 quant.i.ty 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 pa.s.sed through my hands. For I have lived on this island twelve years, sir, with the other two, for I count Almira as a person. Noemi 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 n.o.body"s way, and do no harm; I grow fruit on my bit of desert land, which has no master. G.o.d the Lord and the royal Danube gave it to me, and I thank them for it daily. I thank Thee, my G.o.d! 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. Noemi knows nothing about it. I have taught her to read and write: I tell her of G.o.d, and Jesus, and Moses, as I knew them.
Of the good, all-merciful, omnipresent G.o.d--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 G.o.d of vengeance, the G.o.d of the chosen people--a G.o.d 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 compa.s.sion 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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. Noemi 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 Timea, with her dazzling pale face.
Noemi also was up and boiling fresh goat"s milk for breakfast, with roasted maize instead of coffee, and honey for sugar. Timea took none, but let Narcissa drink the milk instead, who did not despise the stranger"s offer, to Noemi"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. Timea 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 Noemi; 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 sh.o.r.e. But Noemi 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 part.i.tion, 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 part.i.tion. 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 gla.s.ses. "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. Timea 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 pa.s.sing 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 n.o.bles 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sport 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; Timea"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 pa.s.senger 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 pa.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e--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 Timea!