The Lion of Janina Part 9

They really did bury Ali.

When the imams and the officers had departed from the covered tomb, Gaskho Bey summoned the keepers of the observatory to the summit of Lithanizza and laid this command upon them:

"Let a man stand in front of this telescope from morning to evening (and mind that he is relieved every four hours), and never withdraw his eye from that tomb. At night, when the moon goes down, a rocket is to be fired every five minutes, that the watchers may see the tomb and never leave it out of sight, and report upon it every hour."

What? Is Gaskho Bey actually afraid that old Ali, a veteran of seventy-nine, will be able to arise from his tomb and hurl away that heavy marble slab with his dead hands? There are men of whom it is impossible to believe that they are dead, and whom people are afraid of even when they are buried.

Every hour till late in the evening they reported to Gaskho Bey that the tomb remained unchanged, and all the night through not a soul approached it.

Tepelenti, then, was really dead--totally dead.

Early next morning Gaskho Bey heard a very curious story.

In the artillery barracks, where the round guns stood, a drummer had laid down his drum close beside him, with the drumsticks leaning over it, when he suddenly perceived the two drumsticks begin to move of their own accord over the tightly drawn skin of the drums as if some invisible hand wished to beat a tattoo. The drummer cried out at this marvel, and fancied that a _dzhin_ was in the drum.

Gaskho Bey would not believe it till he had himself gone to the barracks and seen with his own eyes how the two drumsticks vibrated with sufficient force to tap the drum pretty loudly, moving in a spiral line backward and forward across it, tap-tap-tapping as they went.

"It is very marvellous!" cried the bey; and he immediately summoned the imams to drive the _dzhin_ out of the drum.

The imams set to work at once. They fetched their fumigators and their sacred books, and they fumigated the drum with nose-offending odors and recited over it drum-expelling exorcisms in a shrill voice. And certainly if the devil was in that drum, and had anything of a nose or ears, he would have been obliged to escape from that noise and stink.

So long as the drum was in any one's hand the drumsticks did not move, but when it was put down on the ground the mysterious tap-tapping began again.

The imams went on howling, and horribly they howled.

The chief of the observatory was present during this scene. As a French renegade he was a man of some education, and therefore he did not accept the theory of the _dzhins_. When he perceived that the imams were not successful in expelling the evil spirits, he called Gaskho Bey aside and whispered in his ear:

"I know nothing about your _dzhins_, and don't understand what you are driving at with all this noise and stench, but I can tell you that this beating of the drum is a sign that invisible hands are at work here."

"What?"

"It means that we ought to get away from here, for they are digging mines beneath us, and that is why the ground trembles and the drumsticks vibrate."

Gaskho Bey began smiling. He had as little idea of sapping and mining as the French renegade had of Turkish monsters.

"How superst.i.tious thou art, my brave moosir!" said he, shrugging his shoulders and looking down upon the Frenchman.

The latter, however, did not remain there much longer, but hastened as quickly as he could to the summit of the Lithanizza.

After about an hour and a half's more hubbub the imams succeeded in expelling the _dzhin_. The drum grew quiet, the excitement subsided, and the soldiers were instructed to lay two swords crosswise in front of the gate, so that the spirit might not be able to come back any more; and with that termination of the affair every one was satisfied.

Opposite the gate of the fortress of Janina, at the head of the collapsed bridge, stood a stone building, fenced about with redoubts and palisades, which had now fallen into the hands of the Suliotes.

This building had been chosen by the two Greek kinsfolk for their dwelling-place. They wanted to get as close to Ali as possible; they would not suffer him to escape even in the shape of a bird or a spirit; their large siege-guns were pointed at the walled-up gate. Let him surrender or find his tomb in the fortress.

And lo! he _had_ found his tomb without consulting them about it. In vain they had sharpened their weapons against him--the sword of Death is quicker and cuts down sooner. They had not been able to reach him on the field of battle; they had not been able to plunge their avenging swords into his heart; they had not been able to bring his gray head to the block; it had been reserved for him to pa.s.s quietly away--to die in his bed, untroubled, unmolested, to die the death of the righteous.

Kleon and Artemis were sitting sullenly in a room of the fort by the light of a flickering candle. The girl had absently divested herself of her cuira.s.s and was walking up and down the room with folded arms.

There was not a single womanly trait in her face. It was as cold as the face of a statue.

"So he is dead, then--dead!"

This phrase she repeated to herself again and again. She seemed unable to get away from it.

"Ali has died, and not by my hand."

Kleon was strikingly like his sister; indeed, his young face scarcely differed at all from hers, but in his eyes quite another sort of flame sparkled. Her face, full of dark thoughts, was much more terrible; his was free and open, and full of radiant hope.

"My triumph has lost its worth if Ali is dead," she said, with a sigh.

"The old fox has dodged my steel by taking refuge in h.e.l.l. Oh, would that I might follow him thither also, that I might tear his gray beard, which he has bathed in my kinsman's blood!"

"Behold! here is my gray beard!" cried a voice at that instant from the other end of the room, and the brother and sister beheld Ali Tepelenti standing before them.

The terror-stricken young people involuntarily crossed themselves.

Horror nailed them to the ground and petrified all their limbs, when they saw what they imagined to be a spectre standing there before them in the self-same gray robe in which he had been buried two days before.

"Behold, here I am, Ali Tepelenti!"

With that the spectre clapped his hands, and from every corner of the room rushed forth Albanians armed to the teeth, and before the brother and sister could approach their weapons, they were overpowered and tied together.

It was really Ali Tepelenti who stood before them.

They had put him away underground, it is true, but underground there were paths and pa.s.sages only too well known to him. The whole spectacle of the interment had been arranged by himself, and there was an exit from the bottom of his tomb into subterranean corridors. When the general joy and satisfaction at the victory was at its height, he was abroad and at work.

A strongly built subterranean trench had been constructed below the ditches encircling the redoubts, and its ramifications extended to the fort at the head of the bridge. Ali had so completely surprised the garrison that they had not been able to fire a shot; the Suliotes had been surprised and disarmed while in their dreams.

Up, up, Gaskho Bey! Arise, Muhammad Aga! To horse, ye captains! Seize thy sword, Pehlivan Pasha! Danger is at hand! This is a bad night for sleeping!

Suddenly a frightful explosion shook the ground, just as if the earth was being wrenched from its hinges, and amidst a flame brighter than the light of day, which seemed to leap up to the very stars, huge round cannons were seen flying. The gunners in the barracks were also pitched into the air. The minarets tottered and fell before the terrific shock, every building round about crumbled into ruins. In a moment one-half of the town was reduced to a rubbish-heap, and the next moment a hail of burning beams and lacerated human limbs fell back upon the ruins from the blood and fire besmudged heavens.

It was thus that Ali Pasha signified his resurrection to his enemies!

He had gone underground, and now from underground he began the war anew.

Gaskho Bey, his gigantic body half undressed (he had just leaped out of bed), rushed to the end of the street, and was so confused that he asked all whom he met where he was. The suddenly aroused soldiers, half mad with terror, rushed hither and thither in confusion, crying out, one for his horse, another for his weapons. And above their heads, more terrible than heaven's thunder-bolts, resounded the dread cry, "Ali, Ali!" There comes the entombed pasha on a white horse, with his white beard; who will dare to look him in the face? The panic-stricken throng falls in thousands beneath the swords of the Albanians, blood flows in streams in the streets of Janina, and Ali Pasha, the dead man, the buried captain, fills the hearts of their warriors with the fear of death. There is none who can stand against him.

Only Pehlivan, the stalwart hero, was able to prevent the vast besieging army from being scattered altogether by a handful of Arnauts. He rallied the fugitives outside the town, and, while Ali's men-at-arms were murdering every one inside, he quickly seized all the gates, advanced in battle-array, and stayed the triumph of the veteran captain.

And enough had surely been done.

Three thousand of the besiegers lay dead, the guns were spiked or overthrown, and the leaders of the Suliote band were prisoners--and all this the result of Ali's nocturnal rally! It was time for him to return.

Pehlivan thus recaptured the town and marshalled his men in the market-place, without pursuing Ali any further. But he had reckoned without Gaskho Bey, who now came rushing up and furiously accosted him:

"Why hast thou not pursued him right into the citadel?"

"It would not do to press Ali too closely," replied the practised general; "let him fly, if fly he will."