EVEN Horace was obliged to admit, when he with Zaimes and their guide had walked round the barracks, that he saw no chance whatever of being able to get the prisoners out by force. The barracks consisted of an old castle, a portion of which was, as the shoemaker told them, now used as a military prison; and round this at some distance ran a strong wall some fifteen feet high, loopholed for musketry. The troops were lodged in huts between this wall and the castle.
“There you see,” the guide said, “what I said was true. You could not get a bird out of that place, much less a man.”
“That is so,” Zaimes agreed. “Well, what cannot be done, cannot. However, we will talk it over this evening at your house. Now let us walk about and view the city. Truly it is a fine one.”
Few towns, indeed, have a finer situation than Adalia, standing as it does at the head of a noble bay, a great portion of which is fringed with lofty and precipitous cliffs. The town, which at that time contained some ten thousand inhabitants, stands on ground sloping upwards from the sea in terraces rising one above another. It was surrounded by a ditch and a double wall of massive construction, with square towers every fifty yards. Beyond the walls stretched gardens and groves of orange, lemon, and mulberry trees. Ten mosques with their domes and minarets reared themselves above the houses, and there were several churches belonging to the Christian population, which was, the guide told them, about two thousand in number, the great proportion of whom spoke only the Turkish language. “I can talk equally well in both, for it is but fifty years since my father settled here, and we always talked Greek in the family as long as he lived. Now I always speak Turkish; it is safer, and does not remind the Turks continually that we are of Greek race.”
“Where does the pasha reside?” Horace asked presently.
“I will show you his place; it is at the lower corner of the north wall. His gardens stretch down to the wall by the water, and another high wall on this side separates them from the town.”
Passing through several streets they arrived opposite the residence of the pasha of the sanjak of Tekeh, of which Adalia is the chief town. The residence itself stood at the angle of the two walls dividing the garden from the town. It was a massive building. Some soldiers sat on benches at either side of the gate that opened into the court-yard, and townspeople and officials passed in and out.
“The public offices are in the court-yard,” the guide said. “The pasha’s private dwelling and his harem lie behind it.”
“I suppose we can walk in?”
“Certainly,” the guide said; and they passed through the gates into the court-yard. On one side was a guard-room, stables, and other offices; on the other were the rooms of the secretaries and officials and that in which the pasha transacted business and received visitors. The portion of the house facing the gates was blank on the basement story, except that a door faced the gateway. Above were a line of windows, all closed with jalousies. “That is the dwelling-house,” their guide said. “I believe all the apartments of the family face the garden. Those windows you see there are only those of the apartments of the servants and slaves.”
After leaving the pasha’s they walked down to the bottom of the town, where two gates with strong flanking powers opened upon the port, which was smaller than Horace had expected to find it. However, he was glad to see that there were several craft anchored in the roadstead, some near the port, some at a distance, showing that vessels did not come in unless for shelter in bad weather or to discharge heavy cargoes. Whatever the craft, then, in which the crew of the schooner might arrive, it would not attract attention by anchoring outside the port, as arranged. They returned with their guide to his house and had a meal there. Zaimes was profoundly discouraged. He saw no prospect whatever of rescuing his brother or the other prisoners, and the strength of the walls and the guns that were mounted upon them—a step which, the host told him, had been taken a few months before to defend the town against the Greek fleet, should it make its appearance there—showed that there was no prospect of the Turks being alarmed by the appearance or threats of a craft like the schooner.
“It seems altogether hopeless,” Zaimes said to the Greek.
The latter shook his head, “I can see no possible way,” he replied. “If it had been an ordinary prisoner in the jail it could be managed without difficulty. I could have got one of our countrymen of some influence to have approached the prison officers, or I myself could have worked with the warders; a small sum of money would have done it. But now it seems to me hopeless, and even if we stop the messenger and gain another eight days while the pasha sends again to Smyrna, we should only run some risk and gain nothing.”
Zaimes assented mournfully.
“You had better make the man a present, Zaimes,” Horace said when they were alone for a minute after the meal was finished. “Tell him that it seems to us to be hopeless, and that we shall probably go right away; but that if, thinking it over, we can hit upon any possible plan we will be back again this evening and sleep here.”
Zaimes carried out the suggestion, gave their host a gold coin, and said that they saw no use in staying longer, but would think it over in every way and might return that evening.
“If you go outside the town you must be back by sunset,” the man said; “the gates are closed at that hour.”
“We will not forget, but I do not think you will see us again.”
“Even if our people don’t arrive this evening, Zaimes, I think it will be just as well not to go back into the town,” Horace said as they issued out through the gates into the country. “I don’t say for a moment that the man is not honest, but it is just as well not to put temptation in his way. He knows that we are friends of the prisoners, and he, no doubt, guesses that we belong to the craft that captured the polacca that was wrecked. No doubt he would not openly betray us; that would bring him into discredit with all the Christians in the town. But a few words whispered to some Turk, and an agreement to share any reward that may be given for our capture, would answer the purpose just as well. I don’t say he would do it, you know, but it would be just as well not to run the risk.”
On issuing from the gate, Horace saw that there was a narrow road running between a deep dry ditch at the foot of the city walls and the outlying gardens and orchards.
“This will be our shortest way down to the water, Zaimes, let us follow it.”
The Greek turned without question. When they had gone half-way down between the gate and the bottom of the hill, Horace stopped. “Now, let us have a good look at this place. On the other side of that wall is the garden of the pasha’s house. I counted the number of steps up from the house to the cross-road leading to the gateway, and I have counted them coming down again; we are about fifty yards below the upper wall of the garden.”
“I daresay it is so,” Zaimes replied listlessly.
“This ditch is about ten feet deep, and from the bottom of the ditch to the top of that first wall is from five-and-twenty to thirty; between that wall and the higher one inside it is about fifteen feet; and the inner wall is about fifteen feet higher than the outer one; those square towers form junctions between the two walls. Now, we may be quite sure that there are no sentries either on the wall or on the square towers. I don’t suppose there are sentries anywhere except in the batteries on the water-face, but there certainly won’t be here, for they would command a view down into the pasha’s garden; so we may quite conclude that except for the trouble of scaling the walls there is nothing to prevent our getting over. A couple of rope-ladders and one or two twenty-foot planks with bits nailed across them to give a foothold would take us on to the inner wall; then we should need another long ladder to get down into the garden. That would be about thirty-five feet, I should say.”
“Yes, I see all that,” Zaimes, whose face had again become animated as he listened, agreed; “but what would be the good of getting into the pasha’s garden?”
“No good at all, if we were by ourselves, Zaimes, but with Martyn and twenty men from the schooner a good deal of good, I should say. We have only got to make a sudden rush into the house, which will, of course, be open to the garden, seize the pasha, and carry him and some of his wives and children off to the craft that our fellows come in, and then on to the schooner. Then we can send ashore to say that unless the prisoners are sent off in a boat to us by twelve o’clock in the day we shall hang the pasha. Maybe when we get hold of the pasha there will be no occasion to carry him and his women off; the mere threat of it might be enough. We can tell him that it will be painful to us to have to hoist them up to the top of the wall in sacks, but that we shall be obliged to do it unless he signs an order for the prisoners’ release, and sends it off at once by an officer to the jail. A handsome bribe that will enable him to make his peace with his superior at Smyrna may help to quicken his perception.”
Zaimes seized Horace’s hand with fervour, shook it wildly, clasped his hands on his breast, raised them to heaven, and poured forth a stream of exclamations of delight. The quiet habits of many years had been thrown to the winds in a moment, and the excitable Greek nature burst through all restraints. “You have given me new life,” he exclaimed as soon as he had calmed down a little. “Just now there did not seem even a shadow of hope. Now there is a chance that once again I may clasp my brother in my arms. Your plan is difficult, it is dangerous, and yet we may succeed. It is a desperate undertaking, but what is that? I would give my life for my brother, and your sailors would all risk theirs for their comrades.”
“Let us sit down here quietly for a few minutes, Zaimes, and take a good look at these walls. It is evident by the look of this road that it is very little used, and even if anyone did come up they would only think that we had been working in the orange groves behind us and were taking a quiet smoke. It is lucky that there is a moon to-night; it would be an awfully difficult job to get over those walls and into a place we know nothing of if it were a dark night. There will be no difficulty in throwing up a grapnel and getting on to the first wall. The greatest difficulty will be in crossing from that one to the one behind it. Of course with a regular gangway it would be easy enough, but we should not be able to get materials for making one. However, with a couple of stout spars put up a foot apart with ropes between them a foot from each other so as to make ratlings, we could get up, though it wouldn’t be a very easy job passing women down. Still, I hope it won’t come to that. I should think if we capture the pasha and his children, if he has any—and I suppose with half-a-dozen wives he will be sure to have some—we might leave the women alone, though, of course, we should threaten to take them. But I’ll tell you what we shall want, and that is a man who can speak Turkish well, so as to explain exactly to the pasha the fix he is in.”
“Yes, we shall want such a man,” Zaimes agreed.
“Very well, Zaimes, then I think you had better go back to our friend at once. Even if he did mean treachery, he would have taken no steps yet, as he won’t expect us back till the evening if we come at a............