“Blest souls, that, from this mortal husk set
free,
In guerdon of brave deeds beatified,
Above this lowly orb of ours abide
Made heirs of heaven and immortality,
With noble rage and ardour glowing ye
Your strength, while strength was yours,
in battle plied,
And with your own blood and the foeman’s
dyed
The sandy soil and the encircling sea.
It was the ebbing life-blood first that failed
The weary arms; the stout hearts never quailed.
Though vanquished, yet ye earned the victor’s
crown:
Though mourned, yet still triumphant was your fall
For there ye won, between the sword and wall,
In Heaven glory and on earth renown.”
“That is it exactly, according to my recollection,”
said the captive.
“Well then, that on the fort,” said the
gentleman, “if my memory serves me, goes thus:
“Up from this wasted soil, this shattered shell,
Whose walls and towers here in ruin lie,
Three thousand soldier souls took wing
on high,
In the bright mansions of the blest to dwell.
The onslaught of the foeman to repel
By might of arm all vainly did they try,
And when at length ’twas left them
but to die,
Wearied and few the last defenders fell.
And this same arid soil hath ever been
A haunt of countless mournful memories,
As well in our day as in days of yore.
But never yet to Heaven it sent, I ween,
From its hard bosom purer souls than these,
Or braver bodies on its surface bore.”
The sonnets were not disliked, and the captive was
rejoiced at the tidings they gave him of his comrade,
and continuing his tale, he went on to say:
The Goletta and the fort being thus in their hands,
the Turks gave orders to dismantle the Goletta—for
the fort was reduced to such a state that there was
nothing left to level—and to do the work
more quickly and easily they mined it in three places;
but nowhere were they able to blow up the part which
seemed to be the least strong, that is to say, the
old walls, while all that remained standing of the
new fortifications that the Fratin had made came to
the ground with the greatest ease. Finally the
fleet returned victorious and triumphant to Constantinople,
and a few months later died my master, El Uchali,
otherwise Uchali Fartax, which means in Turkish “the
scabby renegade;” for that he was; it is the
practice with the Turks to name people from some defect
or virtue they may possess; the reason being that
there are among them only four surnames belonging
to families tracing their descent from the Ottoman
house, and the others, as I have said, take their names
and surnames either from bodily blemishes or moral
qualities. This “scabby one” rowed
at the oar as a slave of the Grand Signor’s for
fourteen years, and when over thirty-four years of
age, in resentment at having been struck by a Turk
while at the oar, turned renegade and renounced his
