Chapter XX

In which is a very circumstantial, if not very pleasant, description of all the conditions to be observed in the exchange and purchase of slaves.

On arriving at the fortress of Onod, Valentine at once handed over his prisoner and the money he had brought with him (of course deducting the two hundred ducats which the robbers had taken away from him) to the Commandant of the fortress, that he might ransom therewith the persons who were languishing in the dungeons of Eger, and especially the woman and child who had been abducted with him and sold at the Eger cattle market. As for the imprisoned butcher, he proposed to exchange him for the field-trumpeter, Simplex.

By this noble deed Valentine so completely won the hearts of the brave warriors of Onod, that they made him a corporal on the spot. Moreover, the liberated lady also visited him with her daughter, expressed her thanks by kissing his hands and embracing his feet, informed him that she was a rich proprietress, and insisted upon giving him her daughter to wife as soon as she had reached maturity, the young lady at present being only twelve years of age.

Valentine thanked her for her offer, but begged her to bring up her daughter for some other more fortunate mortal. Who could tell where his bones might be bleaching in five or six years' time?

It was only pretty Michal that he had always in his thoughts.

He could scarcely wait for Simplex to appear, so impatient was he to set out with him to discover Michal.

But the ransom of the prisoners did not go off so smoothly after all. The Kaimakan of Eger wrote to the Commandant of Onod that he did not consider the Eger butcher worth four hundred gulden, the amount of the trumpeter's ransom. There were still two and thirty butchers at Eger, and therefore he would not give more than two hundred gulden for this particular butcher. If the other two hundred gulden were not paid in cash, the whole of the Christian prisoners at Eger should suffer for it on the soles of their feet. Annexed to the Kaimakan's letter was a heart-rending petition from the Christian prisoners, in which they implored the Commandant to fulfill the desire of the Kaimakan for their sakes.

The Commandant of Onod thereupon fetched out of prison the six and twenty Turks who were in captivity there, and made them address a solemn memorial to the Kaimakan of Eger, whom they piteously besought not to bastinado the Christian captives, as in such a case they, the Turkish captives, would be visited with still more grievous torments.

The principal sufferers, however, were the two prisoners who were to be exchanged, and from whom both sides tried to extort as much as possible, so that in their mutual distress they grew quite fond of each other.

At last Valentine sent the extra two hundred gulden, and both Simplex and the Turkish butcher were escorted to Eger with fetters on only one leg. There the Kaimakan received his gold and the butcher his wife. Ibrahim Kermes celebrated his liberation with a banquet, to which Simplex was also invited, and regaled with mutton in twelve different editions. Finally, Ibrahim presented him with a pair of red morocco slippers, while Jigerdilla sent Valentine a couple of superfine laced pocket-handkerchiefs, with initials embroidered in the four corners in Turkish letters, and wet with the tears from her lovely eyes at the recollection of him.

But Ibrahim Kermes swore by the beard of the Prophet that he would never again buy a Calvinist _giaour_ as a slave, even if he could get him for a single denarius.

And now, after all this, it is high time that Valentine set out to seek his unhappy Michal.