Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks Part 2

"Marriage."

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Jack," exclaimed the orphan; "my experience of the happy state was any thing but agreeable with one wife. Goodness knows how long I should survive if I had, as you say, several wives."

"Don't worry yourself, Mr. Figgins," said Jack, "but it is just as well to be prepared."

"For what?"

"An emergency. You don't know what might happen to you in this country."

Mr. Figgins looked really very anxious at this.

"I don't well see how they can marry a man."

"That's not the question, Mr. Figgins. You could refuse. It would cost you your life for a certainty."

The orphan nearly rolled off his cus.h.i.+on.

"What!"

"Fact, I a.s.sure you," said Jack, gravely.

"Explain."

"You will be expected to pay a visit of state to the pasha."

"Yes."

"That is the greatest honour on landing for a stranger."

"What is a pasha?"

"The governor of the province, a regular Bung."

"Well."

"Bluebeard was a pasha, you remember."

"No, no," interrupted the orphan, delighted to show his historical accuracy. "Bluebeard was a bashaw."

"It is the same thing, another way of writing or p.r.o.nouncing the identical same dignity or rank. Well, you know that polygamy is the pet vice of the followers of Islam."

"Oh, it's dreadful, Jack."

"The greater the man, the greater the polygamist. A pasha has as many wives as he can keep, and more too. The pasha of this province is not rich for his rank, and for his matrimonial proclivities."

"Lor'!"

"How many wives should you suppose he has?" asked Jack, with an air of deep gravity.

"Don't know," replied the orphan, quietly.

"Ninety-eight living."

Mr. Figgins jumped up and dropped his chibouk.

"Never."

"A fact," a.s.serted Jack, with gravity.

"Why, the man must be a regular Bluebeard."

"You've hit it, sir," responded Jack; "that's the sort of man he is."

"Well, that is all very well for the Turks and for these old sinners the pashas, but I am an Englishman."

"This is the way it will most likely be done," continued Jack. "On your presentation to his excellency the pasha, you are expected to make some present. The pasha makes a return visit of ceremony, and leaves behind him some solid evidence of his liberality."

"Well?"

"Well, but the very highest compliment that a pasha can pay you is to leave you one of his wives. He generally makes it an old stock-keeper, something that has been a good thirty years or so in the seraglio."

Mr. Figgins took the liveliest interest in this narrative.

He was growing rapidly convinced of the truth of Jack's descriptions of these singular manners and customs of the country in which they were.

Yet he eyed Jack as one who has a lingering doubt.

"Ahem!" said Mr. Figgins, "I don't think that I shall join you on your visit ash.o.r.e in the morning."

"We'll see in the morning," said Jack; "it's a pity to put off your trip for the sake of such a trifling danger as that of having a wife or so given to you."

"It's no use," said Mr. Figgins, "my mind is fully made up; I shall not visit the pasha."

"It will be taken as a grave insult to go ash.o.r.e without paying your respects to his excellency."

"I can't help that," returned the orphan, resolutely; "I won't visit him."

"Mr. Figgins," said Jack, in a voice of deep solemnity, "these Turks are cruel, vindictive, and revengeful. The last Englishman who refused was, by order of the pasha, skinned alive, placed on the sunny side of a wall, and blown to death by flies."

"Surely the Turks are not such barbarians," said Mr. Figgins.

"You'll find they are. They'd think no more of polis.h.i.+ng you off than of killing a fly."

If that rascal Jack intended to make poor Mr. Figgins uneasy, he certainly succeeded very well.

Mr. Figgins looked supremely miserable.

"Good night, Mr. Figgins. Think it over."