“I cannot recover from my surprise, Yussef. A dozen brigands, and you will consider them your affair?”

  “I will make a breakfast of them.”

  “Let day come, then, and may we meet a dozen brigands, — a round dozen. I promise to leave them to you, Yussef. I will not touch one, not even with the liilt of my dagger.”

  “My dear, never wish to see the devil, lest he immediately appear. Now, as brigands are devils, and as we are here on their ground, it is best not to invoke them. For that matter, it gets darker and darker. Satan must have made off with the moon. Cursed night! how it drags! Ah! help! help!”

  “What ails you?”

  “A brigand has caught me, Iskander! Let me go, demon!”

  “Stand aside, and I will fire.”

  “Stand aside, stand aside! that is very easily said. I believe he has daws. He has got me as a hawk holds its prey. Who are you? What do you want? Come, friend, let us make terms.”

  Iskander approached Yussef.

  “I suspected as much,” said he. “Fear has big eyes; your brigand is a thorn bush. Oh, my dear Yussef, you ought to have ridden an ass to the fountain for water, instead of coming with me to get snow on the top of Schach Dagh.”

  “A bush? I swear that it was certainly a Lesghian or Tchetchen; but he saw me put my hand on my poniard, and he loosed his grip.”

  “He saw you put your hand on your poniard in such darkness as this, when you yourself say the devil has run away with the moon?”

  “Those knaves are like cats; it is well known that they can see in the dark. Oh! my dear Iskander, what is that in front of us?”

  “It is the river. What! with a nose like yours, can you not scent water? See, my horse knows more than you.”

  “Do you mean to cross the river to-night!”

  “Certainly.”

  “Iskander, you are undertaking a very imprudent thing. Better wait till to-morrow, Iskander. It is no trifling matter to cross the river at this hour, and the Karatcha too!”

  Iskander was already in the middle of the stream.

  Yet Yussef preferred to follow his companion rather than to stay behind; he plunged into the black river, and, after exclaiming at the coldness of the water, after shrieking that he was being dragged down by the feet, after calling Allah to witness that he was a lost man, Yussef finally reached the opposite bank.

  The comrades resumed their journey and crossed successively the Alcha and the Velvet.

  At daybreak they had reached the banks of the Samour.

  The Samour flowed swiftly; they saw enormous boulders roll with the waves, and uprooted trees were following its current, floating on the surface like so many wisps of straw on a brooklet.

  This time Iskander yielded to Yussef’s advice, and halted.

  The riders dismounted to give their horses time to rest, they themselves lying down upon their bourkas.

  But Yussef was not the man to go to sleep without relating some of his daring deeds.

  Iskander listened this time, neither interrupting him nor laughing at him. He was falling asleep.

  The one told of what had never taken place.

  The other dreamed of what was to come.

  At last, finding himself without support in the conversation, Yussef decided to go to sleep.

  Iskander had been asleep a long time.

  CHAPTER VII.

  MULLAH NOUR.

  It îs delightful to be awakened by the sun’s first ray, as it peeps through a silk curtain, and lifts the black covering of night from the face of the wife sleeping near you, as fresh as the dewdrop on the leaf. But it is more delightful still, after a short sleep, to open the eyes under a cloudless sky and find yourself face to face with the smiling countenance of Nature. The fiancée is always more beautiful than the wife; and what is Nature, if not the eternal fiancée of man?

  Iskander slowly raised his eyelids, still weighted with dreams, and admired the splendid picture of the morning. All around him undulated the forest, rich with its Southern verdure; above his head glittered and smoked the snowy peak of Schach Dagh. At his feet rolled the noisy Samour, sometimes leaping in cascades, sometimes winding its waves into great coils, like a serpent writhing amidst the rocks.

  On the banks of the channel where the river roared, the nightingale sang.

  Iskander enjoyed a brief moment of enchantment; but just as the bird was renewing an interrupted song, a terrible snore from Yussef roused him to reality.

  The sleeper’s nose projected from his bourka, whose surface it overshot by two or three inches.

  Iskander shook Yussef by the nose and awoke him.

  “Hallo! Who goes there?” demanded Yussef, speedily opening his eyes. “Ah! it is you. May the devil fly away with you!” was his greeting to Iskander on recognizing him. “Is a man to be rung by the nose as a Russian official rings a bell to summon his aids? Know, Iskander, that when Allah favors a man by giving him such a nose, it is that he may command respect and admiration from others. I admire and respect my nose; share my sentiments in this regard, or we shall have a falling out.”

  “My dear Yussef, excuse me; but when I am in haste I seize a man by the first part of him that comes to hand. The first — I will even say the only part of you that I saw, the rest being hidden under your bourka — — happened to be your nose, and I took hold of it.”/

  “Iskander, my friend, some day we shall quarrel, and that day, I foresee, will be a sorry one for you. What the deuce was the matter? Out with it!”

  “I was vexed at that confounded nightingale, whose singing interfered with my listening to your snore. Why, my dear Yussef, you snore so musically that, compared with the melodies that you play naturally in your sleep, the Georgian djourna’s performance is like a penny trumpet’s.”

  “Ah, yes, appease me now. But may you all your life feed only on the odor of roses, and have all their thorns in the soles of your boots, if ever — ”

  Iskander interrupted him.

  “Do you not hear something, Yussef?” he asked. Yussef listened uneasily.

  “No, nothing,” said he, after a pause; “nothing but the voice of the mullah at Seyfouri.”

  “Well, what says the voice, Yussef? ‘Wake ye, faithful Mussulmans; prayer is better than sleep.’ We have a journey to make, Yussef; let us pray and be setting forth n Yussef yielded to the invitation, although with grumbling. It seemed to him that Iskander had yielded ground in the discussion, — an event happening with them so rarely that he would gladly have profited by his comrade’s frame of mind.

  Having performed their ablutions and their prayers, our travellers made ready to ford the river.

  The water was not unusually high; yet it is admitted by those who are acquainted with mountain torrents, and especially with the Samour, that the fording of a river is always more perilous than a battle.

  Everything depends, in such a case, upon your horse; if he makes a misstep, you are lost. But habit renders travellers indifferent to these dangers, although, every year, more than one is left at the ford forever.

  Our two begs, thanks to their skill, to their acquaintance with this sort of exercise, and especially to the excellence of their horses, reached the opposite bank of the Samour safe and sound.

  Yussef, who had been as mute as a tench during the whole time of their crossing, began to scold again the very instant that he touched the farther bank.

  “May the devil take this river!” said he; “I will heave a pig at it! And to think that it is so dry during the autumn and winter that a frog crossing it could not manage to wash his feet!”

  “Where shall we stop in Seyfouri?” inquired Iskander, without heeding the tirades of his comrade, who, the danger past, had already forgotten it. “I do not know a living soul there; yet there our horses must breakfast, and so must we.”

  “I will burn their beards with a wisp of straw, — the blackguards!” responded Yussef. “It is very clear that, without an order from the governor, not one of them will offer us a drop of water, or even a radish, if they see us drop down with hunger and thirst.”

  “The people of Seyfouri are neither better nor worse than those of Derbend; but when it comes to that, we are all Tartars.”

  “Hero we are! we shall see. Perhaps with a little money we can get something from them. As we ride along, look well on your side into the courts; I will keep watch on mine. Perhaps we shall come across a grey-beard; the grey-beards are better than the red ones. The grey-beard is a starost, while the red-beard is a rich man. The red-beard almost always has money and a pretty wife, — two reasons for shutting his doors in the faces of two handsome fellows like us. And here is just the man I was looking for. Hey! friend,” continued Yussef, addressing a grey-beard, “can we rest an hour at your house, and have a bite to eat?”

  “Are you on government service?” demanded the man, a tall, dark-hued Tartar.

  “No, my friend, no.”

  “Have you an order from the governor?”

  “We have money, nothing more.”

  “That is sufficient to obtain a welcome in my house; I receive many lords from Khorassan, and, thanks be to Allah, never have horse or horseman had reason to complain of Agraïne.”

  The gates were thrown open; the travellers entered the court, dismounted, unsaddled their horses, and gave them oats.

  Let us say, in passing, that the people of Daghestan are remarkably neat, and usually have two-story houses of brick white-washed with lime.

  Agraïne’s house was one of these. He invited his guests to ascend to the first floor.

  Yussef required no urging, and led the way for Iskander.

  At the door of the first room, Agraïne took their arms and set them against the wall, as a sign that, being in his house it was now his duty to provide for their safety.

  This custom is so widespread that our two travellers opposed no resistance.

  Within this room they saw nothing but a pair of woman’s trousers.

  Nothing so irritates an Asiatic, and, in general, a Mussulman, whoever he may be, as a question about his wife.

  Hadji Yussef was dying to question his host about those trousers; but Agraïne was the owner of one of those faces that check raillery on the lips of the jester.

  “Have you not a pinch of pilaff to offer us, my friend?” he asked the Tartar.

  “The prophet himself never ate the like of that my wife used to prepare,” answered Agraïne. “Allah! my guests wore out their fingers with licking them, it was so rich.”

  “What the deuce is he talking about!” demanded Iskander Beg of his companion.

  “I don’t know, but it seems to me that, speaking as he does of the past, the idiot thinks to regale us only with his wife’s trousers.”

  “Why not!” said Iskander; “they are greasy enough for that!”

  Then, to the Tartar, —

  “Tell us, now, friend, is there any chance of our having a dish of soup and a bit of chislik? Here is bread and cheese, it is true; but the bread is very moist and the cheese very dry.”

  “Soup? And where should I get soup?” answered Agraïne. “Chislik? And where should I get eliislik? Khan Muel has eaten my sheep to the very last. Ah! my wife, my beautiful young Oumi, used to prepare such delicious chislik!”

  And the Tartar smacked his lips.

  “And where is she, your young and beautiful Oumi?” asked Yussef.

  “She is dead and buried/’ replied the Tartar,” and I buried my last fifty roubles with her; I have nothing left of her but her trousers, over which I weep.”

  And, in fact, the Tartar took up the trousers, which he pressed to his lips, and fell to weeping.

  “A precious souvenir,” remarked Yussef. “She must have been a charming woman, your lovely young Oumi. Give us each a glass of milk and we will weep with you.”

  “Milk? Oh! you should have seen my dear Oumi milking the cows with fingers whiter than the milk itself. But no more Oumi, no more cows; and no more cows, no more milk! and now — ”

  “Now you are beginning to weary us, my dear fellow, with your young and lovely Oumi. Fifty kopecks if you bring us each a glass of milk; if not, take yourself off.”

  And he thrust him out of the room.

  “I will sell your mother for two onions, you villanous beast!” continued Yussef, returning to his seat near Iskander, and trying his teeth on the cheese. “All the cocks of the village are crowing in my stomach, and this scoundrel tries to entertain us with the trousers of his beautiful young Oumi. — Good! there he is now meddling with our guns and gossiping with the passers-by. — What do you mean by whispering to that vicious Lesghian, like a Schummak Bayadere, you wretched knave, instead of bringing us something to eat? So help me, Allah! but I am hungry enough to devour the fish that caused the universal flood by flopping from the Ganges into the sea. Come, bring us something, quickly!”

  “Immediately,” replied the Tartar.

  And, indeed, he returned a few minutes later holding in each hand a bowl of milk.

  Our travellers dipped their bread into the milk, while their host resumed his weeping where he had left off, again contemplating his wife’s trousers.

  Having ended their frugal repast, Yussef threw down sixty kopecks on the trousers of the beautiful young Oumi, and, leaping to their saddles and taking the mountain road, they had very soon left the village of Seyfouri behind.

  “Look back now,” bade Yussef, always on the alert, to Iskander. “The very Lesghian that the soft-hearted Agraïne was talking to is keeping us in sight and watching where we go.”

  In fact, behind the two travellers, on a slight rise of ground, they could descry the interlocutor of the Tartar landlord.

  But when the Lesghian discovered that he was himself an object of interest to the travellers, he disappeared.

  “Well, what of it?” demanded Iskander.

  “I distrust these beggarly Lesghians, — that is what!”

  “According to you, every shepherd is a robber.”‘

  “As if shepherds were honest men in this country! The mountaineers murder travellers and pillage caravans, and the shepherds feed the mountaineers and receive their booty. Mullah Nour’s entire troop, entire gang, rather, what is it? Made up of mountaineers. And who feeds Mullah Nour and his gang? The shepherds.”

  “Well, what then? Are not Mullah Nour and his mountaineers made of flesh and blood as we are? The devil take me if you do not make me wish to meet this bandit of yours, were it only out of curiosity, and to see whether, as you have said, his skin is proof against a ball.”

  “Well, well, here we are back on the old subject. You are either a dog or a pagan, however, to express such a wish. Does it seem, then, such a burden to carry your soul around in your body and a head on your shoulders? May the devil seize my nose if I would not rather meet a lion than this Mullah Nour. Why — — why do you halt?”

  “If you had not been in such a panic, you would not have lost your way. Look, pray, where you have brought us. The devil could not pass here without a lantern!”

  And, indeed, the two found themselves upon a steep mountain, forming, so to speak, the first round of the ladder up Schach Dagh. Their way was becoming so perilous, that our travellers were obliged to dismount and lay hold of their horses’ tails.

  At lengtli they reached a plateau, and, as usual, Yussef, who had maintained silence in the presence of danger, began as soon as the danger was over to curse and swear.

  “May the devil’s tail hack this mountain into mincemeat!” said he; “may all the wild boars of Daghestan root holes into it! may an earthquake upset it, and may thunderbolts grind it to powder, — curse it!”

  “The fault is yours, and you lay the blame on the mountain, “said Iskander, shrugging his shoulders.” What was it that you told me? ‘I know the way as well as I know my mother’s pockets; I will conduct you through the defiles of Schach Dagh as easily as I could make the rounds of the bazaar. I have played at hucklebones on every rock, and at pitch-penny in every cranny. Did you or did you not say all that!”

  “Certainly I said it. Did I not, three years ago, make the ascent of Schach Dagh’s topmost peak? However, three years ago it was not so steep as now.”

  And, indeed, at the point where our travellers had now arrived, Schach Dagh rose before them, a sheer wall surmounted by white battlements; and the white battlements were snow.

  The two men comprehended the impossibility of scaling the peak from that side.

  They resolved to attempt the task from the east side. Yet it was easier to resolve than to execute. All was wild and lonely on those steep and rocky declivities; the eagles’ cries alone broke the solemn stillness which seemed like that of the dead.

  Iskander Beg turned toward Yussef and looked at him as if to say: “Well!”

  “May a thousand million curses fall on the head of this miserable Schach Dagh! Ah! this is the way he receives his visitors, the ill-mannered pig! He pulls his bashlik over his ears, shuts himself within his walls, and hauls up his ladder after him. Where shall we go now. Over the mountain or under the mountain? In faith, ask advice of whom you will, Iskander; as for me, I shall take counsel of my bottle.”

  And Yussef drew from his pocket a full flask of brandy.

  “What a hardened sinner you are, you wretch!” exclaimed Iskander to his comrade. “Have you not enough folly of your own without adding that of wine?”

  “This is not wine, it is brandy.”

  “Wine or brandy, it is all one.”

  “Not at all; observe the distinction: Mahomet has forbidden wine, but not brandy.”

  “I am aware of that; it was not invented in Mahomet’s time: he could not forbid what did not exist.”

  “That is where you are wrong, Iskander. As a prophet, Mahomet knew very well that brandy would be invented later, or, if he did not know it, — why, he was a false prophet.”

  “No blasphemy, Yussef!” remonstrated Iskander, frowning; “let us seek, rather, our way.”

  “Our way? It is here,” said Yussef, slapping his flask. Ho approached the bottle to his lips, blissfully closed his eyes, and tossed otf five or six swallows of the liquor whose orthodoxy was contested.