The captives were taken to Axopolis and all sold as
slaves. Smith was bought by Bashaw Bogall, who forwarded him by way of
Adrianople to Constantinople, to be a slave to his mistress. So chained
by the necks in gangs of twenty they marched to the city of Constantine,
where Smith was delivered over to the mistress of the Bashaw, the young
Charatza Tragabigzanda.

III. CAPTIVITY AND WANDERING

Our hero never stirs without encountering a romantic adventure. Noble
ladies nearly always take pity on good-looking captains, and Smith was
far from ill-favored. The charming Charatza delighted to talk with her
slave, for she could speak Italian, and would feign herself too sick to
go to the bath, or to accompany the other women when they went to weep
over the graves, as their custom is once a week, in order to stay at
home to hear from Smith how it was that Bogall took him prisoner, as the
Bashaw had written her, and whether Smith was a Bohemian lord conquered
by the Bashaw's own hand, whose ransom could adorn her with the glory of
her lover's conquests. Great must have been her disgust with Bogall
when she heard that he had not captured this handsome prisoner, but had
bought him in the slave-market at Axopolis. Her compassion for her slave
increased, and the hero thought he saw in her eyes a tender interest.
But she had no use for such a slave, and fearing her mother would sell
him, she sent him to her brother, the Tymor Bashaw of Nalbrits in the
country of Cambria, a province of Tartaria (wherever that may be). If
all had gone on as Smith believed the kind lady intended, he might have
been a great Bashaw and a mighty man in the Ottoman Empire, and we might
never have heard of Pocahontas. In sending him to her brother, it was
her intention, for she told him so, that he should only sojourn in
Nalbrits long enough to learn the language, and what it was to be a
Turk, till time made her master of herself. Smith himself does not
dissent from this plan to metamorphose him into a Turk and the husband
of the beautiful Charatza Tragabigzanda. He had no doubt that he was
commended to the kindest treatment by her brother; but Tymor "diverted
all this to the worst of cruelty." Within an hour of his arrival, he was
stripped naked, his head and face shaved as smooth as his hand, a ring
of iron, with a long stake bowed like a sickle, riveted to his neck, and
he was scantily clad in goat's skin. There were many other slaves, but
Smith be