alarm was now doubled, and
all awaited the issue in anxious suspense, not knowing whether to hope
or fear it. I fancy the cadi, just then, would have gladly foregone all
his amorous hopes to be safe again in Nicosia, so great was his
perplexity. It did not last long however; for the first galley, without
paying the least regard to the flag of peace, or to what was due to a
community in religion, bore down upon his brigantine with such fury as
nearly to send it to the bottom. The cadi then perceived that the
assailants were soldiers of Nicosia, and guessing what was the real
state of the case, he gave himself up for lost; and had it not been for
the greed of the soldiers, who fell to plundering in the first instance,
not a soul would have been left alive. Suddenly, however, while they
were busy with all their might in pillaging, a voice cried out in
Turkish, "To arms! to arms! Here's a Christian galley bearing down upon
us!" And this indeed was true, for the galley which Mahmoud had descried
to the westward was bearing furiously down upon Hassan's under Christian
colours; but before it came to close quarters it hailed the latter.

"What galley is that?"

"Hassan Pasha's, viceroy of Cyprus."

"How comes it, then, that you, being mussulmans are plundering this
brigantine, on board of which, as we know, is the cadi of Nicosia?"

The reply to this was that they only knew that the pasha had ordered
them to take it, and that they, as his soldiers, had done his bidding.
The commander of the galley under Christian colours having now
ascertained what he wanted to know, desisted from attacking Hassan's and
fell upon the cadi's brigantine, killed ten of its Turkish crew at the
first volley, and immediately boarded it with great impetuosity. Then
the cadi discovered that his assailant was no Christian, but Ali Pasha,
Leonisa's lover, who had been laying wait to carry her off, and had
disguised himself and his soldiers as Christians, the better to conceal
his purpose.

The cadi, finding himself thus assailed on all sides, began loudly to
exert his lungs. "What means this, Ali Pasha, thou traitor?" he cried.
"How comes it that, being a mussulman, thou attackest me in the garb of
a Christian? And you, perfidious soldiers of Hassan, what demon has
moved you to commit so great an outrage? How dare you, to please the
lascivious appetite of him who sent you, set yourselves against your
sovereign?" At these words, the soldiers on both