world. The money was given to them for blood and
weapons. They were going to lavish it on love and wine. And is not
life lovelier so?

When Dirham came back they immediately boiled the eggs hard, and wrote
upon them every sort of magnificent message that occurred to their
minds. They promised to hasten to the assistance of the Greeks, both
by land and by sea; to cut their way through the fleets with their
fire-ships and blow the Turkish flag-ship into the air; to incite the
Janissaries to rise against the Sultan and the Greeks to rise against
the Janissaries; in all of which there was not a single word of truth.
Only worthy Dirham believed these things, and trembled in body and
soul at the bare thought of the sublime deeds that his masters had
determined to perform.

He himself hired a barge, loaded it with wool, and, hiding the eggs
full of secrets in a basket, set out for the Archipelago.

The good youths meanwhile laughed to their hearts' content. They
laughed at worthy Dirham; they laughed at the worthy Bublinia, and at
the wise Kapudan Pasha; they laughed at this amusing piece of good
fortune which brought them riches in heaps. But at nobody did they
laugh so much as at old Tepelenti, who was believing all along that
his sons were collecting war-ships for him.

But did he really believe it?

On the same day that Dirham quitted Adrianople, a fakir of the
Nimetullahita Order penetrated into the Seraglio and demanded an
audience of the Sultan. It was the self-same old soothsayer who had
exhibited his enchantments to Ali.

On being admitted to the presence of Mahmoud, he stood audaciously
upright before him, bending his head no lower than it was already
crooked by the weight of years.

"Allah hath sent me to thee," said the dervish, in a deep, hollow
voice, which had lost all its sonorousness. "A great danger is
approaching thee. The storm hanging over thy head is at this moment
compressed within the skin of an egg, and thou couldst crush it in the
palm of thy hand; but if thou dost suffer it to come forth from the
egg, thy whole realm will not be sufficient to contain it. This,
therefore, is the word of Allah unto thee: This day and this night,
and to-morrow and to-morrow night, stop every vessel which sails up
the narrow waters of the Golden Horn and search them, and whenever thy
guards come upon an egg, let them seize it and bring it to thee; for
amongst them are diverse cockatrice eggs which, if once they