II.
AROTID arteries and jugular veins were of no more concern to Mehemet Ben Ali than the laws of Meum and Tuum, yet he was true to the core when it served his own interests, and invaluable to us in the capacity of Postmaster-General when on the war-path in Asia Minor. The fact was, Ben had had his critical eye on the messengers we sent to the rear with despatches for some considerable time, as recent experiences proved.
Not long since, our faithful Johannes, the driver of the ramshackle areba, or native cart, which contained our supplies, had been attacked when on a foraging expedition in quest of black bread, and very roughly treated. As a representative of English pashas, he was supposed to be a man of more substance than he turned out to be when his pockets were rifled by a detachment of four burly brigands who had been sent out by the wily Ben to intercept him. On his joining us, there could be little doubt that he really had suffered considerably at their hands, having been unmercifully cudgelled as a poverty-stricken knave who was not (happily for himself) worth powder and shot. But is such treatment peculiar to semi-barbarous latitudes? Isn't it a crime in the most cultured centres to be "hard up"? Johannes combined the devotion of a Sancho Panza with the swash-bucklerism of a Falstaff; his unseen adventures were marvellous. When driving in advance, he had several times done prodigies of valour; just before our arrival, against great odds, too, to save our stores. He was generally sheathing his yatagan on our approach, and apparently in a state of considerable excitement. He was, however, honesty itself in its broadest sense, and the fact of his having returned on that particular occasion sans almost everything, and severely knocked about into the bargain, was sufficient evidence of the maltreatment he had received. No; mulching oneself into something like a jelly, is not a likely or pleasant way of producing evidence of an experience. Johannes had been an unmistakable victim.
We all liked him; he was a cheery soul, and generous to a fault—many faults, in fact, as one of our experiences proved. It happened in this way. We found him one morning in advance of our party, commiserating with a poor traveller who, weary and footsore, was leaning against a box-tree in a glade through which we were passing. He had already elicited from the poor wretch the rough story of his strange career, even to the fact that he was then returning by long and exhausting stages to his native village near Lake Van, which he hoped to reach before his aged kotona joined the houri.
