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 be hatched, will swallow up both thee and thy realm." Having said these words, the dervish turned him about, and without so much as saluting the Padishah, without even taking off his slippers before him, he withdrew, not even asking for a reward. The Sultan was profoundly impressed by this audacity. He immediately sent orders to the wardens of the two watch-towers at the entrance of the Golden Horn to board and search thoroughly every vessel that passed between them, seize every egg they found on board and bring them to him, at the same time detaining all the crews of such vessels.