Evening had closed when we bivouacked near the beach, unbitted our horses, lighted our pipes, and sent round our cups of quass to wash down the black ration, bread and salt beef broiled among the embers till it was encrusted with ashes and brine; and we were just composing ourselves for the night, when my sergeant, a cunning and active Cossack, who had crept a mile or two along the shore alone, announced to me that he had seen some suspicious lights in a little creek of the bay of Koutloutzi. "Mount and march," was the order, and favoured by a brilliant moon, beneath whose light the Euxine rolled like a flood of silver at the base of the steep Circassian hills, we rode round the margin of this circular bay, and ascended the beautiful vale of Mezip, towards where my sergeant asserted he had seen the lights. Halting our party he and I dismounted, and, taking only our swords and pistols, crept cautiously through a thicket towards where a river entered the bay, and such a place we knew would be the most probable rendezvous of the Turks with the slave merchant. The foliage was dense and dark overhead, for in this district the sturdy oak, the beech, and the chestnut grew to the water's edge, and the cherry-tree, the fig, and the wild olive were all in full bloom. It was a savage place. Toads croaked among the reeds, and rearing serpents hissed among the sedges of the river, which brawled over a ledge of rocks and fell into the bay, while the yellow-coated and weasel-like suroke whistled on the branches of the pine, and the fleet jerboa fled before us from its lair like an evil spirit. Suddenly we saw a gleam of light, and heard the sound of voices. A few paces more brought us to the brow of a wooded bank, at the base of which we saw a number of Turkish sailors seated round a fire, smoking, drinking raki, and making merry, while one of their number, a little humpbacked fellow, with a hooked nose and enormous beard, sang to them, and twangled on a lute. They were sixteen in number (I counted them carefully), and all fierce-looking fellows, with enormous noses and mustachoes. Large trowsers, dirty red tarbooshes, and red shawl-girdles stuck full of daggers and pistols. Most of them had cuts and scars or patches on their dusky faces, and all had a savage and sinister aspect, as the red gleams of the pinewood fire fell on them. The captain was particularly happy; as he believed, that if the Sultan Abdul-Medjid did but once see Basilia, the fortunes of all who had a share in bringing such loveliness to gladden his sublime eyes would be made for ever.