"True, brother, true," replied Karolyi, "and in truth, this little maiden is a miracle of beauty. My soul and sword are at her service, command them; but in the name of Merissa think not of escape to-night. Another and perhaps more favourable opportunity may soon occur." The night passed quickly away. I watched Basilia while she slept in my mantle. I was sleepless, but silent and happy, for my mind was full of love and her. Next day I placed her on Zupi, and we set out for head-quarters amid the maledictions of the ten rescued slaves, who saw all their anticipated delights of a seraglio life suddenly cut short, and who knew that fate would now consign them to high-cheeked Kalmucks, or the rough, greasy Cossacks, in lieu of the wealthy Osmanlis, the luxurious Pashas, and turbaned Agas, whom they had hoped to have as masters; and they consoled themselves by reviling me as a renegade, and invoking on my head all the ills that fell on the God-abandoned Thamudites, and on the offspring of Saba, the son of Yarab. On arriving at head-quarters, I presented my prisoners, and the right ears of fifteen Turks to Colonel Carlovitch. The ears he flung to his dogs, and the ten girls, not finding favour in the sight of the officers who crowded about them, were given to Cossacks, to make wives or whatever they pleased of them, for such is the law of the Russian military colonies on the Kuban; and to himself, despite my prior claim by love and capture; despite my rage and grief, my entreaties and ill-smothered threatenings--to himself--this accursed Muscovite assigned Basilia as a hand-maiden! * * * * * (Here the Circassian, who had related this part of his narrative in short and broken sentences, paused, and ground his teeth, while the veins of his fine pale forehead swelled like rigid cords, and his keen dark eyes became glazed with the ferocity, fire, and grief that filled them.) CHAPTER XVIII. ZUPI. Ivan Carlovitch, he resumed, was a soldier insensible alike to pity and to danger. His cold and rigid sternness had first brought him under the notice of his imperial master, who raised him from the humblest rank in the army. He had a strict and almost absurd idea of the implicit obedience which should be rendered by the soldier to his superior; and wild as I was then with passion and grief on finding that I had only saved Basilia from one degrading condition to deliver her over to one still more cruel and terrible--to be the mistress, the plaything of a wretched Russian--I had sufficient tact to see that resistance would only serve to destroy my own hopes of a dreadful vengeance, and of achieving her freedom. On the first symptom of disobedience, Carlovitch would have brought me before a general court-martial. From this tribunal in Russia, the way to the knout or the grave is short and rapid, especially to a poor Pole, or a captive Tcherkesse warrior.