Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/250

 dren; and, if he had not appeased the anger of the Sultan and chief officials, we should have long ago been cut in pieces. Therefore, he bade him leave him quiet in the matter, and not press him, if he did not wish to meet with something worse himself.

When the English ambassador sorrowfully made known this sad intelligence to us, and said that we were in danger of our lives, we were greatly terrified and cast down. He also counselled us to pray fervently to the Lord God, that, since it had pleased him to free us from so grievous a prison, it might please Him to be our God still further, and grant us a happy return to our own dear country. And as he understood, that, as soon as the camp moved, we might have some difficulty, and might even perhaps be put to the sword, he cared for us faithfully, hired four peasant carts to go to Buda, gave us 100 ducats for the journey, assigned us his own interpreter, and a janissary to guard us, and counselled us in God’s name, as soon as the Emperor marched towards Erlau, to turn by another way towards Buda, and commit ourselves to the Lord God, since we already had our credentials and the letter to the Pasha of Buda.

As we were obliged to travel that night by a most dangerous road, where day and night the Turks and Tatars and our hussars were skirmishing—and, in fact, they brought into the camp daily captured heyduks of ours, and wounded hussars, and also multitudes of Christians’ heads—we were constrained to swear to the janissary that, if Christians came upon us, no harm should happen to him, and he, on his part, promised in return that, if Turks came upon us, we should travel on in safety, since we had the Turkish emperor’s pass-