Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/257

 to take us up stream to the fortress of Towaschow. At this we were the more delighted in proportion to the greatness of the doubts we had previously entertained about being so easily allowed to go up the Danube; for, remembering the Turks’ wrath and fury on account of the taking of Hatwan, we were every hour in expectation that they would send after us, with orders for our arrest and imprisonment. But it pleased a merciful God to preserve us from this fate.

The next day, early in the morning, we sent the peasants, with the carriages and some of our things, forwards to Towaschow, requesting them to inform the Christian soldiers there of our liberation and arrival, and intending to recompense them there for the use of the carriages. But the poor fellows fell in with some Tatars and were put to the sword by them. We then got into a boat, and were pulled up stream, while our janissary and dragoman, or interpreter, rode on horseback along the bank. When we got close to Towaschow, we saw the bastions full of German soldiers, and imagined that our peasants had already made known our approach in the fortress. Such, however, was not the case. For a few days before some Turks, disguised in women's clothes, had sailed in a boat to the very skirts of the fortress, had seized and bound two fishermen and a woman, and had carried them off to Buda. Thus the people at Towaschow imagined that some more Turks were coming on a plundering expedition, and had disguised themselves like captives, in order the more easily to delude the Christians. Moreover, seeing the janissary and dragoman on the other bank of the Danube, they determined to allow us to approach the fortress within point-blank