Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/291

Rh and the Turkish officer would have probably been acquitted had it not been for the stupid manner in which he contradicted his own statements. The dexterity with which these contradictions were elicited by Blut, acting as a dragoman, greatly amused Captain Jones, who, up to a certain point in the trial, had had a professional sympathy for the Turkish officer, the more so as the case was tried by civilians.

We exacted ample satisfaction. Pistol ate his leek, though with many wry faces; and the Caimacam, after all was over, paid us a visit on board the "Sampson," gazing with a stupid terror and feigned admiration at the massive 68-pounders on the deck, one of which was quite enough to annihilate his tumbledown whitewashed fortress.

"Tell the captain," said he, when he took his leave, "that I have gained this day a real fin end. May our friendship be as firm a union as that of the nail with the flesh; "holding up a very ugly thumb as an illustration of this oriental metaphor.

After redressing the wrongs of the Ionian, to the great satisfaction of the Christian population, I took leave of my kind and hospitable host, Captain Jones, who left with the "Sampson" to rejoin the fleet at Besika Bay. We then made a little tour of four days in Cos, riding through the island from east to west along the north shore opposite Calymnos. Cos is traversed throughout its whole length by a chain of mountains, interrupted only in the part opposite Nisyros. This chain, the ancient Oromedon, called also by Pliny Prion, runs so near the southern