The odabashi put his hand to his forehead and bowed. In a hoarse voice he named five men and followed Hairabedian out of the castle.

Mr Hollar the boatswain, Mr Borrell the gunner, and Mr Lamb the carpenter were drinking tea in the warrant-officer's tent when the dragoman brought them their visitor. He explained his status and function, saying 'I presume he will mess with you.' He then said that he must hurry on and find the first lieutenant and Abbas, because the Captain wished to know how things stood.

'They stand pretty well,' said the bosun, 'all stretched along and the anchor apeak. Every fifth camel has a lantern shipped abaft its load, ready to be lit, and all the saucy ones have been muzzled. There is only this and the gunroom tent to be struck, and in five minutes we are under way. As for Mr Mowett, you will find him beyond the big fire where the starboard watch are sitting.'

'Thank you,' said Hairabedian. 'I must run.' He vanished into the darkness, leaving the odabashi standing there.

'Have a cup of tea,' said the bosun in a very loud voice; and then louder still, 'Tea. Cha.'

The odabashi made no reply but an awkward writhe of his body and stood looking at the ground, his arms dangling low on either side.

'Well, this is a hairy bugger, and no mistake,' said the bosun, surveying him. 'Such a ugly cove I never seen: more like a hape than what you might call a human.'

'Hape!' cried the odabashi, stung out of his shyness, 'You can put that where the monkey put the nuts. You're no oil-painting yourself, neither.'

The dead silence that followed this was broken at last by the bosun, who asked 'did the odabashi speak English?'

'Not a fucking word,' said the odabashi.

'No offence intended, mate,' said the bosun, holding out his hand.

'And none taken,' said the odabashi, shaking it.

'Sit down on this bag,' said the gunner.

'Why didn't you tell the Captain?' asked the carpenter. 'He would have been right pleased.'

The odabashi scratched himself, muttering something about being too bashful. 'I did speak up once,' he added, 'but he did not mind me.'

'So you speak English,' said the bosun, who had been staring heavily for some time, turning the matter over in his mind. 'How does that come about, if I may make so bold?'

'Which I am a janissary,' said the odabashi.

'I'm sure you are, mate,' said the carpenter. 'And very much to your credit, too.'

'You know how janissaries are recruited, in course?'

They looked at one another with perfectly blank faces, and all slowly shook their heads.

'Nowadays it is not so strict,' said the odabashi, 'and all sorts of odds and sods get in, but when I was a little chap it was all by what we call the devshurmeh. It still is, but not so much, if you understand me. The tournaji-bashi goes round all the provinces where there are Christians, mostly Albania and Bosnia, the others being what you might call scum, and in each place he takes up a certain number of Christian boys, sometimes more, sometimes less, whatever their parents may say. And these boys are fetched away to a special barracks where their pricks are trimmed pardon me the expression and they are learnt to be Mussulmans and good soldiers. And when they have served their time as ajami, as we say, they are turned over to an orta of janissaries.'

'So I suppose a good many janissaries talk foreign,' observed the carpenter.

'No,' said the odabashi. 'They are took so young and so far off they forget their language and their religion and their people. It was different with me. My mum was in the same town. She was from the Tower Hamlets in London, and went cook-maid with a Turkey-merchant's family to Smyrna, where she took up with my dad, a cake-maker from Argyrocastro, which made trouble with the family. He took her back to Argyrocastro, but then he died and the cousins put her out of the shop, that being the law, so she had to sell her cakes from a stall. Then the tournaji-bashi came round, and the cousins' lawyer gave his clerk a present to take me, which he did - took me right away to Widin, leaving her alone.'

'And she a widow-woman,' said the carpenter, shaking his head.

'It was cruel hard,' said the bosun.

'I hate a lawyer,' said the gunner.

'But I had not been a prentice-soldier in Widin six months before there was Mum with her stall of cakes outside the barracks: so we saw one another every Friday, and often other times; and it was the same in Belgrade and Constantinople when I was out of my time. Wherever the orta went. And so I never forgot my English.'

'Perhaps that was why they sent you here,' suggested the bosun.

'If it was, I wish I had cut my tongue out,' said the odabashi.

'Don't you like it here?'

'I hate it here. Present company excepted.'

'Why so, mate?'

'I always been in cities, and I hate the country. And the desert is ten times far worse than the country.'

'Lions and tigers, maybe?'

'Worse, mate.'

'Serpents?'

The odabashi shook his head, and leaning towards them he whispered 'Jinns and ghouls.'

'What are jinns?' asked the bosun, somewhat shocked.

'Fairies,' said the odabashi, after a moment's consideration.

'You don't believe in fairies, do you?'

'What, not when I seen a fucking great fairy in the old tower over there? This high,'- holding his hand a yard from the ground- 'with long ears and orange eyes? In the night it goes Uhu, uhu, and every time some poor unfortunate bugger cops it somewhere or other. No worse omen in this mortal world. I've heard it almost every night the last week and more.' He paused, and then said 'I didn't ought to have said fairies. Spirits is more like. Unholy ghosts.'

'Oh,' said the bosun, who might scorn fairies, but who, like most sailors and certainly all his shipmates in the Surprise, most heartily believed in ghosts and spirits.

'And what are ghouls?' asked the gunner in a low, almost furtive voice, dreading to hear yet drawing his bag closer.

'Ho, they are far, far worse,' said the odabashi. 'They often take the shape of young females, but the insides of their mouths are green, like their eyes. You see them walking about in graveyards sometimes, and after dark they dig up the fresh corpses and eat them. Ay, and not always so fresh, either. But they take all sorts of shapes, like the jinns, and you meet them both at every turn in this bloody desert we got to walk across. The only thing to do is to say transiens per medium illorum ibat very quick without a mistake or you're . . .'

At this time of night throughout the fast the castle cooks flung the bony remains of their feast over the outer wall; and now the jackals were ready waiting. But once again they fell foul of the hyaena and four more of her kind, and the odabashi's words were cut off by a sudden Bedlam of screaming, howling and terrible laughter not twenty yards away. The Surprise's warrant-officers leapt to their feet, grasping one another; and as they stood there aghast a heavy body landed on the pole above them. A moment later its enormous voice filled the tent: Uhu, uhu, uhu.

A frozen silence inside the tent and a startled silence outside followed the last Uhu, and in this silence they heard a still larger voice cry 'Strike that tent up forward there. D'ye hear me there? Where's the bosun? Pass the word for the bosun. Mr Mowett, the first party may light its lanterns and stand by to move off.'

CHAPTER SIX

HM Company's Ship Niobe Suez

'Dearest Sophie,' wrote Captain Aubrey to his wife,

'I take advantage of the kindness of Major Hooper, of the Madras establishment, to send you these few hurried lines: he is on his way home, travelling overland - last from the Persian gulf across the desert on an amazingly fine white thoroughbred camel that carried him a hundred miles a day - and so far he has only spent forty-nine days on his journey: he means to go on by way of Cairo.