Our hero never stirs without encountering a romantic adventure.
Noble ladies nearly always take pity on good-looking captains, andSmith was far from ill-favored. The charming Charatza delighted totalk with her slave, for she could speak Italian, and would feignherself too sick to go to the bath, or to accompany the other womenwhen they went to weep over the graves, as their custom is once aweek, in order to stay at home to hear from Smith how it was thatBogall took him prisoner, as the Bashaw had written her, and whetherSmith was a Bohemian lord conquered by the Bashaw's own hand, whoseransom could adorn her with the glory of her lover's conquests.
Great must have been her disgust with Bogall when she heard that hehad not captured this handsome prisoner, but had bought him in theslave-market at Axopolis. Her compassion for her slave increased,and the hero thought he saw in her eyes a tender interest. But shehad no use for such a slave, and fearing her mother would sell him,she sent him to her brother, the Tymor Bashaw of Nalbrits in thecountry of Cambria, a province of Tartaria (wherever that may be).
If all had gone on as Smith believed the kind lady intended, he mighthave been a great Bashaw and a mighty man in the Ottoman Empire, andwe might never have heard of Pocahontas. In sending him to herbrother, it was her intention, for she told him so, that he shouldonly sojourn in Nalbrits long enough to learn the language, and whatit was to be a Turk, till time made her master of herself. Smithhimself does not dissent from this plan to metamorphose him into aTurk and the husband of the beautiful Charatza Tragabigzanda. He hadno doubt that he was commended to the kindest treatment by herbrother; but Tymor "diverted all this to the worst of cruelty."Within an hour of his arrival, he was stripped naked, his head andface shaved as smooth as his hand, a ring of iron, with a long stakebowed like a sickle, riveted to his neck, and he was scantily clad ingoat's skin. There were many other slaves, but Smith being the last,was treated like a dog, and made the slave of slaves.
The geographer is not able to follow Captain Smith to Nalbrits.
Perhaps Smith himself would have been puzzled to make a map of hisown career after he left Varna and passed the Black Sea and camethrough the straits of Niger into the Sea Disbacca, by some calledthe Lake Moetis, and then sailed some days up the River Bruapo toCambria, and two days more to Nalbrits, where the Tyrnor resided.
Smith wrote his travels in London nearly thirty years after, and itis difficult to say how much is the result of his own observation andhow much he appropriated from preceding romances. The Cambrians mayhave been the Cossacks, but his description of their habits and alsothose of the "Crym-Tartars" belongs to the marvels of Mandeville andother wide-eyed travelers. Smith fared very badly with the Tymor.
The Tymor and his friends ate pillaw; they esteemed "samboyses" and"musselbits" great dainties," and yet," exclaims Smith, "but roundpies, full of all sorts of flesh they can get, chopped with varietyof herbs." Their best drink was "coffa" and sherbet, which is onlyhoney and water. The common victual of the others was the entrailsof horses and "ulgries" (goats?) cut up and boiled in a caldron with"cuskus," a preparation made from grain. This was served in greatbowls set in the ground, and when the other prisoners had raked itthoroughly with their foul fists the remainder was given to theChristians. The same dish of entrails used to be served not manyyears ago in Upper Egypt as a royal dish to entertain a distinguishedguest.
It might entertain but it would too long detain us to repeat Smith'sinformation, probably all secondhand, about this barbarous region.
We must confine ourselves to the fortunes of our hero. All his hopeof deliverance from thraldom was in the love of Tragabigzanda, whomhe firmly believed was ignorant of his bad usage. But she made nosign. Providence at length opened a way for his escape. He wasemployed in thrashing in a field more than a league from the Tymor'shome. The Bashaw used to come to visit his slave there, and beat,spurn, and revile him. One day Smith, unable to control himselfunder these insults, rushed upon the Tymor, and beat out his brainswith a thrashing bat--"for they had no flails," he explains--put onthe dead man's clothes, hid the body in the straw, filled a knapsackwith corn, mounted his horse and rode away into the unknown desert,where he wandered many days before he found a way out. If we maybelieve Smith this wilderness was more civilized in one respect thansome parts of our own land, for on all the crossings of the roadswere guide-boards. After traveling sixteen days on the road thatleads to Muscova, Smith reached a Muscovite garrison on the RiverDon. The governor knocked off the iron from his neck and used him sokindly that he thought himself now risen from the dead. With hisusual good fortune there was a lady to take interest in him--"thegood Lady Callamata largely supplied all his wants."After Smith had his purse filled by Sigismund he made a thorough tourof Europe, and passed into Spain, where being satisfied, as he says,with Europe and Asia, and understanding that there were wars inBarbary, this restless adventurer passed on into Morocco with severalcomrades on a French man-of-war. His observations on and tales aboutNorth Africa are so evidently taken from the books of other travelersthat they add little to our knowledge of his career. For some reasonhe found no fighting going on worth his while. But good fortuneattended his return. He sailed in a man-of-war with Captain Merham.
They made a few unimportant captures, and at length fell in with twoSpanish men-of-war, which gave Smith the sort of entertainment hemost coveted. A sort of running fight, sometimes at close quarters,and with many boardings and repulses, lasted for a couple of days andnights, when having battered each other thoroughly and lost many men,the pirates of both nations separated and went cruising, no doubt,for more profitable game. Our wanderer returned to his native land,seasoned and disciplined for the part he was to play in the NewWorld. As Smith had traveled all over Europe and sojourned inMorocco, besides sailing the high seas, since he visited PrinceSigismund in December, 1603, it was probably in the year 1605 that hereached England. He had arrived at the manly age of twenty-sixyears, and was ready to play a man's part in the wonderful drama ofdiscovery and adventure upon which the Britons were then engaged.