The Circassian Slave - Maturin Murray Ballou (good books to read for young adults .TXT) 📗

case, and before many hours the well known hills and headlands of Circassia were visible to their longing eyes. Komel could not suppress the joyous burst of feeling that a sight of her native hills again infused into her bosom, but forgetting each pain and trouble, she pointed out first to Zillah, then to Aphiz, and even to the idiot boy, a beauty here, a well known spot there, and the hill behind which stood the cottage of her dear parents. O, how she trembled with impatient joy to reach its door once more.

Under the skilful guidance of Aphiz and Selim, the raft was steered into the harbor, and was soon surrounded by a score of boats, offering their ready assistance to relieve their distresses, and a short time after saw them landed safely, all upon the long, projecting mole.

All the while Selim seemed thoughtful and absent, and looked about him with strange interest, at everything that met his gaze. He even forgot to seek the side of Zillah, who, with Komel, was hurrying away to a conveyance up the mountain side. Nor did he join them until sent for by Aphiz.

Let another chapter explain the mystery of this singular abstraction.


CHAPTER XV.


HAPPY CONCLUSION.

The skies were yet blushing with departing day, and the evening shadows were quietly advancing over mountain top and sheltered valley, the dew was already touching the evening atmosphere with its fragrant mist, "Leaving on craggy hills and running streams, A softness like the atmosphere of dreams," when those who had so providentially been saved from the wreck, wended their way to the door of Komel's home. Scarcely could the poor girl restrain her impatience, scarcely wait for a moment to have the glad tidings broken to those within, before she should throw herself into her parents' arms. O, the joy that burst like sunshine upon those sad, half broken hearts, while tears of happiness coursed like mountain rivulets down their furrowed cheeks. Their dear, dear child was with them once more. Komel was safe, and they were again happy.

"But who are these, my child?" asked the father of Komel, pointing to Selim and Zillah.

"To him am I indebted, jointly with Aphiz, for my deliverance from bondage," she answered, taking Selim's hand and leading him to her father. "And this," she continued, putting an arm about Zillah, "is a dear sister whom I have learned to love for her kindness and sweet disposition. Both come to make our mountain side their future home."

Nor was the poor half-witted boy forgotten, but he received a share of the kindly welcome, and seemed in his peculiar way to understand and appreciate it, keeping continually by Komel's side.

An hour around the social board seemed to acquaint them all with the history of the past twelvemonth, and to reveal more than we might specify in many pages. The cottage was full of grateful hearts and happy souls that night; and Aphiz learned that since Krometz had fallen in that fatal encounter, the deed of the abduction had been fully proved upon him, and that so earnest were the feelings of the mountaineers in relation to the justice of Aphiz's conduct in that matter that he need fear no trouble concerning it. Thus assured, he too joined the home circle of his parents.

Captain Selim, with his bride, made Komel's house their home, but the young officer could not close his eyes to sleep. He rose with fevered brow and paced the lawn before the cottage until morning. Strange struggles seemed to be going on in his brain like a waking dream; he was striving to recall something in the dark vista of the past.

"You seem trouble this morning," said Komel's father, observing his mood. "Are you not well?"

"No, not exactly well," replied Selim; "indeed a strange dream seems to come over me while I look about me here--this mountain air, these surrounding hills, the distant view of the sea, have I ever seen these things before, or is it some troubled action of the brain that oppresses me with undefined recollections?"

"Come in and partake of our morning meal; that will refresh you," said the mountaineer.

"Thanks; yes, I will join you at once," he replied, but turned away thoughtfully.

With the earliest morning, Aphiz was again at the cottage and by Komel's side. O, how beautiful did she look to him now, once more attired in her simple dress of a mountaineer's daughter. No tongue could describe the fondness of his heart, or the dear truthfulness of her own expressive face when they met thus again. Their hearts were too full, far too full for words, and they wandered away together to old familiar scenes and spots in silence, save that their sympathetic souls were all the while communing with each other. At last they came to a spot from whence the lovely valley opened just below them, when suddenly Aphiz pointed to a projecting and dead limb of a tree far beneath them, and asked Komel if she remembered the scene of the hawk and dove.

"Alas! dear Aphiz, but too well. It was indeed an unheeded warning."

"But the dove is once more restored now, dearest, and we must look only for happy omens."

"I have seen so much of sadness, Aphiz," she answered, "that I shall only the more dearly prize the quiet peacefulness of our native hills."

"Thus too is it with me. A few months of excitement, toil, danger and unhappiness abroad, has endeared each spot that we have loved in our childhood still more strongly to me."

"Then shall good come out of evil, dear Aphiz, inasmuch as we shall now live content."

"Have you seen Captain Selim this morning, Komel?" he asked.

"Yes, and I fear he is ill, some heavy weight seems to be upon his heart."

"Let us seek him then, for we owe all to his manliness and courage."

As the twilight hour once crept over hill and valley, the evening meal was spread on the open lawn before the cottage, and when this was over, all sat there and told of the events that had passed, and each other's experiences, for the few past months, during which time Komel had remained a prisoner at the Sultan's palace. Of Selim, they knew only so much of his history as was connected with themselves, and he was asked to relate his story.

"Mine has been a life of little interest," he said, "save to myself alone. Of my birth and parentage I know nothing, and my earliest recollections carry me back to the period when I was a boy on board a Trebizond merchantman, at a time when I was just recovering from what is called the Asia fever, a malady that often attacks those who come from the north of the Black Sea to the Asia coast to live. This fever leaves the invalid deranged for weeks, and when he recovers from it, he is like an infant and obliged from that hour to cultivate his brain as from earliest childhood, and he can recall nothing of the past. Thus I lost the years of my life up to the age of eight or nine.

"I served in that ship until I was its first officer, and by good luck, having been once employed in one of the Sultan's ships as a pilot during a fierce gale, through which I was enabled, by my good luck, to carry the ship safely. I was appointed at once a lieutenant in the service, with good pay, and the means of improvement. The latter my taste led me to take advantage of, and in a short time I found myself in the command, where I was able to serve you."

"But you had no means whereby to learn of your birth and early childhood?" asked Komel's mother.

"None; I have thought much of the subject, but what effort to make in order to discover the truth as it regards this matter, I know not."

"Had you nothing about your person that could indicate your origin?"

"Nothing."

"Nor could the people with whom you sailed account for these things?" asked Aphiz.

"They said that I was taken off from a wreck on the Asia shore, the only survivor of a crew."

"How very strange," repeated all.

"You found nothing then upon you to mark the fact?" asked Komel's mother once more, sadly.

"Nothing--stay--there was an oaken cross upon my neck. I had nearly forgotten that; I wear it still, and for years I have thought it a sacred amulet, but it can reveal nothing."

"The cross, the cross?" they cried in one voice, "let us see it."

As he unbuttoned the collar of his coat and drew forth the emblem, Komel's mother, who had drawn close to his side, uttered a wild cry of delight as she fell into her husband's arms, saying:

"It is our lost boy!"

Words would but faintly express the scene and feelings that followed this announcement, and we leave the reader's own appreciations to fill up the picture to which we have referred.

Yes, Captain Selim, the gallant officer who had saved Aphiz's life, and liberated Komel from the Sultan's harem, was her own dear brother, but who had been counted as dead years and years gone by. Could a happier consummation have been devised? and Zillah, who loved Selim so tenderly before, now found fresh cause for joy, delight and tenderness in the new page in her husband's history.

Selim, too, now understood the secret influence that had led him to bid so high for the lone slave he had met in the bazaar, the reason why he had, by some undefined intuitive sense, been so drawn towards her in his feelings, for the dumb and beautiful girl was his unknown sister!

And again when he heard her name mentioned, for the first time, by the Armenian physician, it will be remembered how the name rung in his ears, awaking some long forgotten feelings, yet so indistinctly that he could not express or fairly analyze them. The same sensations have more than once come over him since that hour while they were suffering together the hardships of the week, and the fearful scenes that followed the gale they had encountered after the chase.

Aphiz and Komel loved each other now, as they never could have done, but for the strange vicissitudes which they had shared together. They had grown to be necessary to each other's being, and even when absent from each other for a few hours, in soul they were still together. And hand in hand, side by side, they still wandered about the wild mountain scenery of their native hills. They had no thoughts but of love, no desires that were not in unison, no throbbing of their breasts that did not echo a kindred token in each other's hearts. Life, kindred, the whole world were seen by them through the soft ideal hues of ever present affection.

And when, at last, with full consent from her parents, Aphiz led Komel a blushing bride to the altar, and Selim and Zillah supported them on either side, how happy were they all!

Years pass on in the hills of Circassia as in all the rest of the world beside. Sunshine and shadow glance athwart its crowning peaks, the waves of the Black Sea lave its shores, its daughters still dream of a home among the Turks, and the secret cargoes are yet run from Anapa up the Golden Horn. The slave bazaar of the Ottoman capital still presents