“Greet Halil Patrona in my name,” said the Sultan, “and tell him that I will satisfy all his just demands, if he promises to dismiss his forces immediately afterwards.”

The Chaszeki Aga and Sulali Hassan, with the twenty bostanjis, forced their way through the thick crowd which thronged the streets till they reached the central mosque.  Only nine of the twenty bostanjis were beaten to death by the mob on the way, the eleven others were fortunate enough to reach the mosque at least alive.

There, on a camel-skin spread upon the ground, sat Halil, the rebel leader, like a second Dzhengis Khan, dictating his orders and nominations to the softas sitting before him, whom he had appointed his teskeredjis.

When the Janissaries on guard informed him that the Sultan’s Chaszeki Aga had arrived and wanted to speak to him, he drily replied: 

“He can wait.  I must attend to worthier men than he first of all.”

And who, then, were these worthier men?

Well, first of all there was the old master-cobbler, Suleiman, whom they had dragged by force from his house where he had been hiding under the floor.  Halil now ordered a document to be drawn up, whereby he elevated him to the rank of Reis-Effendi.

Halil Patrona, by the way, was still wearing his old Janissary uniform, the blue dolman with the salavari reaching to the knee, leaving the calves bare.  The only difference was that he now wore a white heron’s feather in his hat instead of a black one, and by his side hung the sword of the Grand Vizier, whose palace in the Galata suburb he had levelled to the ground only an hour before.

It was with the signet in the hilt of this sword that Halil was now sealing all the public documents issued by him.

After Suleiman came Muhammad the saddle-maker.  He was a sturdy, muscular fellow, who could have held his own against any two or three ordinary men.  Him Halil appointed Aga.

Then came a ciaus called Orli, whom he made chief magistrate.  Ibrahim, a whilom schoolmaster, who went by the name of “the Fool,” he made chief Cadi of Stambul, and then catching sight of Sulali, he beckoned him forth from among the ciauses and said to him: 

“Thou shalt be the Governor-General of Anatolia.”

Sulali bowed to the ground by way of acknowledgment of such graciousness.

“I thank thee, Halil!  Make of me what thou wilt, but listen, first of all, to the message of the Padishah which he has entrusted to me, for I am in very great doubt whether it be thou or Sultan Achmed who is now Lord of all the Moslems.  Tell me, therefore, what thou dost require of the Sultan, and if thy demands be lawful and of good report they shall be granted, provided that thou dost promise to disperse thy following.”

Then Halil Patrona stood up before the Sulali, and with a severe and motionless countenance answered: 

“Our demands are few and soon told.  We demand the delivery to us of the four arch-traitors who have brought disaster upon the realm.  They are the Kul Kiaja, the Kapudan Pasha, the Chief Mufti, and the Grand Vizier.”