This crazy counsel instantly met with general applause.  Everyone approved of it, of that there could be no doubt.

Halil Patrona regarded them all in contemptuous silence.  Only when “crazy” Ibrahim’s proposal had been resolved upon did he stand up and say: 

“I myself will go to the Seraglio.”

Some of them regarded him with amazement, others laughed.  Musli clapped his hands together in his desperation.

“Halil! dost thou dream or art thou beside thyself?  Dost thou imagine thyself to be one of the Princes of the Thousand and One Nights who can hew his way through monsters and spectres, or art thou wearied of beholding the sun from afar and must needs go close up to him?”

“’Tis no concern of thine what I do, and if I am not afraid what need is there for thee to be afraid on my account?”

“But, prythee, bethink thee, Halil!  It would be a much more sensible jest on thy part to leap into the den of a lioness suckling her young; and thou wouldst be a much wiser man if thou wert to adventure thyself in the sulphur holes of Balsorah, or cause thyself to be let down, for the sake of a bet, into the coral-beds at the bottom of the Sea of Candia to pick up a bronze asper,[2] instead of going to the Seraglio where there are now none but thine enemies, and where the very atmosphere and the spider crawling down the wall is venomous to thee and thy deadly enemy.”

“They may kill me,” cried Halil, striking his bosom with both hands and boldly stepping forward—­“they may kill me it is true, but they shall never be able to say that I was afraid of them.  They may tear my limbs to pieces, but when it comes to be recorded in the Chronicles that the rabble of Constantinople were cowards, it shall be recorded at the same time that, nevertheless, there was one man among them who could not only talk about death but could look it fairly between the eyes when it appeared before him.”

“Listen, Halil!  I and many more like me are capable of looking into the very throat of loaded cannons.  Many is the time, too, that I have seen sharp swords drawn against me, and no lance that ever hath left the smith’s hand can boast that I have so much as winked an eye before its glittering point.  But what is the use of valour in a place where you know that the very ground beneath your feet has Hell beneath it, and it only needs a spark no bigger than that which flashes from a man’s eye when he has received a buffet, and we shall all fly into the air.  Why, even if both our hands were full of swords and pistols, not one of them could protect us—­so who would wish to be brave there?”

“Have I invited thee to come?  Did I not say that I would go alone?”

“But we won’t let thee go.  What art thou thinking about?  If they destroy thee there we shall be without a leader, and we shall fall to pieces and perish like the rush-roof of a cottage when the joists are suddenly pulled from beneath it.  And thou thyself wilt be a laughing-stock to the people, like the cock of the fairy tale who spitted and roasted himself.”