“Yet Allah is the God who defends the Padishah of the Ottomans.  Their Odzhakjaiks[8] will scatter terror.  Allah Akbar!  God is mighty!

“And the captains of the galleys, and the rowers thereof, and the chief of the gunners, and the corsairs of the swift ships will share with one another the treasures and the spoils of the unbelievers.

“And the Padishah shall rule over thirteen nations.

“But lo! a dark cloud arises in the cold and distant North.  A foe appears more terrible and persistent than the Magyars, the Venetians, or the Persians.  He is still tender like the fledgelings of the hawks of the Balkans, but soon, very soon, he will learn to spread his pinions.  Up, up, Silihdar Aga, the Sultan’s Sword-bearer!  Up, up, Rechenbtar Aga, the Sultan’s Stirrup-holder; up, up, and do your duty.  And ye viziers, assemble the reserves.  Those men who come from the land where the pines and firs raise their virgin branches towards Heaven, they long after the warm climates where the olive, the lestisk, the terebinth, and the palm lift their crowns towards Heaven.  The fathers point out Stambul to their sons, they point it out as the booty that will give them sustenance; tender women lay their hands upon the sword to use it against the Osmanli, and will fight like heroes.  Yet the days of the Sons of the Prophet will not yet come to an end; they will resist the enemy, and stand fast like a Salamander in the midst of the burning embers.

“The years pass over the world, again the Giaours assemble in their myriads and threaten vengeance.  But the Divan answers them:  ’Olmaz!’—­it cannot be.  The Anatolian and the Rumelian lighthouses, at the entrance of the Bosphorus, will signal from their watch-towers the approach of the foreign war-ships.

“But this shall be much later, after three-and-twenty Padishahs have ruled over the thirteen nations; then and not till then will the armies of the Unbelievers assemble before Stambul.  Woe, woe unto us!  Eternally invincible should the Osmanlis remain if they walked, with firm footsteps, according to the commands of the Koran.  But a time will come when the old customs will fall into oblivion, when new ways will creep in among Mussulmen like a rattlesnake crawling into a bed of roses.  Faith will no longer give strength against those men of ice, and they will enter the nine-and-twenty gates of the seven-hilled city.

“Lo! this did the Prophet reveal to me in the season of El-Ashsoer, beginning at the time of sundown.

“Allah give his blessing to the rulers of this world.”

Thus ran the message of the “Takimi Vekai.”

Halil Patrona had read these lines over and over again until he knew every letter of them by heart.  They were continually in his thoughts, in his dreams, and the eternally recurring tumult of these anxious bodings allowed his soul no rest.  What if it were possible to falsify this prophecy!  What if his strong hand could but stay the flying wheel of Fate in mid career, hold it fast, and turn it in a different direction! so that what was written in the Book of Thora before Sun and Moon were ever yet created might be expunged therefrom, and the guardian angels be compelled to write other things in place thereof!