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"Oh, my father!" cried the same voice in tones of heart-rending anguish. "How shall we deliver thee? Alas! alas! who can tell the tortures they will make thee suffer in their dreadful dungeons?" The noise of the musketry became more and more distinct. Some of the newly arrived Uzcoques who had hurried up the winding path, were soon heard clamouring furiously for admittance at the castle gates.
Its like exists not in the world; for the mould was made by my order, and broken as soon as used. 'Twas mine until the base Uzcoques plundered my baggage. How thus quickly it passed from them to you, is as well known to me as to yourself.
But by none were the Uzcoques more feared and detested than by the greyheaded doge and senators of the Ocean Queen, the sea-born city, before whose cathedral the colours of three kingdoms fluttered from their crimson flagstaffs; and the few young Venetians in whose breasts the remembrance of their heroic ancestors yet lived, blushed for their country's degradation when they beheld her rulers braved and insulted by a band of sea-robbers.
Truly spoke the Christian maiden, whom but a few weeks back I took captive in a fight with the Uzcoques, but who was shortly after rescued by another band of those raging fiends." "Saw you the maiden," exclaimed Hassan, "the good maiden that accompanies the pirates, like an angel walking among demons?"
The inconvenience and interruption to the trade of Fiume occasioned by these blockades, usually induced the archducal government to institute a pretended investigation into the conduct of the Uzcoques, or at least to promise the Venetians some reparation a mockery of satisfaction with which the latter, in their then state of decline and weakness, were fain to content themselves.
A number of the Uzcoques now threw themselves with brutal violence upon the two prisoners, muffled their heads in cloaks to prevent their crying out, and carried them with the speed of light into the cave, in the innermost recess of which they bestowed them.
"Have we not here the cave, from which, invoked by fire, the storm and the hurricane, the north wind and the tempest, come forth and shatter the most stately vessels against our iron-bound coast. Up, Uzcoques, and fire the cavern! Let the elements do battle for us. Perchance by their aid the bark of your leader Dansowich may yet escape its foes and reach the haven."
In the crush and confusion that ensued, familiars and Uzcoques were separated; and the latter, mingling with the crowd, and no longer distinguishable from the cloaked and masked figures that surrounded them, easily succeeded in effecting their escape.
This was to seize upon the person of a Venetian of note, in order to exchange him for the Uzcoques then languishing in the dungeons of the republic. The Venetians were not yet aware that the much-dreaded woivode Dansowich was among their prisoners.
The graceful form of Strasolda, and the wild figures of the Uzcoques, swam more and more indistinctly before his closing eyes, until he sank at last into a deep and refreshing slumber. The tribe of the Uzcoques, or Scochi, derived their name from scoco, a refugee or fugitive, a word bearing reference to their origin.
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