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Updated: May 24, 2025
While the boy looked upon Komel as she spoke, his fine eye glowed with warmth and expression, but when Aphiz took his hand, and he turned towards him, that light was gone, like the fire from a seared coal, and the optics of the idiot were cold and expressionless. The reader will remember the fleet and beautiful slaver mentioned in an early chapter, when lying off the port of Anapa.
"Why, I should not betray you again into the Sultan's power. I have no real sympathy with these Turks, and would much rather serve you, who seem to be a stranger, than them." "Thanks, a thousand thanks," answered Aphiz, warmly. "Therefore, confide in me, and if I can serve thee, I will do so at once." "I will," said Aphiz, who felt that the officer was honest in what he promised.
"That's true, but I should inspire thee with joy, not fear and uneasiness." "It is only the love I bear thee, dearest, that makes me so jealous, so anxious, so fearful lest some chance should rob me of thee forever," he would reply tenderly. "It is ever thus; what is there to fear, Aphiz?" "I know not, dearest.
"Ah! excellency, I am but a weak girl and can ill abide a jest. Aphiz can have done nothing to receive your displeasure, and surely you would not take his life without reason." "I had reason sufficient for me." "What was it, excellency?" "The fellow loved you, Komel." "O, sorrow me, sorrow me, that his love for should have been his ending."
Aphiz then related to them the story that is already familiar to the reader, and seeing that those with whom he had to deal were in no way particularly partial to the Sultan, he told word for word the whole truth, even from the hour when he had saved him from the Bedouins, to that when he had been cast into the sea.
The gale, too, now gradually subsided, and enabled the half-wrecked people to take more comfortable positions, and Aphiz and Selim to prepare a raft with the assistance of the crew, for it was but too apparent that the schooner must go down before long.
"We were; and perhaps have spoken too plainly of a purpose for her release from bondage," said the Armenian. "Why too freely?" "Because in a degree we have placed ourselves in your power, having spoken treason." "I care not whether it be treason or not," replied Aphiz; "it was such as answered to the feelings of my own heart in every word. Betray you! I will die to achieve the object you name."
And now as he looked upon Komel, he thought he could read some such spirit in the expression of the beautiful slave before him, and he was right! Dark thoughts seemed to be struggling even in her gentle breast, when she realized that Aphiz was no more, and that his murderer was before her. Nothing in reality could be more gentle than the loving disposition of the slave.
"Nay, dear Aphiz," she would say to him, with a gentle smile upon her countenance, "let not that shadow rest upon thy brow, but rather look with the sun on the bright side of everything. Am I not a simple and weak girl, and yet I am cheerful and happy, while thou, so strong, so brave and manly, art ever fearing some unknown ill." "Only as it regards thee, Komel, do I fear anything."
Aphiz was now all impatience. He could scarcely wait for the hours to pass that should bring about the period allotted for the attempt to release her whom he so fondly, and until now so hopelessly, loved.
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