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The gipsy could not help but admire the powerful quick movements of the Tartar yet to be forced into selling his daughter that was another thing. At daylight they were within sight of Mehmet's hut on the shore. The storm had abated. Standing up on the bags of fodder Marcu saw the black smoke that rose from his camp. His people must be waiting on the shore. They were a dozen men.
For it was a dangerous thing to do what he did and facing her father. Yet she will have to marry Stan because her father bids it. "I don't mean to offend you," the boatman spoke again, "but you are very slow in deciding whether you accept my bargain or not. Night is closing upon us." Marcu did not answer immediately. The boat was carried downstream very rapidly.
When everything had been done, Marcu, the tall gray-bearded chief, inspected the work. A few of the ropes needed tightening. He did it himself, shaking his head in disapproval of the way in which it had been done. Then he listened carefully to the blowing of the wind and measured its velocity and intensity. He called to his men. When they had surrounded him, he spoke a few words.
She had hardly been interested in the whole affair, yet, when Mehmet Ali mentioned casually as soon as he was outdoors that he knew a man who would pay twenty pieces of gold for such a wife as Fanutza was, she became interested in the conversation. "I sell horses only," Marcu answered quietly. "Yet my friend and others from his tribe have bought wives.
The last few words of Mehmet Ali, "Not to me," were the sweetest music she had ever heard. Marcu waited until it was dark enough for the Tartar not to see, when pressing significantly his daughter's foot, he said: "So be it as you said. Row us across." "It is not one minute too soon," Mehmet answered. "Only a short distance from here, where the river splits in three forks, is a great rock.
The two men rowed in silence, each one planning how to outwit the other and each one knowing that the other was planning likewise. According to Tartar ethics the bargain was a bargain. When the boat had been pulled out of danger Mehmet hastened to fulfil his end. With one jerk he loosened a heavy belt underneath his coat and pulled out a leather purse which he threw to Marcu.
In his ninth book of Annals, he has mentioned him in the following terms: "Additur Orator Corneliu' suaviloquenti Ore Cethegus Marcu', Tuditano collega, Marci Filius." "Add the Orator M. Cornelius Cethegus, so much admired for his mellifluent tongue; who was the colleague of Tuditanus, and the son of Marcus."
To him all women are alike. But not to Mehmet Ali. So I shall stay with him. A bargain is a bargain. He staked his life for me." Marcu knew it was the end. "All women are alike," he whined to Stan as he handed him the purse. "Take it. All women are alike," he repeated with bitterness as he made a savage movement towards his daughter.
And why do you take her along to the Giaour side, to the heathen side, of the river, friend?" he continued talking as he put heavy boots on his feet and measured Fanutza with his eyes as he spoke. "For everything there is only one right time, say I, Marcu," the chief explained, in measured solemn voice. "And so now is the time for my daughter to get married.
Marcu and his daughter entered the inn that stood a few hundred feet from the shore. The innkeeper, an old fat greasy Greek, Chiria Anastasidis, welcomed the gipsy chief. Not knowing the relationship between the old man and the girl, he feared to antagonize his customer by talking to the young woman.
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