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Fortunately for Halil Patrona, however, he did not raise his face while the suite of the Lords of the Universe swept past him, for otherwise it might have happened that Halil Pelivan, who went before the Sultan with a drawn broadsword, might have recognised him, and certainly nobody would have taken particular trouble to inquire why the Janissary had split in two the head of this or that pedlar who happened to come in his way.
The insurgent mob, moreover, promised to disperse under two conditions: a complete amnesty for past offences, and permission to retain two of their banners that they might be able to assemble together again in case anything was undertaken against them. Their requests were all granted. Halil Patrona, too, was honoured by being made one of the privy councillors of the Divan.
Whilst the younger of the travellers was ascertaining from the patrona the state of the larder, which, as is usual enough in Spanish inns, was but meagrely provided, his companion sought out the landlord of the venta, whom he found in the chimney-corner, enjoying a supplementary siesta amidst a cloud of wood smoke.
"'Tis the dumb curse of Achmed!" whispered the awe-stricken spectators to one another. The surgujal the turban with the triple gold circlet was on the head of Mahmud, but the sword, the sword of dominion, was in the hand of Halil Patrona.
Therefore, let every true believer forsake immediately his handiwork, cast his awl, his hammer, and his plane aside, and seize his sword instead; let him close his booth and rally beneath our standard!" The mob greeted these words with a savage yell, raised Patrona on its shoulders, and carried him away through the arcades of Bezesztan piazza.
Seven-and-twenty of the popular leaders were invited at the same time to appear in the Divan and assist in its deliberations. Halil Patrona was the life and soul of the lot.
Not only did the indefatigable corsair get clear away without any suspicion on the part of the admiral, but his first act on gaining the open sea was to capture the Patrona galley sent from Sicily by Don Juan de Vega to say that reinforcements were on the road.
"This must be put a stop to once for all," murmured Halil, and beckoning to a load-carrier he mounted on to his shoulders and wrote his name high up, just beneath the eaves of the house on a spot where Pelivan's name could not top his own again, from whence it is manifest that there was a certain secret instinct in Halil Patrona which would not permit him to take the lower place or suffer him to recognise anybody as standing higher than himself.
Patrona, like a furious tiger that has burst forth from its cage, at these words rushed from out the ranks of his comrades. His sword flashed in his hand, and if Pelivan had been doubly as big as he was, his mere size could not have saved him.
In all probability the Janissary, when he picked himself up again, had dipped his finger in his own blood, and then scrawled the names upon the wall in order to perpetuate the memory of the incident. He had also taken good care to put Halil Pelivan uppermost and Halil Patrona undermost.
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