The Strange Story Book. Mrs. Lang
after all, and perhaps she can teach us some fresh games. I have noticed that there is a little hole in the curtain; I will peep through that, and if she looks kind and good-natured, I will go in.'
'Yes; that is a good plan,' answered the child, and they both went on tiptoe to the curtain.
The hole was very small, and it was hardly possible that anyone on the other side of the curtain should have seen them looking through. Yet the moment that the wife had fixed her eye on it, the woman threw up her hands and screamed, and both sisters fell down dead; and that is how Mountain Dweller found them when he returned from the hunt.
He guessed at once what had happened, and his anger was so great that the first thing he did was to run behind the curtain and kill the bad woman who lived there. Then he took some eagle-down and spread it over the girls' bodies, and walked round them many times, shaking his rattle all the while. At length slight shivers passed through their limbs; the colour came back into their faces, and there they stood on their feet, as well as ever they were.
When they had been in the mountain for many, many months, Mountain Dweller said one day to his wife:
'Would you not like to see your father and mother once more?'
'Oh, yes, yes!' cried both the girls at once.
'Well, you shall,' said he; 'but first I must go to hunt and prepare a gift for them. So make me a little basket, just big enough to put your finger in.'
'That won't take long,' laughed she, and on his return in the evening the basket was ready. But this basket was not like other baskets, for when the husband shook it, it grew large enough to hold all kinds of meat and bags of tallow, and when he shook it again, it shrunk – and the meat also.
At dawn the next day the girls started and carried the basket to their father's house. It was evening before they arrived, and the first person who saw them approaching was their little brother, who ran in, crying, 'Mother, my sisters are there.'
'Nonsense!' she answered angrily. 'Why do you say such things? They have been dead this many a long day.'
'They are my sisters,' shouted he. 'Do you suppose I don't know them?'
'Well, let me see the hair from their marten-skin robes,' she replied, still unbelieving, for she remembered that her daughters had marten-skin robes, such as only the chief families were allowed to wear. Then the boy went and spoke to his sisters, and pulled little pieces of the fur out. As soon as she saw the fur, the mother believed, and she and her husband and their kinsfolk went forth to meet the lost girls, weeping for joy at having found them again.
The next day the big girl said to her mother, 'There is a little basket in the woods, filled with meat. Let it be fetched.' So several people went to fetch it, but returned, saying it was so large that all of them put together could not bring it in.
'I will go and see about it,' answered the girl, and she made it small so that she could easily carry it, but as soon as she laid it down in the house, it became as large as ever. She knelt on the floor and unpacked the basket, and the house could hardly contain all that was in it; and the village people came and feasted likewise. Only the mother ate so much that she grew very ill, and never got any better.
To this day luck befalls every man who hears Mountain Dweller chopping the wood.
THE ESCAPE OF THE GALLEY-SLAVES
In the year 1563 the 'Three Half Moons,' with thirty men on board, set sail from Portsmouth for the south of Spain, intending to sell their goods to merchants in the town of Seville, situated on the river Guadalquivir. The wind was behind them and they had a prosperous voyage till they neared the Straits of Gibraltar, when eight Turkish ships suddenly hove in sight, and surrounded the 'Three Half Moons.'
Of course, no vessel ever entered the Mediterranean, which in those days was alive with pirates, without being fully armed, and every man was a fighter. So when the captain of the 'Three Half Moons' beheld the flag with the crescent flying at the masthead of each galley, he ordered the trumpets and drums to be beaten, and served out swords and ammunition to the crew. This done, John Fox the gunner moved his cannon into position and sent a shower of bullets at the Turks.
The enemy however either had better artillery or were in greater practice than the English men, for they loaded at least three times as quickly, coming up as they did so to closed quarters, so that the crew were forced to take to their bows. Their aim was deadly and soon many of the Turks had fallen upon their decks, but again their more rapid firing told, and soon there were signs that the 'Three Half Moons' was filling with water from the holes pierced in her side. Then the Turks left their own galleys and tried to board her before she sank. Bows and cannon were alike useless now, so the English seized their pikes and swords, and fought hand to hand till they were overborne by the number of the enemy. At length they could resist no longer; their weapons were taken from them, and those who were left alive were sent, as prisoners of war usually were, to work at the oars of the galley. This was a fate dreaded by all from nearly the beginnings of history. The unfortunate slaves were generally chained together on benches in a stifling, dark place, where they could hardly breathe; their food was scanty and often bad, and if from exhaustion any man showed symptoms of flagging, an overseer was at hand to flog him into greater vigour. Should the ship sink, as often happened, the heavy chains deprived the unhappy slaves of any chance of escaping death.
It was the custom of the Turks to lay up their galleys during the winter in a harbour near the town of Alexandria, and to throw all their prisoners and galley-slaves into gaol, with irons on their legs. The crew of the 'Three Half Moons' were thrust into dungeons like the rest, but before very long the captain and the owner of the ship, who had sailed with them, were ransomed by their friends.
Thankful though they were to be free again, they suffered terrible pain at leaving their companions to so many and great miseries, and they could only falter out a few broken words about doing their best to collect money at home to deliver them also. The prisoners sighed and did not answer: they knew too well the worth of promises such as these.
Their daily allowance of food in the prison was no greater than it had been on the galleys, and they were all more than half starved. Yet their plight would have been even worse than it was, had not John Fox the gunner possessed unusual skill as a barber, which somehow became known, and the officials about the gaol and harbour would send for him to shave them and cut their hair. With the money thus earned, he bought good food for his mates and himself. After a while, he and certain of his companions were allowed by the keeper to go out for the day and make what they could, a regular part of their earnings being paid to the gaoler. As they were obliged to report themselves at night and always kept the irons on their legs, there was not much fear of their running away.
In the winter of 1577, when the crew of the 'Three Half Moons' had reached the fourteenth year of their captivity, the galleys were dismantled of their masts and sails, and laid up in harbour till the spring. The captains and sailors, having nothing more to do, returned to their own homes; and the prisoners, amounting in all to two hundred and sixty-eight Christians belonging to sixteen different nations, were marched back to the prison.
Not far from the harbour was an eating-house kept by one Unticaro, a Spaniard, who since he had been thirty years a captive without once attempting to escape was permitted certain privileges. With him, John Fox had long ago made friends, and it was of this man he now asked advice as to his best plan of running away, because Fox had determined that, even if he died for it, he would stay there no longer. Unticaro had lacked the courage to move on his own account, but fired by Fox, readily agreed to risk his own life also. Six of the other prisoners whom they could trust were let into the secret, and they swore they would stand or fall together.
The first thing to be done was, of course, to get rid of their chains, so Fox distributed files among them, with orders to have their irons off their legs by eight o'clock the next night. They had by this time been imprisoned for so many years, and the gaoler had got so accustomed to seeing them about, that so long as they were all there when he locked up, he did not trouble himself further.
On the evening of the following day, January 1, 1578, the six captives accompanied by John Fox met at Unticaro's eating-house, pretending to be in high spirits so that nobody who dropped