The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II | Page 4

in the same manner as the ecstatic vision I have recorded of my wood-life. I suppose such beauty to be incompatible with any degree of mental activity or personal character, for the process of mental development carries with it a trace of struggle destructive to the supreme serenity and statuesque repose of the Cretan beauty. Pashley tells of a similar experience he had in the mountains of Sphakia, and he was impressed as I was.
On our arrival at the city gates, returning to Retimo, we had an experience of the mediaeval ways of the island, finding the gates locked and no guard on duty. We called and summoned,--for a consul had always the privilege of having the gates opened to him at any hour of day or night,--but in vain, until I devised a summons louder than our sticks on the gate, and, taking the hugest stone I could lift, threw it with all my force repeatedly at the gate, and so aroused the guard, who went to the governor and got the keys, which were kept under his pillow. The next day we had an affair with Turkish justice which illustrates the position of the consuls in Turkey so well that I tell it fully. The dragoman and I had gone off to shoot rock-pigeons in one of the caves by the seashore, leaving at home my breech-loading hunting rifle, then a novelty in that part of the world. When we got home at night the city was full of a report that some one in our house had shot a Turkish boy through the body. I at once made an investigation and found that the facts were that a boy coming to the town, at a distance of about half a mile from the gate, had been hit by a rifle ball which had struck him in the chest and gone out at the back. No one had heard a shot, and the sentinel at our doors, set nominally for honor, but really to watch the house, had not heard any sound. The boy was in no danger, and he declared that the bullet had struck him in the back and gone out by the chest. My Canea dragoman, who was reading in the house all the time we were gone, had heard nothing and knew nothing about it; but, on examining the rifle, I found that some one had tried to wipe it out and had left a rag sticking half way down, the barrel. This pointed to a solution, and an investigation made the whole thing clear. The dragoman's man-servant had taken the gun out on the balcony which looked out on the port, and fired a shot at a white stone on the edge of the wall, in the direction of the village where the boy was hit.
The kaimakam of Retimo sent an express to Canea to ask Ismael what he should do, and received reply to prosecute the affair with the utmost vigor. He therefore summoned the entire household of the dragoman, except him and myself, to the konak, to be examined. As they were all under my protection I refused to send them, but offered to make a strict investigation and tell him the result; but, knowing the rigor of the Turkish law against a Christian who had wounded a Mussulman, even unintentionally, I insisted on being the magistrate to sit in the examination. The pasha declined my offer, and I forbade any one in the house to go to the konak for examination. I then appeared before the kaimakam and demanded the evidence on which my house was accused. There was none except that of the surgeon, who was a Catholic, and a bigoted enemy of the Greeks, and especially of the dragoman, with whom he had had litigation. He declared that the shot came from the direction of the town, while the boy maintained the contrary; and as, in the direction from which the boy had come, there was a Mussulman festival, with much firing of guns, I suggested the possibility that the ball came, as the boy believed, from that direction, and put the surgeon to a severe cross-examination. I asked him if he had ever seen a gunshot wound before, and he admitted that he had not. Thereupon I denounced him to the kaimakam, who had begun to be frightened at the responsibility he had assumed, and the man broke down and admitted that he might be mistaken, on which the kaimakam withdrew the charge.
I knew perfectly well that the servant was guilty, but I knew, too, that for accidental wounding he would have been punished by indefinite confinement in a Turkish prison, as if he had shot the boy intentionally. The refusal of the pasha to permit me