t might have been averted if the three Christian armies
had been joined against the "cruel devouring Turk." Among the slain
were many Englishmen, adventurers like the valiant Captain whom Smith
names, men who "left there their bodies in testimony of their minds."
And there, "Smith among the slaughtered dead bodies, and many a
gasping soule with toils and wounds lay groaning among the rest, till
being found by the Pillagers he was able to live, and perceiving by
his armor and habit, his ransome might be better than his death, they
led him prisoner with many others." The captives were taken to
Axopolis and all sold as slaves. Smith was bought by Bashaw Bogall,
who forwarded him by way of Adrianople to Constantinople, to be a
slave to his mistress. So chained by the necks in gangs of twenty
they marched to the city of Constantine, where Smith was delivered
over to the mistress of the Bashaw, the young Charatza Tragabigzanda.

III

CAPTIVITY AND WANDERING

Our hero never stirs without encountering a romantic adventure.
Noble ladies nearly always take pity on good-looking captains, and
Smith was far from ill-favored. The charming Charatza delighted to
talk with her slave, for she could speak Italian, and would feign
herself too sick to go to the bath, or to accompany the other women
when they went to weep over the graves, as their custom is once a
week, in order to stay at home to hear from Smith how it was that
Bogall took him prisoner, as the Bashaw had written her, and whether
Smith was a Bohemian lord conquered by the Bashaw's own hand, whose
ransom could adorn her with the glory of her lover's conquests.
Great must have been her disgust with Bogall when she heard that he
had not captured this handsome prisoner, but had bought him in the
slave-market at Axopolis. Her compassion for her slave increased,
and the hero thought he saw in her eyes a tender interest. But she
had no use for such a slave, and fearing her mother would sell him,
she sent him to her brother, the Tymor Bashaw of Nalbrits in the
country of Cambria, a province of Tartaria (wherever that may be).
If all had gone on as Smith believed the kind lady intended, he might
have been a great Bashaw and a mighty man in the Ottoman Empire, and
we might never have heard of Pocahontas. In sending him to her
brother, it was her intention, for she told him so, that he should
only sojourn in Nalbrits long enough to learn the language, and what
it was to be a