338 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



the state of insensibility into which he had been 

 thrown by the suffocating influence of the smoke, and 

 heard his companion snoring at his side. For some 

 time the young Turk lay, revolving in his mind the 

 eventful scene he had witnessed, and the strange and 

 startling circumstances that had come to his know- 

 ledge during the few preceding hours. The capture 

 of Dansowich was an event of much importance ; nor 

 was there less weight in the discovery Ibrahim had 

 made of the dependence of the Uzcoques upon a 

 higher power, which, in secret, aided and profited by 

 their depredations. Although Austria had been fre- 

 quently accused of abetting the piracies of the Uz- 

 coques, the charge had never been clearly proved, and 

 to many appeared too improbable to obtain credence. 

 Ibrahim had hitherto been among the incredulous; 

 but what he had this day seen and heard removed 

 every doubt, and fully convinced him of the justice 

 of those imputations. 



Turning in disgust from the contemplation of 

 the labyrinth of crime and treachery to which he 

 had seized the clue, the young Moslem sought and 

 found a far pleasanter subject of reflection in the 

 remembrance of the maiden, whose transcendent 

 beauty and touching devotion to her captive parent, 

 shone out the more brightly from their contrast with 

 the vice and degradation by which she was sur- 

 rounded. With much interest did he endeavour to 

 solve the problem, and explain what appeared almost 



