Burt Standish - Dick Merriwell's Pranks - or, Lively Times in the Orient

Barely were these words spoken when, in the pall of darkness near by, a voice demanded:

“Are you ready to depart now? Will you depart at once? Do you, one and all, swear by your God that you will lose no time about going?”.

Needless to say, the sound of that voice affected them all much like a sudden clap of thunder on a clear and sunny day. The woman gave a little scream, the major uttered a smothered oath, the professor gasped for breath, while both Dick and Brad sat bolt upright, their nerves tense.

“Answer at once!” commanded the unseen speaker. “It is your only hope of escaping. Among the Armenians we have enough so-called missionaries, and, therefore, the woman from Boston is not wanted. In the other boat are the old man and the boys against whom the secret police have been warned. It will be easy to cause all of you to vanish from the face of the earth; yet if you pledge yourselves to leave Turkey, you shall be spared.”

“I tell you one thing,” spluttered Zenas Gunn eagerly, “I’ve seen all of Turkey I care to see, and I’ll give you my pledge to leave within twenty-four hours, taking the boys with me.”

“I’ll go – oh, I’ll go!” promised Miss Ketchum.

“And if she goes,” said Major Fitts, “I shall accompany her.”

“Swear it!”

The trio were willing enough to do so.

A few moments later a light gleamed a short distance away, and then three torches were lighted. Within twenty feet of them was another and larger boat, containing four persons, three of whom were guides. The fourth was Aziz Achmet. One of the guides was Bayazid, who grinned at the professor and the boys, as if he thought the whole thing a fine joke. Another was the guide who had accompanied the major and the woman from Boston.

Achmet did not touch an oar. He sat in dignified silence as his companions slowly brought the boat close to the others.

“Mr. Achmet,” said Dick, “although we dislike to leave Constantinople under compulsion, Professor Gunn has given his pledge, and we shall stand by it. There is one thing, however, that we would like to have explained. How did our guide disappear in such a mysterious manner?”

Achmet shrugged his shoulders a bit. At first he seemed disinclined to answer, but apparently he suddenly decided to do so.

“It was very simple, boy,” he said. “Your guide stepped from your boat into this one, which he had seen floating in the shadow of a pillar. I was in this boat, with these other guides, and I gave him a signal that he understood. Immediately he extinguished the torch. That threw you into confusion. This boat silently approached, and Bayazid stepped into it. In the same manner Yapouly left the other boat.”

“Thank you,” said Dick. “It was altogether too easy!”

“A heap!” growled Buckhart.

They succeeded in securing passage on a steamer that left the port the following day. Major Fitts and Miss Ketchum left by the same steamer.

“I hope yo’ will congratulate me, professor,” said the major, as proud as a peacock. “Miss Ketchum has consented to become Mrs. Fitts as soon as we reach the United States. I’m sorry fo’ yo’, suh; but yo’ never really had a show, suh.”

“That’s right, major,” smiled Dick. “He didn’t have a show, because he is already – ”

“Don’t you dare tell I’m married!” hissed Zenas, in the boy’s ear.

“He is all ready to carry out his plan to penetrate the wilds of Africa, where it would be impossible for him to take a bride, and he could not bear to be parted from one so young and charming as Miss Ketchum, were he to have the good fortune to capture her.”

“Saved your life, you rascal!” whispered Zenas, and then hastened to bow low to the coy and confused lady from Boston.

At Beirut the party split up, the professor and the boys going to Damascus, a distance of ninety-one miles, which was covered by an excellent narrow-gauge railroad, built by Swiss engineers.

“We’re off, boys!” cheerfully exclaimed the professor, as the train finally started. “We’ll soon be in the oldest city in the world.”

“Do you mean Damascus, professor?” inquired Dick.

“Of course I mean Damascus! We’re not bound for any other place, are we? Did you think I meant New York? Did you fancy I was speaking of Hoboken? Hum! Haw!”

“But there is no absolute proof that Damascus is the oldest city in the world. There may be older cities in China or India.”

“There may be,” admitted the old pedagogue; “but we do not know about them. At least, Damascus is the oldest city we know anything about.”

“That is quite true. If you had said that – ”

“Now look here, Richard, you are inclined to be altogether too wise. You keep yourself too well posted about the countries and places we visit, and thus you deprive me of the privilege of imparting information to you. It isn’t right. You make me feel that I am not earning my stipend as your guardian and tutor during this trip round the world. You place me in an embarrassing position. I wish you would feign ignorance, if you cannot do anything else.”

Dick laughed.

“All right, professor; I’ll try to reform. But it was your advice to us that we should post ourselves in advance on each place we visited, and I’ve been obeying instructions, that’s all.”

“Haw! Hum! You’re inclined to be too obedient – altogether too obedient. Now here is Bradley – I haven’t observed that he has wasted much time reading up about different countries and cities.”

“Sure not,” admitted the Texan. “It’s a heap too much trouble, for I know I’ll hear about the places from you and Dick when we hit ’em. This yere country sort of looks familiar.”

“It does,” nodded Dick. “To me it looks like Southern Colorado or Northern New Mexico. It’s a land of irrigation. The mountains, the plains, the foliage, the mud houses, everything but the people, remind me of that portion of our own country.”

“Quite true,” agreed Zenas Gunn; “although the fertile spots here have all been taken up and cultivated. For instance, look there, boys – look at that mountainside.”

Gazing from the window as the train sped along, they could see the side of a mountain walled up in terraces like gigantic stairways, to prevent the soil from being washed away by the rainfalls. These terraces were planted with grapes, figs, olive and mulberry trees. On many of these terraces laborers were at work propping up strange-looking trunks, which were six or seven feet high. In places these trunks could be seen reclining in rows on the ground, looking strangely like sleeping soldiers.

“Those are grapevines,” exclaimed the professor. “In the fall they cut them down to that height and lay them flat on the ground, as you see them. They are now beginning to prop them up. They will be irrigated and dressed, and then new branches will shoot out in all directions and cover the soil and bear fruit.”

As the train wound in and out of the gorges, clinging to the mountainsides, they beheld many strange and interesting things. Laborers were setting out mulberry trees in long trenches. Other laborers were digging the trenches, three men working a single shovel. One of the men manipulated the shovel, holding the handle and driving it down into the soil. Two others lifted it out with its load, doing so by pulling at ropes attached to the shovel just above the blade. They all worked together with astonishing ease and skill. Great hedges of cactus stretched along the railroad in many places. They gazed with interest at the old-fashioned irrigating canals. They beheld men plowing with the same sort of crooked stick that was used for that purpose in Bible times. But there were no farmhouses scattered over the country, for the people still lived in villages, as they did in former days, when it was necessary for neighbors to band together for protection.