The boats at Constantinople are all
very light and sharp, and go with astonishing speed, even when propelled
with one pairs of oars; but people of high consideration, like
dragomans, generally have two pairs to their caeiks, and at this time M.
---- being in a very great hurry, told his two rowers to pull as fast as
they could.
When about half way on his short aquatic journey, M. ---- turned his
head and looked back, and then he saw at the end of the quay, just where
he had left him, the tall African standing starch and motionless, like a
granite statue before an Egyptian temple.
The dragoman's boat continued to cleave the waves; it neared the
opposite shore--no caeik had passed him on his way--when lo! as his own
came in concussion with the wooden piles of the Divan-kapi-iskellesi,
and he rose from his seat to step on shore, he saw the identical African
wizard standing there before him, and gazing calmly over to the opposite
quay where he had just left him, and whence it was impossible he could
have proceeded by mortal agency!
The dragoman rubbed his eyes, as well he might; but there was the
Maugrabee, with his large leaden eye gazing across the Golden Horn, and
fixed on the wharf of the dead, just as he had been left behind there
gazing at the Divan-kapi-iskellesi.
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