And still Mahmoud had the desire to live--to live and rule. A pettier spirit would have fled from the Imperial palace and taken refuge among the palm-trees of Arabia Felix when it recognized that an endless war encompassed it on every side, that to conquer was impossible, and that the nearest enemy was the most dangerous. A mine of gunpowder had been dug beneath the throne, and around the throne a mob of madmen were hurrying aimlessly to and fro with lighted torches. And yet it was Mahmoud's pleasure to remain sitting on that throne.
Frequently he would steal furtively at night from his harem. Alone, unattended, he would contemplate the flight of the stars from the roof of the Seraglio, and would listen to the nocturnal massacres and the shrieks of the dying in the streets of Stambul. He would watch how the conflagrations burned forth in two or three places at once, both in Pera and Galata their lordships the Janissaries were working their will. And he felt that cruelly cold piercing wind which began to blow from the north, so that in the rooms of the Seraglio the shivering odalisks began to draw rugs and other warm coverings over their tender limbs. Never had any one in Stambul felt that cold wind before. Whence came it, and what did it signify?
Mahmoud knew whence it came and what it signified, and he had the courage to look steadily in the face of the future, in which he discerned not a single ray of hope.
In those days Kasi Mollah did not go by the name of Murstud--_i.e._, a pillar of the faith. He was a simple sheik at Himri, in the northern part of the land of Circassia, a remote little place, where the Muscovite was no more than a rumor from afar.
Nature herself had fashioned a strong fortress around Himri. Immense mountain-chains enclosed it within massive walls on both sides, rising bleak, interminable, and ever upwards into the dim distance.
In the midst of this valley of eternal shadows arose a third rocky mass, forming--on both sides--a steep, ladder-like wall; and, after extending far among the other mountains, terminating in a ragged-looking, concave hill, defended by the junction of the impetuous mountain streams, which dug a deep hollow among the excavated rocks. Along this channel, running like a spinal cord throughout the backbone of the mountain, extended some few thousands of acres of luxuriant corn--a long but narrow strip.