Mrs. Pentlow returned to Smyrna thinking that the Assigns would be pleased with her efforts. But Messrs. Smith and Ashby were past being pleased with anything. Though their liability had narrowed down to a matter of only 2000 dollars, they refused to pay. In vain did their friends urge them to be sensible. They met all counsels with the angry obstinacy of exasperated sheep: they would not disburse another penny: they would rather lie in prison till a new Ambassador came out, when, they doubted not, justice would be done them. They had been robbed, they cried, by the Kehayah and his accomplices. The Grand Signor knew nothing of it: it only required a competent ambassador to bring their case to his notice, and all would be well. The Turks, failing to bend, decided to break, their obstinacy by throwing them into a dungeon. Our merchants, however, had by this time lashed themselves into furious recklessness: they resisted and very nearly killed the officer who came to remove them.
Things had reached this dangerous climax when the Smyrna Factory stepped in to avert a tragedy. By the instrumentality of the Chaplain there was raised a fund for the prisoners’ redemption; and so Mr. Ashby is out of it again, without bone broken--not, we hope, without instruction from the adventure. As for Mrs. Pentlow and her children, we shall hear of them again in due time.
Sir John Finch, as usual, praised God that the trouble was over, and took to himself credit for keeping it off himself and the Consul of Smyrna and for saving the Company 20,000 dollars by his non-interference. Things, he believed, might have been much worse but for his masterly inactivity: “so high did the Sea’s run, which God be thanked, are now brought to a Calm.” But how long would the calm last?--“the being in Turky under this Goverment,” he says, “is like the being in a ship, where though Wee are this houre under a fair wind and a serene skye, the Next hour may bring us a cloudy Heaven, and a fierce Storm. And I protest to you, it takes my whole thoughts to become a Good Pilot.”[229]
[221] _Life of Dudley North_, pp. 84-5; Finch to the Levant Company, Jan. 19-29, 1677-78, _Coventry Papers_.
[222] Finch to Coventry, Feb. 17-27, 1678-79.