after them the long heavy guns on wheeled carriages. The mob in its
thousands follows them along the road leading to Scutari, where the camp
has already been pitched. For at last, at any rate, the Padishah is
surfeited with so many feasts and illuminations, and after having
postponed the raising of the banner of the Prophet, under all sorts of
frivolous excuses, from the 18th day of Safer (2nd of September) to the
1st day of Rebusler, and from that day again to the Prophet's birthday
ten days later still, the expected, the appointed day is at length
drawing near, and the whole host is assembling beneath the walls of
Scutari, only awaiting the arrival of the Sultan to take ship at
once--the transports are all ready--and hasten to the assistance of the
heroic Küprilizade on the battlefield.

The whole Bosphorus was a living forest planted with a maze of huge
masts and spreading sails, and a thousand variegated flags flew and
flapped in the morning breeze. The huge line of battle-ships, with their
triple decks and their long rows of oars, looked like hundred-eyed
sea-monsters swimming with hundreds of legs on the surface of the water,
and the booming reverberation of the thunder of their guns was re-echoed
from the broad foreheads of the palaces looking into the Bosphorus.

Everywhere along the sea-front was to be seen an armed multitude;
sparkling swords and lances in thousands flash back the rays of the sun.
The whole of the grass plain round about was planted with tents of
every hue; white tents for the chief muftis, bright green tents for the
viziers, scarlet tents for the kiayaks, dark blue tents for the great
officers of state, the Emirs, the Mecca, Medina, and Stambul
justiciaries, the Defterdars, and the Nishandji; lilac-coloured tents
for the Ulemas, bright blue tents for the Müderesseks, azure-blue tents
for the Ciaus-Agas, and dark green designates the tent of the Emir Alem,