strokes of his flashing paddles his boat shot a furlong ahead; then he
would wait, surveying the race, and sending up volumes of odor from his
cool narghilly.

"Who is he?" asked the crowds who panted along the shore, encouraging,
according to Cambridge wont, the efforts of the oarsmen in the race.
Town and Gown alike asked who it was, who, with an ease so provoking,
in a barque so singular, with a form seemingly so slight, but a skill so
prodigious, beat their best men. No answer could be given to the query,
save that a gentleman in a dark travelling-chariot, preceded by six
fourgons and a courier, had arrived the day before at the "Hoop Inn,"
opposite Brazenose, and that the stranger of the canoe seemed to be the
individual in question.

No wonder the boat, that all admired so, could compete with any
that ever was wrought by Cambridge artificer or Putney workman. That
boat--slim, shining, and shooting through the water like a pike after
a small fish--was a caique from Tophana; it had distanced the Sultan's
oarsmen and the best crews of the Capitan Pasha in the Bosphorus; it
was the workmanship of Togrul-Beg, Caikjee Bashee of his Highness. The
Bashee had refused fifty thousand tomauns from Count Boutenieff, the
Russian Ambassador, for that little marvel. When his head was taken off,
the Father of Believers presented the boat to Rafael Mendoza.

It was Rafael Mendoza that saved the Turkish monarchy after the battle
of Nezeeb. By sending three millions of piastres to the Seraskier; by
bribing Colonel de St. Cornichon, the French envoy in the camp of the
victorious Ibrahim, the march of the Egyptian army was stopped--the
menaced empire of the Ottomans was saved from ruin; the Marchioness of
Stokepogis, our ambassador's lady, appeared in a suite of diamonds which