I was not always successful. I had the misfortune to be overpowered
by numbers, to be made prisoner of war; and, what is worse, but always
usual among the Turks, to be sold for a slave. [The Baron was afterwards
in great favour with the Grand Seignior, as will appear hereafter.] In
that state of humiliation my daily task was not very hard and laborious,
but rather singular and irksome. It was to drive the Sultan's bees every
morning to their pasture-grounds, to attend them all the day long, and
against night to drive them back to their hives. One evening I missed a
bee, and soon observed that two bears had fallen upon her to tear her to
pieces for the honey she carried. I had nothing like an offensive weapon
in my hands but the silver hatchet, which is the badge of the Sultan's
gardeners and farmers. I threw it at the robbers, with an intention to
frighten them away, and set the poor bee at liberty; but, by an unlucky
turn of my arm, it flew upwards, and continued rising till it
reached the moon. How should I recover it? how fetch it down again?
I recollected that Turkey-beans grow very quick, and run up to an
astonishing height. I planted one immediately; it grew, and actually
fastened itself to one of the moon's horns. I had no more to do now
but to climb up by it into the moon, where I safely arrived, and had a
troublesome piece of business before I could find my silver hatchet, in
a place where everything has the brightness of silver; at last,
however, I found it in a heap of chaff and chopped straw. I was now for
returning: but, alas! the heat of the sun had dried up my bean; it was
totally useless for my descent: so I fell to work, and twisted me a rope
of that chopped straw, as long and as well as I could make it. This I
fastened to one of the moon's horns, and slid down to the end of it.
Here I held myself fast with the left hand, and with the hatchet in my
right, I cut the long, now useless end of the upper part, which, when
tied to the lower end, brought me a good deal lower: this repeated