Ekim Bey
The same day I discovered that the passenger who had lost the chaplet was Pasha N, the former governor of a small district near Constantinople, and that he was then living on the opposite shore of the Bosphorus not far from Scutari.
As I had recently been not too well and was feeling worse each day, I decided not to dive for coins the next day, but to deliver the chaplet to its owner, and at the same time to visit the cemetery at Scutari.
I went the following morning and soon found the pasha’s house. He happened to be at home, and when he was told that one of the coin catchers had come, who insisted on seeing him personally, he evidently understood at once what it was about and came out to me himself. When I handed him the chaplet he was so sincerely overjoyed and so simple in his manner towards me that I was deeply moved, and did not wish for anything in the world to accept the promised reward.
He begged me at least to lunch at his house, and this I did not decline. After lunch I left immediately in order to catch the last but one returning steamer. But on the way to the steamer I felt so ill that I had to sit down on the steps of a house, where I lost consciousness.
Passersby noticed my condition and, as I was not far from the pasha’s house, the news soon reached him that a boy had suddenly been taken ill. Hearing that the boy was the one who had brought him the chaplet, the pasha himself came quickly with his servants and gave orders for me to be carried to his house, and for a military physician to be called.
Although I soon recovered consciousness, my condition was such that I could not move and was compelled to remain for the time being in the pasha’s house.
That night all my skin began to crack and burn unbearably; evidently, being unaccustomed to long immersion in seawater, it could not tolerate the action of the salt.
I was put in a wing of the house and an old woman named Fatma Badji was appointed to take care of me. The pasha’s son, a student in a German military school, also came and helped the old woman look after me. This was Ekim Bey, who later became my bosom friend.
181