On another a Minoan warrior prince appears before his retainers.
The lord of the manor with his officials and retainers, the peasantry bound to him by ties of personal dependence and mutual rights and obligations, constituted a little world, in which we can watch the play of motives and passions not so dissimilar as we are sometimes led to believe from those of the great modern world.
Below him ranked the newly converted Moslem aristocracy, who adopted the dress, titles and etiquette of the Turkish court, without relinquishing their language or many of their old customs. They dwelt in fortified towns or castles, where the vali was only admitted on sufferance for a few days; and, at the outset, they formed a separate military caste, headed by 48 kapetans - landholders exercising unfettered authority over their retainers and Christian serfs, but bound, in return, to provide a company of mounted troops for the service of their sovereign.
He gathered by degrees around him "a kind of feudal clan of servants and retainers," and he plunged, with more generous ardour than coolness of judgment, into the troubled politics of the country.
Whenever the cultivation 'of his estate and the vigorous championship of his Samoan retainers gave him the leisure, Stevenson was during these years almost wholly occupied in writing romances of Scottish life.