Oh, bard of Avon, thou whose measured muse
Most sweetly sings Elizabethan views
To shame ungentle smiths of journalese
With thy sublimest verse, what words are these
That shine amid the lines like jewels set
But ere thine hour no bard had chosen yet?
Didst thou in masterly disdain of too much law
Not only limn the truths no others saw
But also, lord not slave of written word,
Lend ear to what no other poet heard
And, liberal minded on the Mermaid bench
With bow for blade and chaff for serving wench
Await from overseas slang-slinging Jack
Who brought the new vocabulary back?
So we three stood still in a row disconsolate, with three ragged
men of Zeitoon holding our horses and theirs, and watched Monty ride
away in the midst of Kagig's motley command, he not turning to wave
back to us because he did not like the parting any better than we
did, although he had pretended to be all in favor of it.
Kagig had left us one mule for our luggage, and the beast was unlikely
to be overburdened, for at the last minute he had turned surly, and
as he sat like a general of division to watch his patch-and-string
command go by he showed how Eye of Zeitoon only failed him for a
title in giving his other eye--the one he kept on us--too little
credit. It was a good-looking crowd of irregulars that he reviewed,
and every bearded, goat-skin clad veteran in it had a word to say
to him, and he an answer--sometimes a sermon by way of answer. But
he saw every item that we removed from the common packs, and sternly
reproved us when we tried to exceed what he considered reasonable.
At that he based our probable requirements on what would have been
surfeit of encumbrance for himself.
"Empty your pockets, effendim!" he ordered at last. "Six cartridges
each for rifle, and six each for pistol must be all. Your cartridges
I know they are. But my people are in extremity!"
When he rode away at last, sitting his horse in the fashion of a
Don Cossack and shepherding Maga in front of him because she kept
checking her gray stallion for another look at Will, he left us no
alternative than to take to the mountains swiftly unless we cared
to starve. We watched Monty's back disappear over a rise, with Rustum
Khan close behind, and then Fred signed to one of the three Zeitoonli
to lead on.
All three of the men Kagig had left with us were surly, mainly, no
doubt, because they disliked separation from their friends. But
there was fear, too, expressed in their manner of riding close together,
and in the fidgety way in which they watched the smoke of burning
Armenian villages that smudged the sky to our left.
"If they try to bolt after Kagig and leave us in the lurch I'm going
to waste exactly one cartridge as a warning," Fred announced.
"After that--!"
"Probably Kagig 'ud skin them if they turned up without us,"
remarked Will.
There was something in that theory, for we learned later what Kagig's
ferocity could be when driven hard enough. But from first to last
those men of Zeitoon never showed a symptom of treachery, although
their resentment at having to turn their backs toward home appeared
to deepen hourly.
With strange unreason they made no haste, whereas we were in a frenzy
of impatience; and when Fred sought to improve their temper by singing
the songs that had hitherto acted like charms on Kagig's whole command,
they turned in their saddles and cursed him for calling attention to us.
"Inch goozek?" demanded one of them (What would you like?), and with
a gesture that made the blood run cold he suggested the choice between
hanging and disembowelment.
Will solved the speed problem by striving to push past them along
the narrow track; and they were so determined to keep in front of
us that within half an hour from the start our horses were sweating
freely. Then we began to climb, dismounting presently to lead our
horses, and all notions of speed went the way of other vanity.
Several times looking back toward our right hand we caught sight
of Kagig's string threading its way over a rise, or passing like
a line of ants under the brow of a gravel bank. But they were too
far away to discern which of the moving specks might be Monty, although
Kagig was now and then unmistakable, his air of authority growing
on him and distinguishing him as long as he kept in sight.
We saw nothing of the footprints in soft earth that Maga had read
so offhandedly. In fact we took another way, less cluttered up with
roots and bushes, that led not straight, but persistently toward an
up-towering crag like an eye-tooth. Below it was thick forest, shaped
like a shovel beard, and the crag stuck above the beard like an old
man's last tooth.
But mountains have a discouraging way of folding and refolding so
that the air-line from point to point bears no relation to the length
of the trail. The last kites were drooping lazily toward their perches
for the night when we drew near the edge of the forest at last, and
were suddenly brought to a halt by a challenge from overhead. We
could see nobody. Only a hoarse voice warned us that it was death
to advance another yard, and our tired animals needed no persuasion
to stand still.
There, under a protruding lock as it were of the beard, we waited
in shadow while an invisible somebody, whose rifle scraped rather
noisily against a branch, eyed every inch of us at his leisure.
"Who are you?" he demanded at last in Armenian, and one of our three
men enlightened him in long-drawn detail.
The explanation did not satisfy. We were told to remain exactly
where we were until somebody else was fetched. After twenty minutes,
when it was already pitch-dark, we heard the breaking of twigs, and
low voices as three or four men descended together among the trees.
Then we were examined again from close quarters in the dark, and
there are few less agreeable sensations. The goose-flesh rises and
the clammy cold sweat takes all the comfort out of waning courage.
But somebody among the shadowy tree-trunks at last seemed to think
he recognized familiar attitudes, and asked again who we might be.
And, weary of explanations that only achieved delay our man lumped
us all in one invoice and snarled irritably:
"These are Americans!"
The famous "Open sesame" that unlocked Ali Baba's cave never worked
swifter then. Reckless of possible traps no less than five men flung
themselves out of Cimmerian gloom and seized us in welcoming arms.
I was lifted from the saddle by a man six inches shorter than myself,
whose arms could have crushed me like an insect.
"We might have known Americans would bring us help!" he panted in
my ear. His breath came short not from effort, but excitement.
Fred was in like predicament. I could just see his shadow struggling
in the embrace of an enthusiastic host, and somewhere out of sight
Will was answering in nasal indubitable Yankee the questions of three
other men.
"This way! Come this way! Bring the horses, oh, Zeitoonli! Americans!
Americans! God heard us--there have come Americans!"
Threading this and that way among tree-trunks that to our unaccustomed
eyes were simply slightly denser blots on blackness, Will managed
to get between Fred and me.
"We're all of us Yankees this trip!" he whispered, and I knew he
was grinning, enjoying it hugely. So often he had been taken for
an Englishman because of partnership with us that he had almost ceased
to mind; but he spared himself none of the amusement to be drawn
out of the new turn of affairs, nor us any of the chaff that we had
never spared him.
"Take my advice," he said, "and try to act you're Yanks for all you've
got. If you can make blind men believe it, you may get out of this
with whole skins!"
I expected the retort discourteous to that from Fred, who was between
Will and me, shepherded like us by hard-breathing, unseen men. But
he was much too subtly skilful in piercing the chain-mail of Will's
humor--even in that hour.
"Sure!" he answered. "I guess any gosh-durned rube in these parts
'll know without being told what neck o' the woods I hail from.
Schenectady's my middle name! I'm--"
"Oh, my God!" groaned Will. "We don't talk that way in the States.
The missionaries--"
"I'm the guy who put the 'oh!' in Ohio!" continued Fred. "I'm running
mate to Colonel Cody, and I've ridden herd on half the cows in Hocuspocus
County, Wis.! I can sing The Star-Spangled Banner with my head under
water, and eat a chain of frankforts two links a minute! I'm the
riproaring original two-gun man from Tabascoville, and any gink who
doubts it has no time to say his prayers!"
There were paragraphs more of it, delivered at uneven intervals between
deep gasps for breath as we made unsteady progress up-hill among
roots and rocks left purposely for the confusion of an enemy. At
first it filled Will with despair that set me laughing at him. Then
Will threw seriousness to the winds and laughed too, so that the
spell of impending evil, caused as much as anything by forced separation
from Monty, was broken.
But it did better than put us in rising spirits. It convinced the
Armenians! That foolish jargon, picked up from comic papers and
the penny dreadfuls, convince more firmly than any written proof
the products of the mission schools, whose one ambition was to be
American themselves, and whose one pathetic peak of humor was the
occasional glimpse of United States slang dropped for their edification
by missionary teachers!
"By jimminy!" remarked an Armenian near me.
"Gosh-all-hemlocks!" said another.
Thenceforward nothing undermined their faith in us. Plenty of amused
repudiation was very soon forthcoming from another source, but it
passed over their heads. Fred and I, because we used fool expressions
without relation to the context or proportion, were established as
the genuine article; Will, perhaps a rather doubtful quantity with
his conservative grammar and quiet speech, was accepted for our sakes.
They took an arm on either side of us to help us up the hill, and
in proof of heart-to-heart esteem shouted "Oopsidaisy!" when we stumbled
in the pitchy dark. When we were brought to a stand at last by a
snarled challenge and the click of rifles overhead, they answered
with the chorus of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, a classic that ought to have
died an unnatural death almost a quarter of a century before.
Suddenly we smelt Standard oil, and a man emerged through a gap in
ancient masonry less than six feet away carrying a battered, cheap
"hurricane" lantern whose cracked glass had been reenforced with
patches of brown paper. He was armed to the teeth--literally. He
had a long knife in his mouth, a pistol in his left hand, and a rifle
slung behind him, but after one long look at us, holding the lantern
to each face in turn, he suddenly discarded all appearances of ferocity.
"You know about pistols?" he demanded of me in English, because I
was nearest, and thrust his Mauser repeater under my nose. "Why
won't this one work? I have tried it every way."
"Lordy!" remarked Will.
"Lead on in!" I suggested. Then, remembering my new part, "It'll
have to be some defect if one of us can't fix it!"
The gap-guard purred approval and swung his lantern by way of invitation
to follow him as he turned on a naked heel and led the way. We entered
one at a time through a hole in the wall of what looked like the
dungeon of an ancient castle, and followed him presently up the narrow
stone steps leading to a trap-door in the floor above. The trap-door
was made of odds and ends of planking held in place by weights.
When he knocked on it with the muzzle of his rifle we could hear
men lifting things before they could open it.
When a gap appeared overhead at last there was no blaze of light
to make us blink, but a row of heads at each edge of the hole with
nothing but another lantern somewhere in the gloom behind them.
One by one we went up and they made way for us, closing in each time
to scan the next-comer's face; and when we were all up they laid
the planks again, and piled heavy stones in place. Then an old man
lighted another lantern, using no match, although there was a box
of them beside him on the floor, but transferring flame patiently
with a blade of dry grass. Somebody else lit a torch of resinous
wood that gave a good blaze but smoked abominably.
"What has become of our horses?" demanded Fred, looking swiftly
about him.
We were in a great, dim stone-walled room whose roof showed a corner
of star-lit sky in one place. There were twenty men surrounding
us, but no woman. Two trade-blankets sewn together with string hanging
over an opening in the wall at the far end of the room suggested,
nevertheless, that the other sex might be within ear-shot.
"The horses?" Fred demanded again, a bit peremptorily.
One of the men who had met us smirked and made apologetic motions
with his hands.
"They will be attended to, effendi--"
"I know it! I guarantee it! By the ace of brute force, if a horse
is missing--! Arabaiji!"
One of our three Zeitoonli stepped forward.
"Take the other two men, Arabaiji, and go down to the horses. Groom
them. Feed them. If any one prevents you, return and tell me."
Then he turned to our hosts. "Some natives of Somaliland once ate
my horse for supper, but I learned that lesson. So did they! I
trust I needn't be severe with you!"
There was no furniture in the room, except a mat at one corner.
They were standing all about us, and perfectly able to murder us
if so disposed, but none made any effort to restrain our Zeitoonli.
"Now we're three to their twenty!" I whispered, and Will nodded.
But Fred carried matters with a high hand.
"Send a man down with them to show them where the horses are, please!"
There seemed to be nobody in command, but evidently one man was least
of all, for they all began at once to order him below, and he went,
grumbling.
"You see, effendi, we have no meat at all," said the man who had
spoken first.
"But you don't look hungry," asserted Fred.
They were a ragged crowd, unshaven and not too clean, with the usual
air of men whose only clothes are on their backs and have been there
for a week past. All sorts of clothes they wore--odds and ends for
the most part, probably snatched and pulled on in the first moment
of a night alarm.
"Not yet, effendi. But we have no meat, and soon we shall have eaten
all the grain."
"Well," said Fred, "if you need horse-meat, gosh durn you, take it
from the Turks!"
"Gosh durn you!" grinned three or four men, nudging one another.
They were lost between a furtive habit born of hiding for dear life,
a desire to be extremely friendly, and a new suspicion of Fred's
high hand. Fred's next words added disconcertment.
"Where is Miss Vanderman?" he demanded, suddenly.
Before any one had time to answer Will made a swift move to the wall,
and took his stand where nobody could get behind him. He did not
produce his pistol, but there was that in his eye that suggested
it. I followed suit, so that in the event of trouble we stood a
fair chance of protecting Fred.
"What do you mean?" asked three Armenians together.
"Did you never see men try to cover a secret before?" Will whispered.
"Or give it away?" I added. Six of the men placed themselves between
Fred and the opening where the blankets hung, ostentatiously not
looking at the blankets.
"Have you an American lady with you?" Fred asked, and as he spoke
he reached a hand behind him. But it was not his pistol that he drew.
He carries his concertina slung to him by a strap with the care that
some men lavish on a camera. He took it in both hands, and loosed
the catch.
"Have you an American lady named Miss Vanderman with you?" he repeated.
"Effendi, we do not understand."
He repeated in Armenian, and then in Turkish, but they shook their
heads.
"Very well," he said, "I'll soon find out. A mission-school pupil
might sing My Country, 'Tis of Thee or Suwannee River or Poor Blind
Joe. You know Poor Blind Joe, eh? Sung it in school? I thought
so. I'll bet you don't know this one."
He filled his impudent instrument with wind and forthwith the belly
of that ancient castle rang to the strains of a tune no missionaries
sing, although no doubt the missionary ladies are familiar with it
yet from where the Arctic night shuts down on Behring Sea to the
Solomon Islands and beyond--a song that achieved popularity by lacking
national significance, and won a war by imparting recklessness to
typhus camps. I was certain then, and still dare bet to-day that
those ruined castle walls re-echoed for the first time that evening
to the clamor of '--a hot time in the old town to-night!"
Seeing the point in a flash, we three roared the song together, and
then again, and then once more for interest, the Armenians eying
us spell-bound, at a loss to explain the madness. Then there began
to be unexplained movements behind the blanket hanging; and a minute
later a woman broke through--an unmistakable Armenian, still good-looking
but a little past the prime of life, and very obviously mentally
distressed. She scarcely took notice of us, but poured forth a long
flow of rhetoric interspersed with sobs for breath. I could see
Fred chuckling as he listened. All the facial warnings that a dozen
men could make at the woman from behind Fred's back could not check
her from telling all she knew.
Nor were Will and I, who knew no Armenian, kept in doubt very long
as to the nature of her trouble. We heard another woman's voice,
behind two or three sets of curtains by the sound of it, that came
rapidly nearer; and there were sounds of scuffling. Then we
heard words.
"Please play that tune again, whoever you are! Do you hear me?
Do you understand?"
"Boston!" announced Will, diagnosing accents.
"You bet your life I understand!" Fred shouted, and clanged through
half a dozen bars again.
That seemed satisfactory to the owner of the voice. The scuffling
was renewed, and in a moment she had burst through the crude curtains
with two women clinging to her, and stood there with her brown hair
falling on her shoulders and her dress all disarrayed but looking
simply serene in contrast to the women who tried to restrain her.
They tried once or twice to thrust her back through the curtain,
although clearly determined to do her no injury; but she held her
ground easily. At a rough guess it was tennis and boating that had
done more for her muscles than ever strenuous housework did for the
Armenians.
"Who are you?" she asked, and Will laughed with delight.
"I reckon you'll be Miss Vanderman?' suggested Fred in outrageous
Yankee accent. She stared hard at him.
"I am Miss Vanderman. Who are you, please.
I sat down on the great stone they had rolled over the trap, for
even in that flickering, smoky light I could see that this young
woman was incarnate loveliness as well as health and strength. Will
was our only ladies' man (for Fred is no more than random troubadour,
decamping before any love-affair gets serious). The thought conjured
visions of Maga, and what she might do. For about ten seconds my
head swam, and I could hardly keep my feet.
Will left the opening bars of the overture to Fred, with rather the
air of a man who lets a trout have line. And Fred blundered
in contentedly.
"I'll allow my name is Oakes--Fred Oakes," he said.
"Please explain!" She looked from one to the other of us.
"We three are American towerists, going the grand trip." (Remember,
a score of Armenians were listening. Fred's intention was at least
as much to continue their contentment as to extract humor from the
situation.) "You being reported missing we allowed to pick you up
and run you in to Tarsus. Air you agreeable?"
The women were still clinging to her as if their whole future depended
on keeping her prisoner, yet without hurt. She looked down at them
pathetically, and then at the men, who were showing no disposition
to order her release.
"I don't understand in the least yet. I find you bewildering. Can
you contrive to let us talk for a few minutes alone?"
"You bet your young life I can!"
Fred stepped to the wall beside us, but we none of us drew pistol
yet. We had no right to presume we were not among friends.
"Thirty minutes interlude!" he announced. "The man who stands in
this room one minute from now, or who comes back to the room without
my leave, is not my friend, and shall learn what that means!"
He repeated the soft insinuation in Armenian, and then in Turkish
because he knows that language best. There is not an Armenian who
has not been compelled to learn Turkish for all official purposes,
and unconsciously they gave obedience to the hated conquerors' tongue,
repressing the desire to argue that wells perennially in Armenian
breasts. They had not been long enough enjoying stolen liberty to
overcome yet the full effects of Turkish rule.
"And oblige me by leaving that lady alone with us!" Fred continued.
"Let those dames fall away!"
Somebody said something to the women. Another Armenian remarked
more or less casually that we should be unable to escape from the
room in any case. The others rolled the great stone from the trap
and shoved the smaller stones aside, and then they all filed down
the stone stairs, leaving us alone--although by the trembling blankets
it was easy to tell that the women had not gone far. The last man
who went below handed the spluttering torch to Miss Vanderman, as
if she might need it to defend herself, and she stood there shaking
it to try and make it smoke less until the planks were back in place.
She was totally unconscious of it, but with the torch-light gleaming
on her hair and reflected in her blue eyes she looked like the spirit
of old romance come forth to start a holy war.
"Now please explain!" she begged, when I had pushed the last stone
in place. "First, what kind of Americans can you possibly be? Do
you all use such extraordinary accents, and such expressions?"
"Don't I talk American to beat the band?" objected Fred. "Sit down
on this rock a while, and I'll convince you."
She sat on the rock, and we gathered round her. She was not more
than twenty-two or three, but as perfectly assured and fearless as
only a well-bred woman can be in the presence of unshaven men she
does not know. Fred would have continued the tomfoolery, but Will
oared in.
"I'm Will Yerkes, Miss Vanderman."
"Oh!"
"I know Nurse Vanderman at the mission."
"Yes, she spoke of you."
"Fred Oakes here is--"
"Is English as they make them, yes, I know! Why the amazing efforts to--"
"I stand abashed, like the leopard with the spots unchangeable!"
said Fred, and grinned most unashamedly.
"They're both English."
"Yes, I see, but why--"
"It's only as good Americans that we three could hope to enter here
alive. They're death on all other sorts of non-Armenians now they've
taken to the woods. We supposed you were here, and of course we
had to come and get you."