 19 Peter scarcely looked up from his breakfast. I'm willing, Dick, he said, but you mustn't ask me to be friends with Stumb. He makes my stomach cold, that one. For the first time he had stopped calling me Cornelis. The day of make-believe was over for all of us. Not to be friends with him, I said, but to bust him and all his kind. Then I'm ready, said Peter cheerfully. What is it? I spread out the maps on the Deban. There was no light in the place but Blancaron's electric torch. The hazen had put out the lantern. Peter got his nose into the things at once. For his intelligence work in the Boer War had made him handy with maps. It didn't want much telling from me to explain to him the importance of the one I had looted. That news is worth many a million pounds, said he, wrinkling his brows and scratching delicately the tip of his left ear. It was a way he had when he was startled. How can we get it to our friends? Peter cogitated. There is but one way. A man must take it. Once I remember when we fought for the make-bel, it was necessary to find out whether the chief Macapan was living. Some said he had died, others that he'd gone over the Portuguese border, but I believed he lived. No native could tell us, and since his crown was well defended, no runner could get through. So it was necessary to send a man. Peter lifted up his head and laughed. The man found the chief Macapan. He was very much alive and made good shooting with a shotgun, but the man brought the chief Macapan out of his crown and handed him over to the mounted police. You remember Captain Archole, Dick? Jim Archole? Well, Jim loved so much that he broke open a wound in his head and had to have a doctor. You were that man, Peter, I said. Ja, I was the man. There are more ways of getting into crowds than there are ways of keeping people out. Will you take this chance? For certain, Dick, I am getting stiff with doing nothing, and if I sit in houses much longer, I shall grow old. A man bet me five pounds on the ship that I could not get through a trench line, and if there had been a trench line handy, I would have taken him on. I will be very happy, Dick, that I do not say I will succeed. It is new country to me, and I will be hurried and hurry makes bad stalking. I showed him what I thought the likeliest place, in the spurs of the Palantacan Mountains. Peter's ways of doing things was all his own. He scraped earth and plaster out of a corner and sat down to make a little model of the landscape on the table, following the contours of the map. He did it extraordinarily neatly, for, like all great hunters, he was as deft as a weaver bird. He puzzled over it for a long time, and coned the map till it must have got it by heart. Then he took his field glasses, a very good single-size, which was part of the spoils from Ruster's motor car, and announced that he was going to follow my example and get onto the house top. Presently his leagues disappeared through the trap, and Blencheron and I were left to our reflections. Peter must have found something uncommon, interesting, for he stayed on the roof the better part of the day. It was a dull dog for us, since there was no light, and Blencheron had not even the consolation of a game of patience. But for all that he was in good spirits, for he had had no dyspepsia since we left Constantinople, and announced that he believed he was at last getting even with his darn juded him. As for me, I was pretty restless, for I could not imagine what was detaining Sandy. It was clear that our presence must have been kept secret from Hilda von Einem, for she was a pal of stumps, and he must, by now, have blown the gap on Peter and me. How long could this secrecy last? I asked myself. We had now no sort of protection in the whole outfit. Raster and the Turks wanted our blood, so did Stumm and the Germans, and once the lady found we were deceiving her, she would want it most of all. Our only hope was Sandy, and he gave no sign of his existence. I began to fear that with him, too, things had miscarried. And yet I wasn't really depressed, only impatient. I could never again get back to the beastly stagnation of that Constantinople week. The guns kept me cheerful. There was the devil of a bombardment all day, and the thought that our allies were thundering there half a dozen miles off gave me a perfectly groundless hope. If they burst through the defence, Hilda von Einem and her prophet and all our enemies would be overwhelmed in the Deluge, and that blessed chance depended very much on old Peter, now brooding like a pigeon on the housetops. It was not till the late afternoon that Huson appeared again. He took no notice of Peter's absence, but lit a lantern and set it on the table. Then he went to the door and waited. Presently a light step fell on the stairs, and Huson drew back to let someone enter. He promptly departed, and I heard the key turn in the lock behind him. Sandy stood there, but a new Sandy, who made blinker on, and me jumped to our feet. The pelts and skin cap had gone, and he wore instead a long linen tunic clasped at the waist by a broad girdle. A strange green turban adorned his head, and as he pushed it back I saw that his hair had been shaped. He looked like some acolyte, a weary acolyte, but there was no spring in his wolf or nerve in his carriage. He dropped numbly on the devan and laid his head in his hands. The lantern showed his haggard eyes with dark lines beneath them. Good God, old man, have you been sick? I cried. Not sick, he said hoarsely. My body is riding up, but the last few days I had been living in hell. Blankeron nodded sympathetically. That was how he himself would have described the company of the lady. I marched across to him and gripped both his wrists. Look at me, I said, straight in the eyes. His eyes were like a sleek walker's, unwinking, unseen. Great Heaven's man, you've been drugged, I said. Drugged, he cried, with a weary laugh. Yes, I have been drugged, but not by any physique. No one has been doctoring my food. But you can't go through hell without getting your eyes red-hot. I kept my grip on his wrists. Take your time, old chap, and tell us about it. Blankeron and I are here, and old Peter's on the roof, not far off. We'll look after you. It does me good to hear your voice, Dick, he said. It reminds me of clean, honest things. They'll come back, never fear. We're at the last lap now. One more spurt, and it's over. You've got to tell me what the new snag is. Is it that woman? He shivered like a frightened cult. Woman, he cried. Does a woman drag a man through the nether pit? She is a she-devil. Oh, it isn't madness that's wrong with her. She's as sewn as you and as cool as Blankeron. Her life is an infernal game of chess, and she plays with souls for pawns. She is evil, evil, evil. And once more, he buried his head in his hands. It was Blankeron who brought sense into this hectic atmosphere. His slow, beloved draw was an antiseptic against nerves. Say, boy, he said, I feel just like you about the lady, but our job is not to investigate her character. Her maker will do that good and sure someday. We've got to figure how to circumvent her, and for that you've got to tell us what exactly has been occurring since we parted company. Sandy pulled himself together with a great effort. Green Mantle died that night, I saw you. We buried him secretly by her order in the Garden of the Villa. Then came the trouble about his successor. The four ministers would not be no party to a swindle. They were honest men, and vowed that their task now was to make a tomb for their master and pray for the rest of their days at his shrine. They were as immovable as a granite hill, and she knew it. Then they two died. Murdered, I gasped. Murdered all four in one morning. I do not know how, but I helped to bury them. Oh, she had Germans and Kurds to do her foul work, but their hands were clean compared to hers. Pity me, Dick, for I have seen honesty and virtue put to the shambles, and have abetted the deed when it was done. It will haunt me to my dying day. I did not stop to console him, for my mind was on fire with his news. Then the prophet is gone, and the humbug is over. I cried. The prophet still lives. She has found a successor. He stood up in his linen tunic. Why do I wear these clothes? Because I am green mantle. I am the Kaaba Iharia for all Islam. In three days' time I will reveal myself to my people, and wear on my breasts the green epoch of the prophet. He broke off with an hysterical laugh. Only you see I won't. I will cut my throat first. Cheer up, said Blinker and Soothingly. We'll find some prettier way than that. There is no way, he said, no way but death. We're done for, all of us. Husband got you out as stumps clutches, but you're in danger every moment. At the best you have three days, and then you too will be dead. I had no words to reply. This change in the bold and unshakable sandy took my breath away. She made me her accomplice, he went on. I should have killed her on the graves of those innocent men. But instead I did all she asked and joined in her game. She was very candid, you know. She cares no more than Enver for the faith of Islam. She can laugh at it, but she has her own dreams, and they consume her as a saint, is consumed by his devotion. She has told me them, and if the day in the garden was hell, the day since had been the innermost fires of Tophet. I think it is horrible to say that she has got some kind of crazy liking for me. When we have reclaimed the East, I am to be by her side when she rides on her milk white horse into Jerusalem. And there have been moments, only moments, I swear to God, when I have been fired myself by her madness. Sandy's figures seemed to shrink, and his voice grew shrill and wild. It was too much for blinkering. He indulged in a torrent of blasphemy, such as I believe had never before passed his lips. I'm blessed if I'll listen to this God-darned stuff. It isn't delicate. You get busy, Major, and pump some sense into your afflicted friend. I was beginning to see what had happened. Sandy was a man of genius, as much as anybody I ever struck. But he had the defects of such high strung, fanciful souls. He would take more than mortal risks, and you couldn't scare him by any ordinary terror. But let his old conscience get cross-eyed. Let him find himself in some situation which in his eyes involved his honour, and he might go stark crazy. The woman who roused in me and blinkering only hatred could catch his imagination and stir in him, for the moment only, an unwilling response, and then came bitter and morbid repentance, and the last desperation. It was no time to mince matters. Sandy, you old fool, I cried. Be thankful you have friends to keep you from playing the fool. You saved my life at Luz, and I'm jolly well going to get you through this show. I'm bossing the outfit now, and for all your profounded prophetic manners, you've got to take your orders from me. You aren't going to reveal yourself to your people, and still less are you going to cut your throat. Green mantle will avenge the murder of his ministers, and make that bedlamite woman sorry she was born. We're going to get clear away, and inside of a week we'll be having tea with the Grand Duke Nicholas. I wasn't bluffing, puzzled as I was about ways and means. I had still the blind belief that we should win out, and as I spoke two legs dangled through the trap and a dusty and blinking Peter descended in our midst. I took the mats from him and spread them on the table. First you must know what we've had, an almighty piece of luck. Last night, Huson took us for a walk over the roofs of Ezra, and by the blessing of Providence, I got him to Stumb's room, and bagged his staff map. Look there, do you see his notes? That's the danger point of the whole defence. Once the Russians get that fort, Kara Gubek, they've turned the main position. And it can be got, some knows it can. For these two adjacent hills are not held. It looks a mad enterprise on paper, but some knows that it is possible enough. The question is, will the Russians guess that? I say no, not unless someone tells them. Therefore, by hook or by crook, we've got to get that information through to them. Sandy's interest in ordinary things was beginning to flicker up again. He studied the map and began to measure distances. Peter's going to have a try for it. He thinks there's a sporting chance of his getting through the lines. If he does, if he gets this map to the Grand Duke staff, then Stumb's goose is cooked. In three days, the Cossacks will be in the streets of Erzerum. What are the chances? Sandy asked. I glanced at Peter, where hard-bitten fellows and can face the truth. I think the chances against success are about five to one. Two to one, said Peter modestly. Not worse than that. I don't think you're fair to me, Dick, my old friend. I looked at that lean, tight figure and the gentle, resolute face, and I changed my mind. I'm hanged if I think there are any odds, I said. With anybody else it would want a miracle, but with Peter I believe the chances are legal. Two to one, Peter persisted. If it was evens, I wouldn't be interested. Let me go, Sandy cried. I talk the lingo and can pass as a Turk, and I'm a million times likelier to get through. For God's sake, Dick, let me go. Not you. You're wanted here. If you disappear, the whole show is busted too soon. And the three of us left behind will be strung up before morning. No, my son, you're going to escape, but it will be in company with Blankarin and me. We've got to blow the whole green mantle business so high that the bits of it will never come to earth again. First, tell me how many of your fellows will stick by you. I mean the companions. The whole half doesn't. They are very worried already about what has happened. She made me sell them in her presence, and they were quite ready to accept me as green mantle's successor. But they had their suspicions about what happened at the villa, and they've no love for the woman. They'd follow me through hell if I bade them, but they would rather it was my own show. That's all right, I cried. It is the one thing I've been doubtful about. Now, observe this map. Ezerim isn't invested by a long chalk. The Russians are rounded in a broad half moon. That means that all the west, southwest, and northwest is open and undefended by trench lines. There are flanks far away to the north and south in the hills which can be turned, and once we get round the flank, there's nothing between us and our friends. I figured out our road, and I traced it on the map. If we can make that big circuit to the west and get over that pass unobserved, we're bound to strike a Russian column the next day. It'll be a rough road, but I fancy we're all ridden as bad in our time, but one thing we must have, and that's horses. Can we and your six ruffians slip off in the darkness on the best beasts in this township? If you can manage that, we'll do the trick. Sandy sat down and pondered. Thank heaven he was thinking now of action and not of his own conscience. It must be done, he said at last, but it won't be easy. Husbands are great fellow, but as you know well, Dick, horses right up at the battlefront are not easy to come by. Tomorrow I've got some kind of infernal fast to observe, and the next day that woman will be coaching me for my part. We'll have to give husband time. I wish to heaven it could be tonight. He was silent again for a bit, and then he said, I believe the best time would be the third night, the eve of the revelation. She's bound to leave me alone that night. Righto, I said, it won't be much fun sitting waiting in this cold sepulchre, but we must keep our heads and risk nothing by being in a hurry. Besides, if Peter wins through, the Turk will be a busy man by the day after tomorrow. The key turned in the door, and Hudson stole in like a shade. It was the signal for Sandy to leave. You fellows have given me a new lease of life. He said, I've got a plan now, and I can set my teeth and stick it out. He went up to Peter and gripped his hand. Good luck. You're the bravest man I've ever met, and I've seen a few. Then he turned abruptly and went out, followed by an exaltation from Blinkaron to get busy about the conrepence. Then we set about equipping Peter for his crusade. It was a simple job, for we were not rich in properties. His get-up with his thick, fur-coloured grade coat was unlike the ordinary Turkish officer seen in a dim light, that Peter had no intention of passing for a Turk, or indeed of giving anybody the chance of seeing him. And he was more concerned to fit in with the landscape. So he stripped off the great coat and pulled a grey sweater of mine over his jacket, and put on his head a woolen helmet of the same color. He had no need of the map, for he had long since got his route by heart. And what was once fixed in that mine stuck like wax, but I made him take Stum's plan and paper hidden below his shirt. The big difficulty I saw would be getting to the Russians without getting shot, assuming he passed the Turkish trenches. He could only hope that he would strike someone with a smattering of English or German. Twice he ascended to the roof and came back cheerful, for there was promise of wild weather. Husband brought in our supper, and Peter made up a parcel of food. Blinkarin and I had both small flasks of brandy, and I gave him mine. Then he held out his hand quite simply, like a good child who is going off to bed. It was too much for Blinkarin. With large tears rolling down his face, he announced that, if we all came through, he was going to fit him into the softest berth that money could buy. I don't think he was understood, for old Peter's eyes had now the faraway absorption of the hunter who has found game. He was thinking only of his job, two legs and a pair of very shabby boots vanished through the trap, and suddenly I felt utterly lonely and desperately sad. The guns were beginning to roar again in the east, and in the intervals came the whistle of the rising storm. End of chapter 19. Chapter 20 of Green Mantle This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Nicole Carl, St. Louis, Missouri, July 2007. Green Mantle by John Buckin, Chapter 20. Peter Pinar Goes to the Wars This chapter is the tale that Peter told me long after sitting beside a stove in the hotel at Bergen, where we were waiting for our boat. He climbed on the roof and shinned down the broken bricks of the outer wall, the outbuilding we were lodged in abutted on a road. It was outside the proper enciente of the house. At ordinary times, I have no doubt there were centuries, but Sandy and Hussain had probably managed to clear them off this end for a little. Anyhow, he saw nobody as he crossed the road and dived into the snowy fields. He knew very well that he must do the job in the twelve hours of darkness ahead of him. The immediate front of the battle is a bit too public for anyone to lie hidden in by day, especially when two or three feet of snow make everything can speckle. Now, hurry in a job of this kind was abhorrent to Peter's soul, for, like all wars, his tastes were for slowness and sureness, though he could hustle fast enough when haste was needed. As he pushed through the winter fields, he reckoned up the things in his favor and found the only one, the dirty weather. There was a high, gusty wind blowing scuds of snow, but never coming to any great fall. The frost had gone, but the lying snow was as soft as butter. That was all to the good, he thought, for a clear, hard night would have been the devil. The first bit was through farmlands, which were seen with little snow-filled water furrows. Now and then would come a house and a patch of fruit trees, but there was nobody abroad. The roads were crowded enough, but Peter had no use for roads. I can picture him swinging along with his bent back, stopping every now and then to sniff and listen, alert for the foreknowledge of danger. When he chose, he could cover a country like an antelope. Soon he struck a big road full of transport. It was the road from Ezorim to the Palantik and Pass, and he waited his chance and crossed it. After that the ground grew rough with boulders and patches of thorn trees, splendid cover where he could move fast without worrying. Then he was pulled up suddenly on the bank of a river. The map had warned him of it, but not that it would be so big. It was a torrent, swung with melting snow and rains in the hills, and it was running fifty yards wide. Peter thought he could have swum it, but he was very adverse to adrenching. A wet man mixed too much noise, he said, and besides there was the off chance that the current would be too much for him. So he moved upstream to look for a bridge. In ten minutes he found one, a new-made thing of trestles brought enough to take transport wagons. It was guarded for he heard the tramp of his entry, and as he pulled himself up the bank he observed a couple of long wooden huts, obviously some kind of billets. These were on the near side of the stream, about a dozen yards from the bridge. A door stood open and a light showed in it, from within came the sound of voices. Peter had a sense of hearing like a wild animal, and he could detect even from the confused gavel that the voices were German. As he lay in listen someone came over the bridge. It was an officer for the century saluted. The man disappeared in one of the huts. Peter had struck the billets in repairing shop of a squad of German sappers. He was just going roofily to retrace his steps and try to find a good place to swim the stream when it struck him that the officer who had just passed him wore clothes very like his own. He too had had a grey sweater and a baklava helmet, for even a German officer ceases to be dressy on a midwinter's night in Anatolia. The idea came to Peter to walk boldly across the bridge and trust to the century, not seeing the difference. He slipped around a corner of the hut and marched down the road. The century was now at the far end, which was lucky, for if the worst came to the worst he could throttle him. Peter, mimicking the stiff German walk, swung past him, his head down as if to protect him from the wind. The man saluted, he did more for he offered conversation. The officer must have been a genial soul. It's a rough night captain, he said in German. The wagons are late. Pray God Michael hasn't got the shell in his lot. They've begun putting over some big ones. Peter grunted good night in German and strode on. He was just leaving the road when he heard a great hallow behind him. The real officer must have appeared on his heels when the century's doubts had been stirred. A whistle was blown and, looking back, Peter saw lanterns waving in the gale. They were coming out to look for the duplicate. He stood still for a second and noticed the light spreading out south of the road. He was just about to dive off it, on the north side, when he was aware of a difficulty. On that side a steep bank fell to a ditch, and the bank beyond bounded a big flood. He could see the dull ruffle of the water under the wind. On the road itself he would soon be caught. South of it the search was beginning, and the ditch itself offered no place to hide, for he saw a lantern moving up it. Peter dropped into it all the same and made a plan. The side below the road was a little undercut and very steep. He resolved to plaster himself against it, for he would be hidden from the road, and a searcher in the ditch would not be likely to explore the unbroken sides. It was always a maxim of Peter's that the best hiding place was the worst, at least obvious to the minds of those who were looking for you. He waited until the lights both in the road and the ditch came nearer, and then he gripped the edge with his left hand where some stones gave him purchase, dug the toes of his boots into the wet soil, and stuck like a limpet. It needed some strength to keep that position for long, but the muscles of his arms and legs were like whipcord. The searcher in the ditch soon got tired, for the place was very wet, and joined his comrades on the road. They came along, running, flashing lanterns into the trench and exploring all the immediate countryside. Then rose a noise of wheels and horses from the opposite direction. Michael and the delayed wagons were approaching. They dashed up at a great pace, driven wildly, and for one hoarded second Peter thought they were going to spill into the ditch at the very spot where he was concealed. The wheels passed so close to the edge that they almost grazed his fingers. Somebody shouted an order, and they pulled up a yard or two nearer the bridge. The others came up, and there was a consultation. Michael swore he had passed no one on the road. That fool Hannes has seen a ghost, said the officer tessally. He took gold for this child's play. Hannes, almost in tears, repeated his tale. The man spoke to me in good German, he cried. Ghost or no ghost, he is safe enough up the road, said the officer. Kind God, that was a big one. He stopped and stared at a shell burst for the bombardment from the east was growing fiercer. They stood discussing the fire for a minute, and presently moved off. Peter gave them two minutes' law, then clambered back to the highway and set off along it at a run. The noise of the shelling and the wind, together with the thick darkness, made it safe to hurry. He left the road at the first chance and took to the broken country. The ground was now rising towards the spur of the Palantuken, on a far slope of which were the Turkish trenches. The night had begun by being pretty nearly as black as pitch, even the smoke from the shell explosions, which was often visible in darkness, could not be seen. But as the wind blew the snow clouds a thought, the sky patches of stars came out. Peter had a compass, but he didn't need to use it, for he had a kind of feel for landscape, a special sense which is born in sapeges, and can only be acquired after long experience by the white man. I believe he could smell more than orth lay. He had settled roughly which part of the line he would try, merely because of its nearness to the enemy. But he might see reason to vary this. As he moved, he began to think that the safest place was where the shelling was hottest. He didn't like the notion, but it sounded sense. Suddenly he began to puzzle over queer things in the ground, and as if he had never seen big guns before, it took him a moment to fix them. Presently, one went off at his elbow with a roar like the last day. These were Austrian howitzers, nothing over eight inch I fancy, but to Peter they looked like the Viathans. Here, too, he saw for the first time a big and quite recent shell-hole, for the rushing guns were searching out the position. He was so interested in it all that he poked his nose where he shouldn't have been, and dropped plumb into the pit behind a gun encampment. Gunners all over the world shy people, who hide themselves and holds, and a high-bronade and mortally disliked being detected. A gruff voice cried, and a heavy hand seized his neck. Peter was ready with his story. He belonged to Michael's wagon team and had been left behind. He wanted to be told the way to the sappers' camp. He was very apologetic, not to say obsequious. It is one of the expressions found from the Marta Bridge, said a gunner. Peter thanked them and bore off to the right. After that he kept a wary eye on the howitzers, and was thankful when he got out of their area to the slopes of the hill. And he defied any Turk or botch to spot him among the scrub and boulders. He was getting on very well. One once more close to his ear came a sound like the crack of doom. It was the field guns now, and the sound of a field gun close at hand is bad for the nerves, if you aren't expecting it. Peter thought he had been hit and lay flat for a little to consider. Then he found the right explanation, and crawled forward very warily. Presently he saw his first Russian shell. It dropped half a dozen yards to his right, making a great hole in the snow and sending up a mass of mixed earth, snow, and broken stones. Peter spat out the dirt and felt very solemn. He must remember that never in his life had he seen a big shelling, and was now being landed in a thick of first-class show without any preparation. He said he felt cold in his stomach and very wishful to run away, if there had been anywhere to run. But he kept on to the crest of the ridge, over which a big glow was broadening like sunrise. He tripped once over a wire which he took for some kind of snare, and after that went very warily. By and by he got his face between two boulders and looked over into the true battlefield. He told me it was exactly what the predicant used to say that hell would be like. About fifty yards down the slope lay the Turkish Patrenches. They were dark against the snow, and now and then a black figure like a devil showed for an instant and disappeared. The Turks clearly expected an infantry attack, for they were sending up calcium rockets and very flares. The Russians were battering their line and spraying all the hinterland. Not with shrapnel, but with good solid high explosives. The place would be as bright as day for a moment, all smothered in the scurry of smoke and snow and debris, and then a black paw would fall on it, when only the thunder of the guns told of the battle. Peter felt very sick. He had not believed there could be so much noise in the world, and the drums of his ears were splitting. Now, for a man whom courage is habitual, the taste of fear, naked, utter fear, is a horrible thing. It seems to wash away all his manhood. Peter lay on the crest, watching the shells burst, and confident that any moment he might be a shattered remnant. He lay and reasoned with himself, calling himself every name he could think of, but conscious that nothing would get rid of that lump of ice below his heart. Then he could stand it no longer. He got up and ran for his life. But he ran forward. It was the craziest performance. He went hell for leather over a piece of ground, which was being watered with A.G., but by the mercy of heaven nothing hit him. He took some fearful tosses and shell holes that partly erect and partly on all fours. He did the fifty yards and tumbled into a Turkish trench right on top of a dead man. The contact with that body brought him to his senses. That man could die at all seemed a comforting, homely thing after that unnatural pandemonium. The next moment a crump took the parapet of the trench some yards to his left, and he was half buried in an avalanche. He crawled out of that, pretty badly cut about the head. He was quite cool now, and thinking hard about his next step. There were men all around him, selling dark faces as he saw them when the players went up. They were manning the parapets and waiting tensely for something else than the shelling. They paid no attention to him, for I fancy that in the trench units are pretty well mixed up, and under a bad bombardment no one bothers about his neighbor. He found himself free to move as he pleased. The ground of the trench was littered with empty cartridge cases, and there were many dead bodies. The last shell, as I have said, had played havoc with the parapet. In the next spell of darkness Peter crawled through the gap and twisted among some snowy hillocks. He was no longer afraid of shells any more than he was afraid of a velled thunderstorm, but he was wondering very hard how he should ever get to the Russians. The Turks were behind him now, but there was the biggest danger in front. Then the artillery ceased. It was so sudden that he thought he had gone deaf, and could hardly realize the blessed relief of it. The wind too seemed to have fallen, or perhaps he was sheltered by the lee over the hill. There were a lot of dead here, also, and that he couldn't understand, for they were new dead. Had the Turks attacked and been driven back? When he had gone about thirty yards he stopped to take his bearings. On the right were the ruins of large buildings set on fire by guns. There was a blur of woods and the debris of walls round it. Away to the left another hill ran out farther to the east, and the place he was in seemed to be a kind of cup between the spurs. Just before him was a little ruined building, with the sky seen through its rafters, for the smoldering ruin on the right gave a certain light. He wondered if the Russian firing line lay there. Just then he heard some voices, smothered voices, not a yard away, and apparently below the ground. He instantly jumped to what this must mean. There was a Turkish trench, a communication trench. Peter didn't know much about modern warfare, but he had read in the papers, or heard from me, enough to make him draw the right wall. The fresh dead pointed to the same conclusion. What he had got through were the Turkish support trenches, not their firing line. That was still before him. He didn't despair, for the reef bound from panic had made him extra courageous. He crawled forward an inch at a time, taking no sort of risk, and presently found himself looking at the paradox of a trench. Then he lay quiet to think out the next step. The shelling had stopped, and there was that queer kind of peace which falls sometimes on two armies, not a quarter of a mile distant. Peter said he could hear nothing but the far off sighing of the wind. There seemed to be no movement of any kind in the trench before him, which ran through the ruined building. The light of the burning was dying, and he could just make out a mound of earth a yard in front. He got out his packet of food and had a swig at the brandy flask. That comforted him, and he fell the master of his fate again. But the next step was not so easy. He must find out what lay behind that mound of earth. Suddenly a curious sound fell on his ears. It was so faint that at first he doubted the evidence of his senses. Then, as the wind fell, it came louder. It was exactly like some hollow piece of metal being struck by a stick, musical and oddly resonant. He concluded it was the wind blowing a branch of a tree against an old boiler in the ruin before him. The trouble was that there was scarcely enough wind now for that in this sheltered cup. But as he listened, he caught the note again. It was a bell, a fallen bell, and the place before him must have been a chapel. He remembered that an Armenian monastery had been marked on the big map, and he guessed it was the burned building to his right. The thought of a chapel and a bell gave him the notion of some human agency, and then suddenly the notion was confirmed. The sound was regular and concerted dot dash dot dash dot dot. The branch of a tree and the wind may play strange pranks, but they do not produce the longs and shorts of the Morse code. This was where Peter's intelligence work in the Boer War helped him. He knew the Morse, he could read it, but he could make nothing of the signaling. It was either in some special code or in a strange language. He lay still and did some calm thinking. There was a man in front of him, a Turkish soldier, who was in the enemy's pay. Therefore he could fraternize with him, for they were on the same side. But how was he to approach him without getting shot in the process? Again, how could a man send signals to the army from a firing line without being detected? Peter found an answer in the strange configuration of the ground. He had not heard a sound until he was a few yards from the place, and they would be inaudible to men in the reserve trenches and even in the communication trenches. If somebody moving up the latter caught the noise, it would be easy to explain it naturally. But the wind blowing down the cup would carry it far in the enemy's direction. They remained the risk of being heard by those parallel with the bell and the firing trenches. Peter concluded that the trench must be very thinly held, probably only by a few observers, and the nearest might be a dozen yards off. He had read about that being the French fashion under a big bombardment. The next thing was to find out how to make himself known to this ally. He decided that the only way was to surprise him. He might get shot, but he trusted to his strength and agility against a man who was almost certainly wearied. When he had got him safe, explanations might follow. Peter was now enjoying himself hugely. If only these infernal guns kept silent, he would play out the game in the sobered, decorous way he loved. So very delicately he began to wriggle forward to where the sound was. The night was now as black as ink round him, and very quiet too, except for the sawings of the dying gale. The snow had drifted a little in the lee of the ruined walls, and Peter's progress was naturally very slow. He could not afford to dislodge one ounce of snow. Still the tinkling went on, now in greater volume. Peter was in terror lest it should cease before he got his man. Presently his hand clutched at empty space. He was on the lip of the front trench. The sound was now a yard to his right, and with infinite care he shifted to his position. Now the bell was just below him, and he felt the big rafter of the woodwork from which it had fallen. He felt something else, a stretch of wire fixed in the ground with the far end hanging in the void. That would be the spy's explanation if anyone heard the sound and came seeking the cause. Somewhere in the darkness before him and below was the man, not a yard off. Peter remained very still, studying the situation. He could not see, but he could feel the presence, and he was trying to decide the relative position of the man and bell and their exact distance from him. The thing was not so easy as it looked, for if he jumped for where he believed the figure was, he might miss it and get a bullet in the stomach. A man who played so risky a game was probably handy with his firearms. Besides, if he should hit the bell, he would make a hideous row and alarm the whole front. Fate suddenly gave him the right chance. The unseen figure stood up and moved a step, until his back was against the peridose. He actually brushed against Peter's elbow. Who held his breath? There is a catch that the Kaphiers have, which would need several diagrams to explain. It is partly a neck hold and partly a paralyzing backward twist to the right arm, but if it is practiced on a man from behind, it locks in as sure as if he were handcuffed. Peter slowly got his body raised and his knees under him and reached for his prey. He got him. A head was pulled backward over the edge of the trench, and he felt in the air the motion on the left arm pulling feebly but unable to reach behind. Be still, whispered Peter in German. I mean you no harm. We are friends, the same purpose. Do you speak German? Nine, said my full voice. English? Yes, it is the voice. Thank God, said Peter. Now we can understand each other. I have watched your notion of signaling and a very good one it is. I have got to get through the Russian lines somehow before mourning, and I want you to help me. I am English, a kind of English, so we are on the same side. If I let go your neck, will you be glued and talk reasonably? The voice ascended. Peter let go and the same incident slipped to the side. The man wheeled around and flung out an arm with a crypt of vacancy. Steady friend, said Peter, you mustn't play tricks on me or I will be angry. Who are you? Who sent you? asked a puzzled voice. Peter hid a happy thought. The companions of the rosy hours, he said. Then we are friends indeed, said the voice. Come out of the darkness, friend, and I will do you no harm. I am a good Turk, and I fought beside the English and Cordefin, and learned their language. I live only to see the ruin of the Enver, who has beggared my family and slain my twin brother. Therefore I serve the Muskoff Gyars. I don't know what the Musky Jaws are, but if you mean the Russians, I am with you. I have got news for them which would make Enver green. The question is, how I am to get to them, and that is where you shall help me, my friend. How? By playing that little tune of yours again, tell them to expect within the next half hour a deserter with an important message. Tell them, for God's sake, not to fire at anyone until they have made certain it isn't me. The man took the blunt end of his bayonet, and squatted beside the bell. The first stroke brought out a clear, searching note which floated down the valley. He struck three notes at slow intervals. For all the world, Peter said, he was like a telegraph operator calling up a station. Send the message in English, said Peter. They may not understand it, said the man. Then send it any way you like, I thrust you home your brothers. After ten minutes the man ceased and listened. From far away came the sound of a trench gong, the kind of thing they used on the western front to give the gas alarm. They say they will be ready, he said. I cannot think down messages in the darkness, but they have given me the signal which means consent. Come, that is pretty good, said Peter. And now I must be moving. You take a hint from me. When you hear big firing up to the north, get ready to beat a quick retreat, for it will all be up with that city of yours. And tell your folk, too, that they're making a bad mistake letting those full Germans rule their land. Let them hang Enver and his little friends, and we'll be happy once more. May Satan receive his soul, said the Turk. There is wire before us, but they will show you a way through. The guns this evening made many rents in it, but the haste for a working party may be here presently to repair it. Remember, there is much wire before the other lines. Peter, with certain directions, found it pretty easy to make his way through the entanglement. There was one bit which scraped a hole in his back, but very soon he had come to the last posts and found himself in open country. The place, he said, was a graveyard among the unburied dead that smelt horribly as he crawled among them. He had no inducements to delay, for he thought he could hear behind him the movement of the Turkish working party, and was in terror that a flare might reveal him and a volley accompany his retreat. From one shell-hole to another he warmed his way, until he struck an old, ruinous communication trench, which led in the right direction. The Turks must have been forced back in the past week, and the Russians were now in the evacuated trenches. The thing was half full of water, but it gave Peter a feeling of safety, for it enabled him to get his head below the level of the ground. Then it came to an end, and he found before him a forest of wire. The Turk in his signal had mentioned half an hour, but Peter thought it was near two hours before he got through that noxious entanglement. Shelling had made little difference to it. The uprights were all there, and the barbed strands seemed to touch the ground. Remember, he had no wire cutter, nothing but his bare hands. Once again fear got hold of him. He felt caught in a net, with monstrous vultures waiting to pounce on him from above. At any moment a flare might go up, and a dozen rifles find their mark. He had altogether forgotten about the message which had been sent, for no message could dissuade the ever-present death he felt around him. It was, he said, like following an old lion into bush, when there was but one narrow way in, and no rode out. The guns began again, the Turkish guns from behind the ridge, and a shell tore up the wire a short way before him. Under cover of the burst, he made a few good yards, leaving large portions of his clothing in the strands. Then quite suddenly, when hope had almost died in his heart, he felt the ground rise steeply. He lay very still. A star rocket from the Turkish side lit up the place, and there in front was a rampart, with the points of bayonets showing beyond it. It was the Russian hour for stand to. He raised his cramped limbs from the ground, shouted, friend, English! A face looked down at him, and then the darkness again descended. Friend! He said hoarsely, English! He heard speech be on the parapet, and electric torch was flash on him for a second. A voice spoke, a friendly voice, and the sound of it seemed to be telling him to come over. He was standing now, and as he got his hands on the parapet, he seemed to feel the bayonets very near him. But the voice that spoke was kindly, so with a heave, he scrambled over and flopped into the trench. Once more, the electric torch was flashed, and revealed to the eyes of the onlookers an indescribably dirty, lean, middle-aged man with a bloody head, and scarcely a rag of shirt on his back. The said man, seeing friendly faces around him, grinned cheerfully. That was a rough trek, friends, he said. I want to see your general pretty quick, for I've got the present for him. He was taken to an officer and a dugout who addressed him in French, which he did not understand. But the sight of Stoom's plan worked wonders. After that, he was fairly bundled down communication trenches, and then over swampy fields to a farm among trees. There he found staff officers who looked at him and looked at his map, and then put him on a horse and hurried him eastwards. At last he came to a big ruined house, and was taken into a room which seemed full of maps and generals. The conclusion must be told in Peter's words. There was a big man sitting at a table drinking coffee, and when I saw him my heart jumped out of my skin, for it was the man I had hunted with on the Pungva in 98, him whom the Kaphirs called Buck's Horn because of his long curled moustaches. He was a prince even then, and now he is a very great general. When I saw him, I ran forward and gripped his hand and cried. How got hit whom here? And he knew me and shouted in Dutch. Damn, if it isn't old Peter Pinar, then he gave me coffee and ham and good bread, and he looked at my map. What is this? he cried, growing red in the face. It is a staff map of one Stoom, a German skellum, who commands Neon City, I said. He looked at the clothes and read the markings, and then he read the other paper which you gave me, Dick. And then he flung up his arms and laughed. He took a loaf and tossed it into the air, so that it fell on the head of another general. He spoke to them in their own tongue, and they too laughed. And one or two ran out as if on some errand. I have never seen such merrymaking. They were clever men, and they knew the worth of what you gave me. Then he got to his feet and hugged me all dirty as I was, and kissed me on both cheeks. Before God, Peter, you are the mightiest hunter since Nimrod. You found me game, but never game so big as this. Recording by Nicole Carl, St. Louis, Missouri, September 2007. It was a wise man who said that the biggest kind of courage was to be able to sit still. I used to feel that when we were getting shelled in the reserve trenches outside her life. I felt it before we went over the parapets at Los, but I never felt it so much as on the last two days in that cellar. I had simply to set my teeth and take a pull on myself. Peter had gone on a crazy errand which I scarcely believed would come off. There were no signs of Sandy. Somewhere, within a hundred yards, he was fighting his own battles. And I was tormented by the thought that he might get jumpy again and wreck everything. A strange companion brought us food. A man who only spoke Turkish and could tell us nothing. Huson, I judged, was very busy about the horses. If I could only have done something to help on matters, I could have scotched my anxiety. But there was nothing to be done. Nothing but weight and brood. I tell you, I began to sympathize with the general behind the lines in a battle. The fellow who makes the plan which others execute. Leading in charge can be nothing like so nerve-shaking a business as sitting in an easy chair and waiting on the news of it. It was bitter cold, and we spent most of the day wrapped in our great coats and buried deep in the straw. Blink iron was a marvel. There was no light for him to play patience by, but he never complained. He slept a lot of the time, and when he was awake, talked as cheerfully as if he were starting out on a holiday. He had one great comfort. His dyspepsia was gone. He sang hymns constantly to the benign providence that had squared his duodenum. My only occupation was to listen for the guns. At first, after Peter left, they were very quiet on the front nearest us, but in the late evening they started a terrific racket. The next day they never stopped from dawn to dusk, so that it reminded me of that tremendous forty-eight hours before loss. I tried to read into this some proof that Peter had got through, but it would not work. It looked more like the opposite, for this desperate hammering must mean that the frontal assault was still the Russian game. Two or three times I climbed on the housetop of the fresh air. The day was foggy and damp, and I could see very little of the countryside. Transport was still bumping southward along the road to the Palantukin, and the slow-weakened loads of wounded returning. One thing I noticed, however, there was a perpetual coming and going between the houses and the city. Motors and mounted messengers were constantly arriving and departing, and I concluded that Hildavon Inum was getting ready for her part in the defense of Erzurum. These ascents were all on the first day after Peter's going. The second day, when I tried the trap, I found it closed and heavily weighted. This must have been done by our friends and very right, too. If the house were becoming a place of public resort, it would never do for me to be journeying roofward. Late on the second night Hussin reappeared. It was after supper when Blank Iron had gone peacefully to sleep, and I was beginning to count the hours till the morning. I could not close an eye during those days, and not much at night. Hussin did not lie to Lantern. I heard his key and lock, and then his light step close to where we lay. Are you asleep? he said, and when I answered he sat down beside me. The horses are found, he said, and the master bids me tell you that we started the morning three hours before dawn. It was welcome news. Tell me what happened, I begged. We had been lying in this tomb for three days and heard nothing. The guns are bidding, he said. The elements come to this place every hour. I know not for what. Also there has been a great search for you. The searchers have been here, but they were sent away empty. Sleep, my lord, there is wild work before us. I did not sleep much, for I was strung too high with expectation, and I envied Blank Iron whose nail you peptic slumbers. But for an hour or so I dropped off, and my old nightmare came back. Once again I was in the throat of a pass, hotly pursued, straining for some sanctuary which I knew I must reach. But I was no longer alone, others were with me, how many I could not tell, for when I tried to see their faces they dissolved and missed. Deep snow was underfoot, a gray sky was over us, black peaks were on all sides, but a head in the mist of the pass was that curious kestrel which I had first seen in my dream on the Erzurum Road. I saw it distinct in every detail. It rose to the left of the road through the pass above Ahalo where great boulders stood out in snow. Its sides were steep so that the snow had slipped off in patches, leaving stretches of glistening black shale. The cranes at the top did not rise sheer, but sloped at an angle of forty-five, and on the very summit there seemed Ahalo, as if the earth within the rock rim had been beaten by weather into a cup. That is often the way with the South African kestrel, and I knew it was so with this. We were straining for it, but the snow clogged us and our enemies were very close behind. Then I was awakened by a figure at my side. Get ready, my lord, it said. It is the hour to ride. Like sleepwalkers, we moved into the sharp air. Huson let us out of an old postern, and then through a place like an orchard to the shelter of some tall evergreen trees. Their horses stood, champing quietly from their nosebags. Good, I thought, a feat of oats before a big effort. There were nine beasts for nine riders. We mounted without a word and filed through a grove of trees to our broken, paling mark to the beginning of cultivated land. There, for the matter of twenty minutes, Huson chose to guide us through deep, clogging snow. He wanted to avoid any sound till we were well beyond earshot of a house. Then we struck a bypass which presently merged on a hard highway, running, as I judged, southwest by west. There we laid no longer, but galloped furiously into dark. I got back all my exhilaration. Indeed, I was intoxicated with the movement, and I could have laughed out loud and sung. Under the black canopy of the night, perils were either forgotten or terribly alive. Mine were forgotten. The darkness I galloped into led me to freedom and friends. Yes, and success, which I had not dared to hope, and scarcely even to dream of. Huson rode first with me at his side. I turned to my head and saw Blank Iron behind me, evidently mortally unhappy about the pace we had set in the mount he sat. He used to say that horse exercise was good for his liver. But it was a gentle amble and a shortened gallop that he liked, not this mad helter-skelter. His thighs were too round to fit a saddle-leather. We passed a fire in the hollow, the bivouac of some Turkish unit, and all the horses shied violently. I knew by Blank Iron's oaths that he had lost his stripes and was sitting on his horse's neck. Beside him rode a tall figure swith to the eyes and wrappings, and wearing around his neck some kind of shawl whose ends floated behind him. Sandy, of course, had no European ulster. For it was months since he had worn proper clothes. I wanted to speak to him, but somehow I did not dare. His stillness forbade me. He was a wonderful fine horseman, with his firm English hunting-seat, and it was as well for he paid no attention to his beast. His head was still full of unquiet thoughts. Then the air around me began to smell accurate and raw, and I saw that a fog was winding up from the hollows. Here's the devil's own luck, I cried to Huson. Can you guide us in a mist? I do not know, he shook his head. I had counted on seeing the shape of the hills. Weave a map and a compass anyhow, but these make slow traveling. Pray God it lifts! Presently the black vapor changed to gray, and the day broke. It was little comfort. The fog rolled and waved to the horse's ears, and riding at the head of the party I could but dimly see the next rank. It is time to leave the roads, said Huson, or we may meet inquisitive folk. We struck to the left, overground, which, for all the world, was like a scotch more. There were pools of rain on it, and masses of tangled snow-laden junipers, and long reefs of wet slady stone. It was bad going, and the fog made it hopeless to steer with a good course. I had out the map and the compass, and tried to fix our route, so as to round the flank of a spur of the mountains which separated us from the valley we were aiming at. There's a stream ahead of us, I said to Huson. Is it affordable? It is only a trickle, he said, coughing. This cursed mist is from Evus. But I knew long before we reached it, that it was no trickle. It was a hill stream coming down in spate, and, as I soon guessed, in a deep ravine. Presently we were at its edge, one long whirl of yeasty falls and brown rapids. We could soon get the horses over it as to the topmost cliffs of the Palantoucan. Huson stared at it in consternation, may Allah forgive my folly, for I should have known. We must return to the highway and find a bridge, my sorrow for I should have led my Lord so ill. Back over the more we went with my spirits badly damped, we had none too long a start, and held a vile item around heaven and earth to catch us up. Huson forced forcing the pace, for his anxiety was as great as mine. Before we reached the road, the mist blew back and revealed a wedge of country right across to the hills beyond the river. It was a clear view, every object standing out wet and sharp in the light of morning. It showed the bridge with horsemen drawn up across it, and it showed two cavalry pickets moving along the road. They saw us at the same instant. A word was passed down the road, a shrill whistle blew, and the pickets put their horses at the bank, and started across the moor. Did I not say this mist was for Iblis, Groud Huson, as we swung round and galloped back in our tracks? This crucifix has seen us, and our road is cut. I was for trying to stream at all costs, but Huson pointed out that it would do us no good, that the cavalry beyond the bridge was moving up the other bank. There is a path through the woods that I know, but it must be traveled on foot. If we can increase our lead, and the mist cloaks us, there is yet a chance. It was a weary business plotting up into the skirts of the hills. We had the pursuit behind us now, and that put an edge on every difficulty. There were long banks of broken screes, I remember, where the snow slipped and wreathed from under our feet. Great boulders had to be circumvented, and patches of bog where the streams from the snows first made contact with the plains mired us to our girth. Happily the mist was down again, but this, though it hindered the chase, lessened the chances of Huson finding the path. He found it, nevertheless. There was the gully and the rough mule track leading upwards. But there also had been a landslip quite recent from the marks. A large scar of earth had broken across the hillside, which, with the snow above it, looked like a slice cut out of an ice chocolate cake. We stared blankly for a second till we recognized its hopelessness. I'm trying the crags, I said, where there once was a way another can be found, and be picked off of their leisure by these marksmen, said Huson Girmley. Look! The mist had opened again, and a glance behind showed me the pursuit closing up on us. They were now less than three hundred yards off. We turned our horses and made off eastward along the skirts of the cliff. Then Sandy spoke for the first time. I don't know how you fellas feel, but I'm not going to be taken. There's nothing much to do except find a place and put up a fight. We can sell our lives dearly. That's about all, said Blankiron cheerfully. He suffered such tortures on that gallop that he welcomed any kind of stationary fight. Serve out the arms, said Sandy. The companions all carried rifles slung across their shoulders. Huson, from a deep saddlebag, brought out rifles and bandoliers for the rest of us. As I lay mine across my saddle-bow, I saw it was a German mouser of the latest pattern. It's held for leather till we find a place for a stance, said Sandy, the games against us this time. Once more we entered the mist, and presently found better going on a long stretch of even slope. Then came a rise, and on the crest of it I saw the sun. Presently we dipped into bright daylight and looked down on a broad glen with a road winding up it to pass in the range. I had expected this. It was one way to the Poundtookan Pass, some miles south of the house where we had been lodged. And then, as I looked southward, I saw what I had been watching for days. A little hill split the valley, and on its top was a crown of rocks. It was the castle of my persistent dream. On that I promptly took charge. There's our fort, I cried. If we once get there we can hold it for a week. Sit down and ride for it. We bucketed down that hillside like men possessed, even blank-iron sticking on manfully among the twists and turns and slithers. Presently we were on the road and were racing past marching infantry and gun teams and empty wagons. I noted that most seemed to be moving downward, and a few going up. Boussin screamed some words in Turkish that secured us a passage, but indeed our crazy speed left them staring. Out of a corner of my eye I saw that Sandy had flung off most of his wrappings and seemed to be all a dazzle of rich color. But I had thought for nothing except the little hill. Now almost fronting us across the shallow glen. No horses could breast that steep. We urged them into the hollow, then hastily dismounted, humped the packs, and began to struggle up the side of the castle. It was strewn with great boulders, which gave a kind of cover that very soon was needed. For snatching a glance back I saw that our pursuers were on the road above us and were getting ready to shoot. At normal times we would have been easy marks, but, fortunately, wisps and streamers of mist now clung about that hollow. The rest could fend for themselves, so I stuck to blank iron and dragged him, wholly breathless, by the least exposed route. Bullets spattered now and then against the rocks, and one sang unpleasantly near my head. In this way we covered three-fourths of the distance, and had only the bare dozen yards where the gradient eased off up to the edge of the cons. Blank iron got hit in the leg, our only casualty. There was nothing for it but to carry him, so I swung him on my shoulders, and with the bursting heart did that last lap. It was hottish work, and the bullets were pretty thick about us, but we all got safely to the cons, and a short scramble took us over the edge. I laid blank iron inside the castle and started to prepare our defense. We had little time to do it. Out of the thin fog figures were coming, crouching in cover. The place we were in was a natural redoubt, except that there were no loopholes or sandbags. We had to show our heads over the rim to shoot, but the danger was lessened by the superb field of fire given by those last dozen yards of glaces. I posted the men, and waited, and blank iron, with a white face insisted on taking his share, announcing that he used to be handy with a gun. I gave the order that no man was to shoot till the enemy had come out of the rocks to the top of the glaces. The thing ran right round the top, and we had to watch all sides to prevent them getting us in flank or rear. Huson's rifle cracked out presently from the back, so my precautions had not been needless. We were all three fair shots, though none of us up to Peter's miraculous standard, and the Companions, too, made good practice. The Mauser was the weapon I knew best, and I didn't miss much. The attackers never had a chance, for their only hope was to rush us by numbers, and the whole party being not above two dozen. They were far too few. I think we killed three, for their bodies were left blind, and wounded at least six, while the rest fell back towards the road. In a quarter of an hour it was all over. They are dogs of curds, I heard Huson say fiercely. Only a Kurdish gyar would fire on the livery of the Kaaba. Then I had a good look at Sandy. He had discarded shawls and wrappings, and stood up in the strangest costume man had ever worn in battle. Somehow he had procured field-boots in an old pair of riding-bridges. Above these, reaching well above his middle, he had a wonderful silken jibba, or epa. of bright emerald. I call it silk, but it was like no silk I had ever known. So exquisite in the mesh was such sheen and depth in it. Some strange pattern was woven on the breast, which in the dim light I could not trace. I warn't no rarer or cost their garment was ever exposed to lead on a bleak winter hill. Sandy seemed unconscious of his garb. His eye, listless no more, scanned the hollow. That's only the overture, he cried. The opera will soon begin. We must put a beastwork up in these gaps, or they'll pick us off from a thousand yards. I had, meantime, roughly dressed Blankiron's wound with a linen rag which Huson produced. It was from a ricochet bullet, which it clipped into his left shin. Then I took a hand with the others in getting up earthworks to complete the circuit of the defense. It was no easy job, but we wrought only with our knives and had to dig deep below the snowy gravel. As we worked I took stock of a refuge. The kestrel was a rough circle about ten yards in diameter. Its interior filled with boulders and loose stones, and its parapet about four feet high. The mist had cleared for a considerable space, and I could see the immediate surroundings. West, beyond the hollow, was the road we had come, where now the remnants of the pursuit were clustered. North, the hill fell steeply to the valley bottom, but to the south after a dip there was a ridge which shut the view. East lay another fork of the stream, the chief fork I guessed, and it was evidently followed by the main road to the pass, for I saw it crowded with transport. The two roads seemed to converge somewhere farther south of my site. I guessed we could not be very far from the front, for the noise of guns sounded very near, both the sharp crack of the field pieces and the deeper boom of the howitzers. More I could hear the chatter of machine guns, a magpie note among the baying of hounds. I saw even the bursting of Russian shells evidently trying to reach the main road. One big fellow, an eight inch, landed not ten yards from a convoy to the east of us, and another in the hollow through which we had come. These were clearly ranging shots, and I wondered if the Russians had observation posts on the heights to mark them. If so, they might soon try a curtain, and we should be very near its edge. It would be an odd irony if we were the target of friendly shells. By the Lord Harry, I heard Sandy say, if we had a brace of machine guns we could hold this place against a division. What price shells? I asked. If they get a gun up, they can blow us up to Adams in ten minutes. Please, God, the Russians keep them too busy for that, was his answer. With anxious eyes I watched our enemies on the road. They seemed to have grown in numbers. They were signaling, too, for a white flag fluttered. Then the mists rolled down on us again, and our prospect was limited to ten yards of vapor. Steady, I cried. They may try to rush us at any moment. Every man keep his eye on the ridge of the fog, and shoot at the first sign. For nearly half an hour by my watch we waited in that queer white world, our eyes smarting with a strain appearing. The sound of the guns seemed to be hushed, and everything groaned, deathly quiet. Blink iron squeal, as he knocked his wounded leg against a rock, made every man start. Then out of the mist there came a voice. It was a woman's voice, high, penetrating, and sweet. But it spoke, and no tongue I knew. Only Sandy understood. He made a sudden movement, as if to defend himself against a blow. The speaker came into clear sight on the glass as the yard or two away. Mine was the first face she saw. I come to utter terms, she said in English. Will you permit me to enter? I could do nothing except take off my cap and say, Yes, ma'am. Blink iron snuggled up against the parapet was cursing furiously below his breath. She climbed up the counts, and stepped over the edge, as lightly as a deer. Her clothes were strange, spurred roots and breeches over which fell a short green curdle. A little cap, skewered with a jeweled pin, was on her head, and a cape of some coarse country cloth hung from her shoulders. She had rough gauntlets on her hands, and she carried for a weapon a riding whip. The fog crystals clung to her hair, I remember, and a silvery film of fog lay on her garments. I had never before thought of her as beautiful, strange and canny, wonderful if you like, but the word beauty had too kindly and human a sound for such a face. But she stood with heightened color, her eyes like stars, her poise like a wild birds. I had to confess, she had her own loveliness. She might be a devil, but she was also a queen. I understood that there might be merits in the prospect of riding by her side into Jerusalem. Sandy stood rigid, his face very grave and set. She held out both hands to him, speaking softly in Turkish. I noticed that the six companions had disappeared from the castle, and were somewhere out of sight on the farther side. I do not know what she said, but from her tone, and above all from her eyes, I judged that she was pleading, pleading for his return, for his partnership in her great adventure, pleading for all I knew for his love. His expression was like a death mask. His brows drawn tight in the little frowns, which are rigid. Madam, he said, I ask you to tell your business quick and to tell it in English. My friends must hear it as well as me. Your friends, she cried. What has a prince to do with these hirelings? Your slaves perhaps, but not your friends. My friends, Sandy repeated grimly. You must know, madam, that I am a British officer. That was beyond doubt a clean, staggering stroke. What she had thought of his origin, God knows, but she had never dreamed of this. Her eyes grew larger and more lustrous. Her lips parted, as if to speak, but her voice failed her. Then, by an effort, she recovered herself. And out of that strange face went all the glow of youth and ardour. It was again the unholy mask I had first known. And these others, she asked in a level voice. One is a brother officer of my regiment. The other is an American friend. But all three of us are on the same errand. We came east to destroy Greenmantle and your devilish ambitions. You have yourself destroyed your profits, and now it is your turn to fail and disappear. Make no mistake, madam, that folly is over. I will tear this sacred garment into a thousand pieces and scatter them on the wind. The people wait today for revelation. But none will come. You may kill us all if you can. But we have at least crushed a lie and done service to our country. I would not have taken my eyes from her face for a king's ransom. I have written that she was a queen, and of that there is no manner of doubt. She had the soul of a conqueror, for not a flicker of weakness or disappointment marred her heir. Only pride and the statelyest resolution looked out of her eyes. I said I come to offer terms. I will still offer them, though they are other than I thought. For the fat American I will send him home safely to his country. I do not make war on such as he. He is Germany's foe, not mine. You, she said, turning fiercely on me, I will hang before dusk. Never in my life had I been so pleased. I had got my revenge at last. This woman had singled me out above the others as the object of her wrath, and I almost loved her for it. She turned to Sandy, and the fierceness went out of her face. You seek the truth, she said, and also do I, and if we use a lie, it is only to break down a greater. You are of my household and spirit, and you alone of all men I have seen are fit to ride with me in my mission. Germany may fail, but I shall not fail. I offer you the greatest career that mortal has known. I offer you a task which will need every atom of brain and sinew courage. Will you refuse that task? I do not know what effect this vaporing might have had in hot-scented rooms, or in the langer of some rich garden, but up on that cold hilltop it was as unsubstantial as mist around us. It sounded not even impressive, only crazy. I stay with my friends, said Sandy. Then I will offer more. I will save your friends. They too shall share in my triumph. This was too much for Blank Iron. He scrambled to his feet to speak the protest that had been wrung from his soul, forgot his game leg, and rolled back on the ground with a groan. Then she seemed to make a last appeal. She spoke in Turkish now, and I do not know what she said, but I dutch that it was the plea of a woman to her lover. Once more she was the proud beauty, but there was a tremor in her pride. I had almost written tenderness. To listen to her was like horrid treachery, like eavesdropping on something pitiful. I know my cheeks grew scarlet, and Blank Iron turned away his head. Sandy's face did not move. He spoke in English. You can offer me nothing that I desire, he said. I am the servant of my country, and her enemies are mine. I can have neither part nor lot with you. That is my answer, Madame Banaynam. Then her steely restraint broke. It was like a dam giving before a pent up mass of icy water. She tore off one of her gauntlets and hurled it in his face. Implacable hate looked out of her eyes. I have done with you, she cried. You have scorned me, but you have dug your own grave. She leapt on the parapet, and the next second was on the glaces. Once more the mist had fled, and across the hollow I saw a field gun in place, and men around it who were not Turkish. She waved her hand to them, and hastened down the hillside. But at that moment I heard the whistle of a long range Russian shell. Among the boulders there was the dull shock of an explosion and a mushroom of red earth. It all passed at an instant of time. I saw the gunners on the road point their hands, and I heard them cry. I heard too a kind of sob from Blank Iron, all this before I had realized myself what had happened. The next thing I saw was Sandy, already behind the glaces, leaping with great bounds down the hill. They were shooting at him, but he heeded them not. For the space of a minute he was out of sight, and his whereabouts was shown only by the patter of bullets. Then he came back, walking quite slowly up the last slope, and he was carrying something in his arms. The enemy fired no more. They realized what had happened. He laid his burden down gently in a corner of the castle. The cap had fallen off, and the hair was breaking loose. The face was very wide, but there was no wound or bruise on it. She was killed at once. I heard him saying, her back was broken by a shelf fragment. Dick, we must bury her here. You see, she lied to me, and I can make her no return but this. We set the companions to guard, and with infinite slowness, using our hands and our knives, we made a shallow grave below the eastern parapet. When it was done we covered her face with a linen cloak which Sandy had worn that morning. He lifted the body and laid it reverently in its place. I did not know that anything could be so light, he said. It wasn't for me to look on at that kind of scene. I went to the parapet of Blank Iron's field glasses, and had a stare at our friends on the road. There was no turf there, and I guessed why, for it would not be easy to use the men of Islam against the wearer of the green apple. The enemy were German or Austrian, and they had a field gun. They seemed to have got it laid on our fort, but they were waiting. As I looked, I saw behind them a massive figure I seemed to recognize. Stuhl had come to see the destruction of his enemies. To the east I saw another gun in the fields, just below the main road. They had got us on both sides, and there was no way of escape. Hilde von Einem was to have a noble pyre and goodly company for the dark journey. The dusk was falling now, a clear bright dusk, where the stars pricked through a sheen of amethyst. The artillery were busy all around the horizon, and towards the pass on the other road where Fort Pellentuchin stood, there was the dust and smoke of a furious bombardment. It seemed to me, too, that guns on the other fronts had come nearer. Devboyan was hidden by a spur of hill, but up in the north white clouds, like the streamers of evening, were hanging over the Euphrates Glen. The whole firmament hummed and twinged like a taut string that had been struck. As I looked, the gun to the west fired. The gun where Stuhl was. The shell dropped ten yards to our right. A second later another fell behind us. Blinkiron had draped himself over the parapet. I don't suppose he had ever been shelled before, but his face showed curiosity rather than fear. Pretty lousy shooting, I reckon, he said. On the contrary, I said, they know their business. They're bracketing. The words were not out of my mouth. When one fell right among us, it struck the far room of the kestrel, shattering the rock, but bursting mainly outside. We all ducked, and barring some small scratches. No one was a penny the worse. I remember that much of the debris fell on Hildavon Island's grave. I pulled Blinkiron over the far parapet and called on the rest to follow, meaning to take cover on the rough side of the hill. But as we showed ourselves, shots rang out from our front. Shots fired from a range of a few hundred yards. It was easy to see what had happened. Riflemen had been sent to hold us in rear. They would not assault so long as we remained in the kestrel. But they would block any attempt to find safety outside it. Shtun and his gun had us at their mercy. We crouched below the parapet again. We may as well toss for it, I said. There's only two ways. To stay here and be shelled or try to break through those fellows behind. Either is pretty unhealthy. But I knew there was no choice. With Blinkiron crippled we were pinned to the kestrel. Our numbers were up all right. End of Chapter 21 I fancied I knew. It's Shtun's way, I said. He wants to torture us. He'll keep us ours on Tentahooks while he sits over yonder exulting in what he thinks we're endearing. He has just enough imagination for that. He would rush us if he had the men. As it is he's going to blow us to pieces but do it slowly and smack his lips over it. Sandy yawned. We'll disappoint him for we won't be worried, old man. We three are beyond that kind of fear. Meanwhile we're going to do the best we can, I said. He's got the exact range for his whiz bangs. We've got to find a hole somewhere just outside the kestrel and some sort of head cover. We're bound to get damaged to whatever happens but we'll stick it out to the end. When they think they have finished with us and rushed the place there may be one of us alive to put a bullet through old Shdoom. What do you say? They agreed and after our meal Sandy and I crawled out to a prospect leaving the others on guard in case there should be an attack. We found a hollow in the glossy a little south of the kestrel and, working very quietly, managed to enlarge it and cut a kind of shallow cave in the hill. It would be no use against a direct hit but it would give some cover from flying fragments. As I read the situation Shdoom could land as many shells as he pleased in the kestrel and wouldn't bother to attend to the flanks. When the bad shelling began there would be shelter for one or two in the cave. Our enemies were watchful. The riflemen on the east burnt very flares at intervals and Shdoom's lot sent up a great star rocket. I remember that just before midnight hell broke loose round Fort Palantukhin. No more Russian shells came into our hollow but all the road to the east was under fire and at the fort itself there was a shattering explosion and a queer scarlet glow which looked as if a magazine had been hit. For about two hours the firing was intense. And then it died down. But it was towards the north that I kept turning my head. There seemed to be something different in the sound there. Something sharper in the report of the guns as if shells were dropping in a narrow valley whose rock walls doubled the echo. Had the Russians by any blessed chance worked round that flank? I got Sandy to listen but he shook his head. Those guns are a dozen miles off, he said. They're no nearer than three days ago. But it looks as if the sportsmen on the south might have a chance. When they break through and stream down the valley they'll be puzzled to account for what remains of us. We're no longer three adventurers in the enemy's country. We're the advance guard of the allies. Our pals don't know about us and we're going to be cut off which has happened to advance guards before now. But all the same we're in our own battle line again. Doesn't that cheer you dick? It cheered me wonderfully for I knew now what had been the weight on my heart ever since I accepted Sir Walter's mission. It was the loneliness of it. I was fighting far away from my friends, far away from the true fronts of battle. It was a sideshow which, whatever its importance, had none of the exhilaration of the main effort. But now we had come back to familiar ground. We were like the Highlanders cut off. It sits on a goose on the first day of loose. Or those scots' guards at Festubert of whom I had heard. Only the others did not know of it, would never hear of it. If Peter succeeded he might tell the tale, but most likely he was lying dead somewhere in the no man's land between the lines. We should never be heard of again any more, but our work remained. Sir Walter would know that and he would tell our few belongings that we had gone out in our country's service. We were in the castrol again, sitting under the parapets. The same thoughts must have been in Sandy's mind, for he suddenly laughed. It's a queer ending, Dick. We simply vanish into the infinite. If the Russians get through they will never recognize what is left of us, among so much of the wreckage of battle. The snow will soon cover us, and when the spring comes there will only be a few bleached bones. Upon my soul it is the kind of death I always wanted. And he quoted softly to himself a verse of an old Scots ballad. Many's the one for him makes moan, but none sell kin, where he is gone. Or his white veins when they are bare, the wind shall blow for evermere. But our work lives, I cried, with a sudden great gasp of happiness. It's the job that matters, not the men that do it. And our job's done. We have one, old chap, one hands down, and there's no going back on that. We have one, anyway. And if Peter has had a slice of luck, we've scooped the pool. After all, we never expected to come out of this thing with our lives. Blink-iron, with his legs stuck out stiffly before him, was humming quietly to himself, as he often did when he felt cheerful. He had only one song, John Brown's body, usually only a line at a time. But now he got as far as the whole verse. He captured Harper's fairy with his 19 men so true, and he frightened old Virginia till she trembled through and through. They hung him for a traitor, themselves the traitor crew, but his soul goes marching along. Feeling good, I asked. Fine. I'm about the luckiest man on God's earth, major. I've always wanted to get into a big show, but I didn't see how it would come the way of a homely citizen like me, living in a steam-warmed house and going downtown to my office every morning. I used to envy my old dad that thought at Chattanooga and never forgot to tell you about it. But I guess Chattanooga was like a scrap in a bowery bar compared to this. When I meet the old man in glory, he'll have to listen some to me. It was just after Blink-iron spoke that we got a reminder of Stoom's presence. The gun was well laid, for a shell plumped on the near edge of the castrol. It made an end of one of the companions who was on guard there, badly wounded another, and a fragment gashed my thigh. We took refuge in the shallow cave, but some wild shooting from the east side brought us back to the parapets, for we feared an attack. None came, nor any more shells, and once again the night was quiet. I asked Blink-iron if he had any near relatives. Why, no, except a sister's son, a college boy who has no need of his uncle. It's fortunate that we three have no wives. I haven't any regrets, neither, for I've had a mighty deal out of life. I was thinking this morning that it was a pity I was going out, when I had just got my duodenum to listen to reason. But I reckon that's another of my mercies. The good God took away the pain in my stomach, so that I might go to him with a clear head and a thankful heart. We're lucky fellows, said Sandy. We've all had our whack. When I remember the good times I've had, I could sing a hymn of praise. We've lived long enough to know ourselves and to shape ourselves into some kind of decency. But think of those boys who have given their lives freely, when they scarcely knew what life meant. They were just at the beginning of the road, and they didn't know what dreary bits lay before them. It was all sunshiny and bright-colored, and yet they gave it up without a moment's doubt. And think of the men with wives and children and homes that were the biggest things in life to them. For fellows like us to shirk would be black cowardice. It's small credit for us to stick it out. But when those others shut their teeth and went forward, they were blessed heroes. After that we fell silent. A man's thoughts at a time like that seemed to be double-powered, and the memory becomes very sharp and clear. I don't know what was in the other's minds, but I know what filled my own. I fancy it isn't the men who get most out of the world and are always buoyant and cheerful but most fear to die. Rather, it is the weak-engined souls who go about with dull eyes, that cling most fiercely to life. They have not the joy of being alive, which is a kind of earnest of immortality. I know that my thoughts were chiefly about the jolly things that I had seen and done, not regret, but gratitude. The panorama of blue noons on the veld unrolled itself before me, and hunter's nights in the bush, the taste of food and sleep, the bitter stimulus of dawn, the joy of wild adventure, the voices of old staunch friends. Hitherto the war has seemed to make a break with all that had gone before, but now the war was only part of the picture. I thought of my battalion and the good fellows there, many of whom had fallen on the loose parapets. I had never looked to come out of that myself, but I had been spared and given the chance of a greater business, and I had succeeded. That was the tremendous fact, and my mood was humble gratitude to God and exultant pride. Death was a small price to pay for it, as Blink Iron would have said, I had got good value in the deal. The night was getting bitter cold, as happens before dawn. It was frost again, and the sharpness of it woke our hunger. I got out the remnants of the food and wine, and we had a last meal. I remember we pledged each other as we drank. We have eaten our Passover feast, said Sandy. When do you look for the end? After dawn, I said. Stoom wants daylight to get the full savor of his revenge. Slowly the sky passed from ebony to gray, and black shapes of hill outlined themselves against it. A wind blew down the valley, bringing the acrid smell of burning, but something too of the freshness of mourn. It stirred strange thoughts in me, and woke the old mourning vigor of the blood, which was never to be mine again. For the first time in that long vigil, I was torn with a sudden regret. We must get into the cave before it is full light, I said. We had better draw lots for the two to go. The choice fell on one of the companions and Blink Iron. You can count me out, said the latter. If it's your wish to find the man to be alive when our friends come up to count their spoil, I guess I'm the worst of the lot. I'd prefer, if you don't mind, to stay here. I've made my peace with my maker, and I'd like to wait quietly on his call. I'll play a game of patience to pass the time. He would take no denial, so we drew again, and the lot fell to Sandy. If I'm the last to go, he said, I promise I don't miss. Stoom won't be long in following me. He shook hands with his cheery smile, and he and the companion slipped over the parapet in the final shadows before dawn. Blink Iron spread his patience cards on a flat rock and dealt out the double Napoleon. He was perfectly calm and hummed to himself his only tune. For myself, I was drinking in my last draft of the hill air. My contentment was going. I suddenly felt bitterly loath to die. Something of the same kind must have passed through Blink Iron's head. He suddenly looked up and asked, Sister Anne, Sister Anne, do you see anybody coming? I stood close to the parapet, watching every detail of the landscape as shown by the revealing daybreak. Up on the shoulders of the palantukin, snowdrifts slipped over the edges of the cliffs. I wondered when they would come down as avalanches. There was a kind of croft on one hillside, and from a hut the smoke of breakfast was beginning to curl. Stoom's gunners were awake and apparently holding counsel. Far down on the main road a convoy was moving. I heard the creak of the wheels two miles away, for the air was deathly still. Then as if a spring had been loosed, the world suddenly leaped to a hideous life. With a growl the guns opened round all the horizon. They were especially fierce to the south, where a raffle beat as I had never heard it before. The one glance I cast behind me showed the gap in the hills choked with fumes and dust. But my eyes were on the north. From air's a room city, tall tongues of flame leaped from a dozen quarters. Beyond, towards the opening of the Euphrates glen, there was the sharp crack of field guns. I strained eyes and ears mad with impatience, and I read the riddle. Sandy, I yelled. Peter has got through. The Russians around the flank. The town is burning. Glory to God! We've won! We've won! And as I spoke the earth seemed to split beside me, and I was flung forward on the gravel which covered Hildavon Inam's grave. As I picked myself up, and to my amazement found myself uninjured, I saw a blink-iron rubbing the dust out of his eyes and arranging a disordered card. He had stopped humming and was singing aloud. He captured Harpers Ferry with his 19 minutes of true and he frightened Old Virginia. Say, Major, he cried. I believe this game of mine is coming out. I was now pretty well mad. The thought that Old Peter had won, that we had won beyond our wildest dreams, that if we died there were those coming who would exact the uttermost vengeance rode my brain-like fever. I sprang on the paratet and waved my hand to Shdoom, shouting defiance. Rifle shots cracked out from behind, and I leaped back, just in time, for the next shell. The charge must have been short, for it was a bad miss landing somewhere on the glossy. The next was better, and crashed on the near-parapet, carving a great hole in the rocky crons. This time my arm hung limp, broken by a fragment of stone, but I felt no pain. Blink-iron seemed to bear a charmed life, for he was smothered in dust but unhurt. He blew the dust away from his cards very gingerly, and went on playing. Sister Anne, he asked, Do you see anybody coming? Then came a dud, then came a dud which dropped neatly inside on the soft ground. I was determined to break for the open and chance the rifle-fire, for if Shdoom went on shooting the castrol was certain death. I caught Blink-iron round the middle, scattering his cards to the winds, and jumped over the paratet. Don't apologize, Sister Anne, said he. The game was as good as one. But for God's sake drop me, for if you wave me like the banner of freedom, I'll get plugged sure and good. My one thought was to get cover for the next minutes, for I had an instinct that our vigil was near its end. The defenses of Erzurun were crumbling like sand castles, and it was a proof of the tenseness of my nerves that I seemed to be deaf to the sound. Shdoom had seen us cross the paratet, and he started to sprinkle all the surroundings of the castrol. Blink-iron and I lay like a working party between the lines caught by machine guns, taking a pull on ourselves as best we could. Sandy had some kind of cover, but we were on the bear farther slope, and the rifleman on that side might have had us at their mercy. But no shots came from them. As I looked east, the hillside, which a little before had been held by our enemies, was as empty as the desert. And then I saw on the main road a sight, which for a second time made me yell like a maniac. Down that glen came a throng of men and galloping limbers, a crazy jostling crowd spreading away beyond the road to the steep slopes, and leaving behind it many black dots to darken the snows. The gates of the south had yielded, and our friends were through them. At that sight I forgot all about our danger. I didn't give a cent for Shdoom's shells. I didn't believe he could hit me. The fate which had mercifully preserved us for the first taste of victory would see us through to the end. I remember bundling Blink-iron along the hill to find Sandy. But our news was anticipated, for down our own side glen came the same broken tumult of men. More for at their backs, far up at the throat of the pass, I saw horsemen, the horsemen of the pursuit. Old Nicholas had flung his cavalry in. Sandy was on his feet with his lips set and his eye abstracted. If his face hadn't been burned black by the weather, it would have been pale as a dishclout. A man like him doesn't make up his mind for death and then be given his life again without being wrenched out of his bearings. I thought he didn't understand what had happened, so I beat him on the shoulders. Man, DSC! I cried. The Cossacks! The Cossacks! God how they're taking that slope! They're into them now. Bye, heaven will ride with them. We'll get the gun horses. A little knoll prevented Shdoom and his men from seeing what was happening farther up the glen till the first wave of the route was on them. He had gone on bombarding the castrol and its environs while the world was cracking over his head. The gun team was in the hollow below the road and down the hill among the boulders we crawled. Blink iron as lame as a duck and me with a limp left arm. The poor beasts were straining at their pickets and sniffing the morning wind which brought down the thick fumes of the great bombardment and the indescribable babbling cries of a beaten army. Before we reached them that maddened horde had swept down on them, men panting and gasping in their flight, many of them bloody from wounds, many tottering in the first stages of collapse and death. I saw the horses seized by a dozen hands and a desperate fight for their possession. But as we halted there our eyes were fixed on the battery on the road above us, for round it was now sweeping the van of the retreat. I had never seen a route before when strong men come to the end of their tether and only their broken shadows stumble towards the refuge they never find. No more had stewen, poor devil. I had no ill will left for him, though coming down that hill I was rather hoping that the two of us might have a final scrap. He was a brute and a bully, but by God he was a man. I heard his great roar when he saw the tumult, and the next I saw was his monstrous figure working at the gun. He swung itself and turned it on the fugitives. But he never fired it. The press was on him and the gun was swept sideways. He stood up a foot higher than any of them, and he seemed to be trying to check the rush with his pistol. There is power in numbers, even though every unit is broken and fleeing. For a second to that wild crowd stewen was the enemy, and they had strength enough to crush him. The wave flowed round and then across him. I saw the butt ends of rifles crash on his head and shoulders, and the next second the stream had passed over his body. That was God's judgment on the man who had set himself above his kind. Sandy gripped my shoulder and was shouting in my ear. They're coming, Dick. Look at the gray devils. Oh, God, be thanked as our friends. The next minute we were tumbling down the hillside, Blink iron hopping on one leg between us. I heard dimly Sandy crying. Oh, well done, our side. And Blink iron declaiming about Harper's Ferry. But I had no voice at all and no wish to shout. I know the tears were in my eyes, and that if I had been left alone, I would have sat down and cried with pure thankfulness. For sweeping down the glen came a cloud of gray cavalry on little wiry horses, a cloud which stayed not for the rear of the fugitives, but swept on like a flight of rainbows with the steel of their lance heads glittering in the winter sun. They were riding for air's room. Remember that for three months we had been with the enemy and had never seen the face of an ally in arms. We had been cut off from the fellowship of a great cause, like a fort surrounded by an army. And now we were delivered, and there fell around us the warm joy of comradeship, as well as the exultation of victory. We flung caution to the winds and went stark mad. Sandy, still in his emerald coat and turban, was scrambling up the farther slope of the hollow, yelling greetings in every language known to man. The leader saw him, with a word checked his men for a moment. It was marvelous to see the horses reigned in in such a breakneck ride, and from the squadron half a dozen troopers swung loose and wheeled towards us. Then a man in a gray overcoat and a sheepskin cap was on the ground beside us, ringing our hands. You are safe, my old friends. It was Peter's voice that spoke. I will take you back to our army and get you breakfast. No, by the Lord you won't, cried Sandy. We've had the rough end of the job, and now we'll have the fun. Look after Blinkiron and these fellows of mine. I'm going to ride knee by knee with your sportsman for the city. Peter spoke a word and two of the Cossacks dismounted. The next I knew I was mixed up in the cloud of graycoats, galloping down the road up which the morning before we had strained to the castrol. That was the great hour of my life, and to live through it was worth a dozen years of slavery. With a broken left arm I had little hold on my beast, so I trusted my neck to him and let him have his will. Black with dirt and smoke, hatless with no kind of uniform, I was a wilder figure than any Cossack. I soon was separated from Sandy, who had two hands and a better horse, and seemed resolute to press forward to the very van. That would have been suicide for me, and I had all I could do to keep my place in the bunch I rode with. But great, God, what an hour it was! There was loose shooting on our flank, but nothing to trouble us, though the gun-team of some Austrian howitzer, struggling madly at a bridge, gave us a bit of a tussle. Everything flitted past me like smoke, or like the mad finale of a dream just before waking. I knew the living movement under me and the companionship of men, but all dimly, for at heart I was alone, grappling with the realization of a new world. I felt the shadows of the palantuken glen fading, and the great burst of light as we emerged on the wider valley. Somewhere before us was a pall of smoke seen with red flames, and beyond the darkness of still higher hills. All that time I was dreaming, crooning daft caches of song to myself, so happy, so deliriously happy, that I dared not try to think. I kept muttering a kind of prayer made up of Bible words to him who had shown me his goodness in the land of the living. But as we drew out from the skirts of the hills, and began the long slope to the city, I woke to clear consciousness. I felt the smell of sheepskin and lathered horses, and above all the bitter smell of fire. Down in the trough lay air's a room, now burning in many pieces, and from the east past the silent forts horsemen were closing in on it. I yelled to my comrades that we were nearest, that we would be first in the city, and they nodded happily and shouted their strange war cries. As we topped the last ridge I saw below me the van of our charge. A dark mass on the snow, while the broken enemy on both sides were flinging away their arms and scattering in the fields. In the very front, now nearing the city ramparts, was one man. He was like the point of the steel spear soon to be driven home. In the clear morning air I could see that he did not wear the uniform of the invaders. He was turbaned and rode like one possessed, and against the snow I caught the dark sheen of emerald. As he rode it seemed that the fleeing Turks were stricken still and sank by the roadside with eyes strained after his unheating figure. Then I knew that the prophecy had been true, and that their prophet had not failed them. The long-looked-for revelation had come. Green mantle had appeared at last to an awaiting people.