The Eye of Zeitoon

tread the t

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faith that

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what Mo

of subdiv

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om heights whe

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hat I sh

buy with tr

these Hours

no teach

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pundits prea

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ings in

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the breath

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Hours tha

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of drudge

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-Italian War had not been fought when Fred Oakes took the fever of the place, although the stage was pretty nearly set for it

nqueror, maligning them for their city's sake, and if Sennacherib, who built the first foundations, and if Anthony and Cleopatra, Philip of Macedon, Timour-i-lang, Mahmoud, Ibrahim

hatever their indifference to custom, Anthony and Cleopatra knew better than do that. Alexander the Great, on the other hand, f

t in the American mission, where they dispense more than royal hospitality to utter strangers. Will Yerkes had friends there but that made no difference; Fred was quinined, low-dieted, bathed, comforted and reproved for swearing by a college-educated nurse, who liked his pri

onsidering that every member of the staff worked fourteen hours a day and had to make up for attention

did not go at all: when the fever is on him Fred's feelings toward his own sex are simply blunt bellicose. When they put anot

ghtshire, and a privy councilor, was welcome

no place, either, for Will Yerkes and me. Will prefers dime novels, if he must sit st

le-cloth in its original one-pound tin; and there was a Turkish officer in riding pants and red morocco slippers, back from the Yemen with two or thre

ady-cut building stone the Turks have never cherished monuments that might accentuate their own decadence). After that we fossicked in the manner of prospectors that we are by p

prices for one service as there are grades of credulity, but a genuine two-hundred-year-old Turkish place, run by a Turk, and named Yeni Khan (which means the new rest house) in proof that once the world was younger. The man who directed us

that was a yard deep with the dung of countless camels, horses, bullocks, asses; crowded with arabas

very guest dumps all his discarded rubbish over the balcony rail into the courtyard, to be trodden and wheeled under foot and he

eek in black frock coat and trousers, fez, and slippered feet gesticulated with his right arm like a pump-handle while he sat on the balcony-rail and bellowed orders to a crowd mixed of Armenians, Italians, Maltese, Syrians and a Turk or tw

e, but hugged long knives as they passed back and forth among the swarming st

into second place before the Turks, who, without any swagger at all, lorded it over every one. For the Turk is a conqueror, whatever else he ought to be. The poorest Turkish servant is race-conscious, and unshakabl

slain with slipper heels by angry owners of the blood; but we were not in search of luxury, and we had our belongings and a can of insect-bane brought down from the hotel at once. The fact t

backs against it would only yield enough to pass one person in gingerly at a time. We saw a sea of heads and hats and faces. It looked

ality. We sat wedged between a Georgian in smelly, greasy woolen jacket, and a man who looked Persian but talked for the most par

mountains and the sea, making roads and fords impassable and the mountain passes risky. So men from the ends of earth sat still contentedly, to pass earth

ening to the ever-changing lies. We could not hope to pick out truth, but sat as if in the pit of a

coat suggested, but active and strong, with a fiery restless eye. He talked Russian at intervals with the men who sat near him at the end of the room on our right, but used at lea

ality?" I asked Will, shouting to him bec

ond Will, and spat venomously, as if th

lty of altogether too much zest for life, and laughed too boldly in Turkish presence. I

you mak

puts two and two together all the time, because the heroes of d

, and I looked into the Persian's gentle brown eyes. "The jingaan

at nati

hing. They in particul

Zingarri. Not a depe

He shrugged his shoulders, as if there

finite, soft eyes. The man I watched had brown eyes, but they were hard. And, unlike them, he had long lean fi

me curiously, and spitting again. "That o

the perplexing person got up and came over toward me, showing no fear of the Turk at all. He was tall and lean w

he. The Turk got up clumsily, and went out, muttering to himself. I glanced toward the corner where

us, raising both hands, palms outward, in app

n that land of a hundred tongues has been done by American missionaries, teaching in the course of a gener

man are you?"

lanation bound in one. Yet he looked hardly like an honorable man.

not caring to have him turn the ta

h a sort of ha

of being disbelieved!" He laid a finger on his right eye, as I have seen Arabs do when they mean to ascribe to themselves unfathomable cunning. "S

m, looking at us down his nose, not ceasing to smil

scribed as jingaan," I answer

did not see-the six undoubted gipsies got up and left the room, shambling ou

cided that it might as well be supper-time and rose stiffly to his feet. The Persians rob and murder, and even retreat, gracefully. He bade us a stately and benignant g

nounced with a sort of savage pride, as

hoolboy-looking ears tha

n, where a man steps out of his front door on to a

is teeth in anot

ed with intelligence!

I exchang

he best room in the khan

red say that and smile we would have struck him, and Monty might have been alive to-day. But

d was a cigarette. I produced and lit what he contemptuously called a "boughten cigar

t," he said.

?" deman

r. Do not be af

l retorted, "you'll need your frie

ot leave the room. He went back to the end-wall against which he had sat before, and alth

id Will. "Suppose we call the bluff, and keep him wai

camp kitchen-a contraption of wood and iron we had built with the aid of the mission carpenter. And the walk t

im!" said I. "I know how to

d who wa

e narrowly missed by a mule's heels because of the deceptive shadows that confused his aim, tripped over a donkey's heel-rope, and found our stairway-thoroughly well cursed i

place, contentment took hold of us; and as we lighted the primus burner in the cooking box, we pitied from the bottom of compas

, and the bray of an amorous he-ass-the bubbling complaint of fed camels that want to go to sleep, but are afraid of dreaming-the hum of human voices-the clash of cooking pots-the voice of a man on th

oked a meal over the primus burner on the floor, to say that all that medley of sounds and smells is not go

The Zeitoonli arrived true to his threat on the stroke of the half-hour, and we could not shut the door in his face bec

tted him to go for water wherewith to wash up. He strode back and forth on the balcony, tr

er the rail, and sitting down again to watch

ng him in our canvas-backed easy chairs. He refused the "genuine Turkish" coffee that Will stewed over the primus. Will drank the beastly stuff, of cours

d elapsed to preclude his imagining that we regarded him seriously. One

epugnance for the man that I itched to open the door and thrust him through-other moments when compassion for him urged me to offer money-f

cial watching?" I demanded. "How

of lawless eyes, and

w their cannon down a thousand feet into the bed of the torrent, and there they lie to-day! We took prisoner as many of their Arab zaptiehs as still were living-aye, they even brought Arabs against us-

They answered that Zeitoon-fashion. How? I will tell. There is a bridge of wood, flung over across the mountain torrent, five hundred feet above the water, spanning from crag to crag. Those Zeitoonli wives of

on the

eard what our wives had done. We were encouraged. We prevailed! We fell back to-ward our mountain and prevailed! There in Zeitoon we have weapons-numbers-advantage of position, for no road

tell us all this

are not agents of th

out both hands toward us. "Een

ican dislike of being mistaken for an Englishman, but long ago gave up arguin

At Zeitoon there is

One sportman to anoth

nd did no

Zeitoon?"

u-not hurrying-by horse-seven-eight

l Armenians

been reenforced continually by deserters from the Turkish Army. Ninety-five per cent., however, are Armenians," he

tled all Armenian problems long ago by process of

hed fist. "There is spirit here! There is spirit in Zeitoon! No Osmanli dare molest my peo

en?" I asked him, and he laughed as suddenly as h

the man. My brother I would kill for it-a stranger perhaps not. Those men are Zinga

hey yo

are no m

carried no

ut hunting at Zeito

onderful-a mountain in a mist, with houses clinging

asked. "No anci

his tactics

ear Zeitoon that have never been explored since the Turks-may God destroy them!-overran the land! Castles hidden among trees

anded Will, purp

e-a honeycomb! No man knows how far those tunnels run! The Turks have attempted now and then to smoke out the inh

gs in the States," Will

where do y

ot unde

propose to ge

my country. I am sportma

ians love money, whatever else they do or leave undone, and can wring a handsome p

e out of town, at a place you know, and your jingaan-gipsy brethren will hold

y and every crook would have been at pains to hide his real feelings. Yet this st

mind, but he dismissed it. Three times he raised his hands

on, nor as if he hoped to convince us that it was, but as if he were offering an excus

arty," said Will, apropo

ct was u

the knuckle-bones of both hands crack li

I'll undertake to talk it over with my other friends. Then, either we'll all four agree

th-Zeitoon-caves-boa

guide. You shall

ke foreigners. But why

behin

l this afternoon. You

t. You shall pay me.

closed again against us in obedience to some racial or religious instinct out

ould have made me half such a sportmanlike proposal without an answer on the instant! A man fit to strike the highw

your re

e same thing! I did not ask your

, not irresolute, but taking one l

out, closing the door behind him with an air of having honored us, not we him particularly

t, hazarding guesses about him. Whatever else he

nyway!" said Will, dropping his last cigarette-en

ckle, and l

ore himself presumably abstemious, was not above dispensing at a price mastika that the Greeks get drunk on, and the vile

-and-dog-fight swearing in and out among the camel pickets and the wheels of