August 24, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
21 
his hands and the negro appeared and at his nod took his 
place behind a httle side-counter. 
" Follow me," he said, and led us through a long noisome 
passage which was pitch dark and very unevenly paved. Then 
lie unlocked a door and with a swirl the wind caught it and 
blew it back on us. 
We were looking into a mean Uttle yard, with on one side a 
high curving wall, evidently of great age, with bushes growing 
in the cracks of it. Some scraggy myrtles stood in broken 
pots, and nettles flourished in a corner. At one end was a 
wooden building hke a dissenting chapel, but painted a dingy 
scarlet. Its windows and skylights were black with dirt and 
its door, tied up with rope, flapped in the wind. 
" Behold the Pavilion," Kuprasso said proudly. 
" That is the old place," I observed with feeling. " What 
times I've seen here ! Tell me, Mr. Kuprasso, do you ever 
open it now ? 
He put his thick lips to my ear. 
" If the Signor will be silent I will tell him. It is some- 
times open — not often. Men must amuse themselves even 
in war. Some of the German officers come here for their 
pleasure, and but last week we had the ballet of Mademoiselle 
Cici. The pohce approve — but not often, for this is no time 
for too much gaiety. I will tell you a secret. To-morrow 
afternoon there will be dancing — wonderful dancing. Only 
a few of my patrons know. Who, think you, will be there ? " 
He bent his head closer and said in a whisper : 
" The Compagnie des Heures Roses." 
" Oh, indeed," I said with a proper tone of respect, though 
I hadn't a notion what he meant. 
" Will the Signor wish to come ? 
" Sure," I said. " Both of us. We're all for the rosy 
hours." 
" Then the fourth hour after mid-day. Walk straight 
through the cafe and one will be there to unlock the door. 
You are newcomers here. Take the advice of Angelo Kuprasso 
and avoid the streets after nightfall. Stamboul is no safe 
place nowadays for quiet men." 
I asked him to name an hotel and he rattled off a list from 
which I chose one that sounded modest and in keeping 
with our get-up. It was not far off, only a hundred yards 
to the right at the top of the hill. 
When we left his door the night had begun to drop. We 
hadn't gone twenty yards before Peter drew very near to 
me and kept turning his head like a hunted stag. 
" We are being followed close, Cornehs," he said calmly. 
Another ten yards and we were at a cross-road where a 
little place faced a biggish mosque. I could see in the waning 
light a crowd of people who seemed to be moving towards us. 
I heard a high-pitched voice cry out a jabber of excited words, 
and it seemed to me that I had heard the voice before. 
CHAPTER XI 
The Companions of the Rosy Hours 
WE battled to a corner where a jut of building 
stood out into the street. It was our only chance 
to protect our backs to stand up with the rib of 
stone between us. It was only the work of 
seconds. One moment we were groping our solitary way in the 
darkness, the next we were pinned against a wall with a throaty 
mob surging round us. 
It took me a moment or two to realise that we were attacked. 
Mvery man has one special funk in the back of his head, 
and mine was to be the quarry of an angry crowd. I hated 
the thought of it, the mess, the blind struggle, the sense of 
unleashed passions different from those of any single black- 
guard. It was a dark world to me, and I don't like darkness. 
But in my nightmares I had never imagined anything just like 
this. The narrow fetid street with the icy winds fanning 
the filth, the unknown tongue, the hoarse savage murmur, and 
my utter ignorance as to what it might all be about, made me 
cold in the pit of my stomach. 
" We've got it in the neck this time, old man," I said to 
Peter, who had got out the pistol the commandant at Rustchuk 
had given him. These pistols were our only weapons. The 
crowd saw them and hung back, but if they chose to rush us 
it wasn't much of a barrier two pistols would make. 
Rasta's voice had stopped. He had done his work, and had 
retired to the background. There were shouts from the 
crowd — " Alleman " and a word " Khafiyeh " constantly 
repeated. I didn't know what it meant at the time, but now 
I know that they were after us because we were Bodies and 
spies. There was no love lost between the Constantinople 
scum and their new masters. It seemed an iionical end for 
Peter and me to be done in because we were Bodies. And 
done in we should be. I had heard of the East as a good place 
for people to disappear in ; there were no inquisitive news- 
papers or incorruptible police. 
I wished to Heaven I had a word of Turkish. But I made 
my voice heard for a second in a pause of the din, and shouted 
that we were German sailors who had brought down big guns 
for Turkey, and were going home next day. I asked them 
what the devil they thought we had done ? I don't know if 
any fellow there understood German ; anyhow, it only brought 
a pandemonium of cries in which that ominous word Khafiyeh 
was predominant. 
Then Peter fired over their heads. He had to, for a chap 
was pawing at his throat. The answer was a clatter of 
bullets on the wall above us. It looked as if they meant to 
take us alive and that, I was very clear, should not happen. 
Better a bloody end in a street scrap than the tender mercies 
of that bandbox bravo. 
I don't quite know what happened next. A press drove 
down at me and I fired. Someone squealed and I looked the 
next moment to be strangled. And then suddenly the 
scrimmage ceased and there was a wavering splash of light in 
that pit of darkness. 
I never went through many worse minutes than these. 
When I had been hunted in the past weeks there had been 
mystery enough, but no immediate peril to face. When 
I had been up against a real urgent physical risk, like Loos, 
the danger at any rate had been clear. One knew what one 
was in for. But here was a threat I couldn't put a name to, 
and it wasn't in the future, but pressing hard at our throats. 
And yet I couldn't feel it was quite real. The patter of the 
pistol bullets against the wall, like so many crackers ; the faces, 
felt rather than seen, in the dark ; the clamour which to me 
was pure gibberish, had all the madness of a nightmare. Only 
Peter, cursing steadily in Dutch by my side, was real. And 
then the light came, and made the scene more eery. 
It came from one or two torches carried by wild fellows 
with long staves who drove their way into the heart of the 
mob. The flickering glare ran up the steep wall and made 
monstrous shadows. The wind swimg the flame into long 
streamers dying away in a fan of sparks. \ ' 
And now a new word was heard in the crowd. It was 
Chinganeh, shouted not in anger, but in fear. 
At first I could not see the newcomers. They were hidden 
in the deep darkness under their canopy of light, for they were 
holding their torches high at the full stretch of their arms. 
They were shouting, too, wild shrill cries ending sometimes 
in a gush of rapid speech. Their words did not seem to be 
directed against us, but against the crowd. A sudden hope 
came to me that for some unknown reason they were on our 
side. 
The press was no longer heavy against us. It was thinning 
rapidly, and I could hear the scufflle as men made off down the 
side streets. My first notion was that these were the Turkish 
police. But I changed my mind when the leader came out 
into a patch of light. He carried no torch, but a long stave 
with which he belaboured the heads of those who were too 
tightly packed to flee. 
It was the most eldritch apparition you can conceive. 
A tall man dressed in skins, with bare legs and sandal-shod 
feet. A wisp of scarlet cloth clung to his shoulders, and, 
drawn over his head down close to his eyes, was a skull-cap 
of some kind of pelt with the tail waving behind it. He 
capered like a wild animal, keeping up a strange high mono- 
tone that fairly gave me the creeps. 
I was suddenly aware that the crowd had gone. Before us 
was only this figure and his half-dozen companions, some 
carrying torches and all wearing clothes of skin. But only the 
one who seemed to be their leader wore the skull-cap ; the 
rest had bare heads and long tangled hair. 
The fellow was shouting gibberish at me. His eyes were 
glassy, like a man who smokes hemp, and his legs were never 
still a second. You would think such a figure no better than 
a mountebank, and yet there was nothing comic in it. Fearful 
and sinister and uncanny it was ; and I wanted to do any- 
thing but laugh. 
As he shouted he kept pointing with his stave up a street 
which climbed the hillside. 
" He means us to move," said Peter. " For God's sake let's 
get away from this witch doctor." 
I couldn't make sense of it, but one thing was clear. These 
maniacs had delivered us for the moment from Rasta and his 
friends. 
Then I did a dashed silly thing. I pulled out a sovereign 
and offered it to the leader. I had some notion of showing 
gratitude, and as I had no words I had to show it by deed. 
He brought his stick down on my wrist and sent the coin 
spinning in the gutter. His eyes blazed and he made his 
weapon sing round my head. He cursed me. Oh ! I could 
tell cursing well enough, though I didn't follow a word ; and 
he cried to his followers and they cursed us too. I had offered 
him a mortal insult and stirred up a worse hornet's nest than 
Rasta's push. 
(To be continued) 
