ARCHAG
The
LITTLE ARMENIAN
CHAPTER I
A DAY AT SCHOOL
The boys had just finished a grammar lesson, and as a reward for paying attention their master was reading them a bit of history. Jousif hodja (schoolmaster) was a tall young man of twenty, very slight, and frail in appearance, with dreamy black eyes. Perfect silence reigned in the smoky old schoolroom while he read in a strong, clear voice:
“The day of battle had come at last![1] Our men, commanded by Vartan the Mamigonian, had pitched their tents that night on the plain of Avaraīr. The snowy peak of Ararat was just becoming visible in the early light of dawn, when a sentinel burst into Vartan’s tent, crying: ‘The Persians! The Persians! they are coming!’ The chief went out from his tent and climbed a hill around which we had made our camp. His piercing eye quickly distinguished a black mass moving slowly, like surging waves, along the Tabriz road. From time to time the silence of the plain was broken by a dull threatening sound like the distant rumbling of thunder.... Vartan was fighting in the thick of the fray; he seemed all unconscious of his wounds and of the blood streaming from them; in despair he saw his soldiers, overpowered by numbers, fast giving way. The ground was strewn with the dead bodies of Armenians; the cries of the wounded were drowned by the yells of the Persians. Vartan, with several brave followers, had made his way almost up to Khan Mustapha, general of the hostile forces, when a Kurd rushed upon him and dealt him a violent blow with his scimitar, striking the back of his neck. Stunned by the shock, the Mamigonian sank to earth, and was immediately surrounded by a dozen devils; one cut off his legs, another, leaning over him with a grimace, thrust his cutlass into the breast of the ill-starred hero——”
“But I don’t want him to die,” sobbed a boy of twelve. “Oh, master, why did God let him?”
Some of the older boys began to laugh, but Jousif hodja sternly silenced them, and going to the child, said to him:
“Come, Archag, quiet yourself; envy our Vartan, if you will, admire him, but don’t give him pity. His martyr’s death has sustained and fortified thousands of Armenians; even to-day, after so many centuries of oppression and sorrow, to whom should we lift our eyes if not to our national hero? We all love him, and in the hour of danger we shall fight and die as worthy sons of Vartan.”