And rapt them nigher
To Heaven, whose chariot and horses are fire."
—C. F. Alexander.
Dread were the watches of that December night, amidst the unutterable agonies of half a city. In the Armenian Quarter the only sleepers were those—thrice happy!—who would never awake again—
"Until the Heavens be no more."
They were very many, like the slain in some great battle that decides a nation's destiny. They lay in heaps, in the open street, in the court-yards, in the houses. Tearless, wild-eyed women, strong in the strength of love, came and sought their own amongst them. Sometimes a wife who found her husband, a mother who embraced her son, wept and wailed and made sore lamentation, but for the most part they were still enough. Sometimes they thanked God that they had found them—there.
It went worse with those who sat in their desolate homes, and watched the slow ebbing, often in cruel anguish, of the lives they loved. The number of the wounded and the dying was enormous. For one thing, the murderers were unskilful, for another they were often deliberately—diabolically—cruel. Moreover, it was better economy to hack a Giaour to pieces with swords or knives than to shoot him, since every bullet cost two piastres!
It went worse still with the women, the girls, the little children even, who were dragged to the mosques and shut up there, in hunger, cold, and misery, until the murderers of their fathers, their husbands and brothers had leisure to come and take them, and work their will upon them. Oh God of mercy and pity, that these things should be in this world of Thine!
Had He quite forsaken Urfa? Not always, standing outside the Furnace, can we see therein the Form of One like unto the Son of God. In the Furnace, men know better.