"YANNI WAS STRUGGLING IN THE GRASP OF TWO MEN, THE GREEK AND THE TURK"
There was no time for exultation. Mitsos picked himself up and gained his feet just as Yanni and the Turk, who were still struggling together, fell—the Turk uppermost. Mitsos saw him reach his hand to the butt of his pistol and draw it, keeping his knee on Yanni while he cocked it with the other hand. But in a moment he had done the same, and the two reports were almost simultaneous. Just above Yanni's head there appeared on the wooden floor a raking furrow, as if some wild beast's claw had struck and torn it; but the Turk fell back, shot through the head.
The smoke cleared away, and Mitsos pulled Yanni from under the soldier; he lay quite still, and the edge of his black curls was singed and burned. Mitsos propped him up against the wall, and ran to get water from the millstream outside. When he came back Yanni's eyes were open, and he was looking about in a dazed, confused way. Mitsos poured a draught of it down his throat and sluiced his head, whereat Yanni looked up and smiled at him.
"Did I not say it would be very good?" he murmured. "Oh, Mitsos, the black devils!"
He sat up and looked round, then pointed at the dead body of the Turk.
"I think I was stunned by the fall," he continued. "I remember falling and hitting my head an awful bang. So you shot him. Where is the other?"
He staggered to his feet and looked round at the millstone; it was streaked and clotted with something dark and oily, and its edges dripped with the same. Krinos's fingers, though he had been dead two minutes at the least, still opened and shut, like seaweed under the suck of a ground-swell, and the nails scratched impotently on the rough-splintered floor.