"In the house," said Yanni, and went off in the direction Nicholas had told him.
On that mad and ghastly day Petrobey was one of the few who had kept his head, and getting together a few sensible men, he had systematically worked his way up the street, stopping only to kill where there were signs of resistance. Open doors and men flying unarmed he left alone; there were plenty to do work like that; but he forced door after door where barricades had been put up, and attacked bodies of soldiers, who still from time to time charged out of some house or other, trying to force their way out to one of the gates. Without him and a few resolute bands of men it is possible that great slaughter would have taken place among the unarmed rabble who had followed the Greeks, and that a considerable body of men would have collected and won their way out of the city, and over the now undefended hills to Argos or Nauplia. He had also ordered up, under an armed escort, a train of provision-laden mules for the Mainats who were with him, and these supplies had just arrived before Nicholas came up.
"Stay with us and eat, dear cousin," he said to Nicholas, "for men cannot fight fasting. And, oh, Nicholas, but my life and all I have are yours, for you did not fail me when God and man forsook me!"
"Give me something, then, to take with me," said Nicholas, "for I have work before me. That girl of Mitsos' had left the house before I got there, and God knows where she is, alive or dead. I love the lad, and indeed we owe him a debt we can never repay for all he has done, and I should never forgive myself, nor hope for forgiveness, if I did not do what I could to find her."
Petrobey shook his head. "She may have taken refuge in some other house," he said. "If not—"
"Why should she fly from one house to another? If she is alive she is either somewhere in the streets, or it is just possible she has escaped."
Petrobey shook his head again.
"One woman fly in the face of that mob? God be with your kind heart, Nicholas. Poor little Mitsos, poor lad!"
Nicholas tore off a crust of bread, and staying only to swallow a draught of wine, went out again into the blinding glare of the streets. Everywhere it was the same ghastly scene over again: heaps of bodies; gutters with slow, oily streams of blood flowing and congealing; here a Turk wounded and in the last agony of death; there some young country lad shot through the heart, lying with open mouth and glazed eyes, which stared unblinkingly at the sun. Sometimes a woman lay across the path, while a little baby, still living and unhurt, lay beside where she had fallen, and groped with feeble, automatic hands for her breast. By them all without stopping went Nicholas, peering about for any sign of a living woman, but finding none. Very few apparently had been so desperate as to run into the street like Suleima, and though he felt the search wellnigh hopeless he went on. Once he came across a woman lying in the path, not yet dead, and as he bent over her she opened her eyes and spoke to him in Turkish. Nicholas questioned her in Greek, but she did not understand, and he went on again. In a little more than an hour he was back and found Yanni waiting for him, but he too had seen no sign of her they had never seen but sought.
All that afternoon the work went on, and at sunset Petrobey set a strong watch at all the gates, and he with most of the men went to sleep in the camp outside, where the air was less stifling and the poisonous breath from the murdered town came not. But Nicholas, who still hoped against hope, would not leave the place; by night, he thought, if Suleima was in hiding somewhere in the town she might try to steal back to the house, or attempt to escape by one of the gates; and he sat waiting in the doorway of Abdul Achmet's house till he fell asleep from sheer weariness, having seen naught but the dogs paddling about on their horrible errands. He woke early, before it was dawn, shivering and feeling ill; and thinking that his chill came only from exposure to the night air, got up and walked about, waiting for day. As soon as it was light he went out of the south gate to the Mainat camp, and had breakfast with Petrobey, who shook his head sadly over the absence of news.