It was lighter now that they had arrived at what appeared to be the centre of the Turkish concentration; for numerous camp-fires were dotted about the place, lighting up the surroundings with their reflection, and indeed making the outer darkness even denser, even more impenetrable. There loomed up now in front of them a row of tents, one larger than the others, over which a flag could be heard fluttering in the breeze, though its folds could not be seen so easily. There were lamps burning in the tent, and towards it the guard escorted their prisoners.
"Halt!" commanded Tewfic Pasha, and then entered the tent.
"Master," whispered Esbul at that moment, taking advantage of the fact that the guard had released their grip of their prisoners, and were now standing at attention dressed in two lines, one in front and one behind their captives. "Master, let me say a word in your ear while there is time. Listen! I am an Armenian."
It was a fact of which Geoff was thoroughly well aware, and yet a fact the seriousness of which had not struck him till that moment.
"An Armenian! An Armenian, yes!" he said, speaking his thoughts in a whisper; "and the Turks have no love for that nation."
"Love, Excellency!" exclaimed Esbul, with a bitterness which was strange to him. "Love, my master! Of a truth, where the Armenian race is concerned, the Turk has nothing but bitterness and hatred to show. You have heard maybe of their doings in past years?"
"I have," Geoff said consolingly.
"How these Turkish fiends massacred our people, how they hate us perhaps because we are Christians, and how they have done their utmost to exterminate us, to grind us under their heel, to rid this land of Turkey of us."
"I have heard the tale," Geoff told him sadly enough, for for many years the massacre of unfortunate and helpless Armenians in Turkey had been carried out by the Sultan's people, and had more than once roused the bitter anger of peoples in Europe. Yet who could control the Turk in the centre of his own country? What nation could prevent the Sultan from wreaking his fiendish hate upon these people? And now that this gigantic war had broken out, and Turkey had declared herself in favour of the Germans, who could prevent the agents of the Kaiser, those sinister individuals, from persuading the Young Turk Party once more to commence their hideous work in the neighbourhood of Erzerum and the Caucasus Mountains? Already, urged on by those satellites of the Kaiser—those ruthless individuals, possessed of as little mercy as their fellows in Europe—massacres of the Armenians had once again begun, and ere they were finished were to account for almost a million of these miserable, unfortunate individuals. No wonder Esbul was trembling—Esbul, the Armenian, the faithful servant who had followed Douglas Pasha into the heart of Mesopotamia, and who had borne that message to our hero.
"Master," he said again, making violent efforts to control his words, "for you, who are a prisoner, and for your comrade, things may be well enough, for at heart the Turk is kindly disposed, and thinks well of the British, but for me, an Armenian, what is there to hope for?"