"What indeed?" Geoff sighed, when he grasped the full import of what Esbul had been saying. For he knew well enough the hardships of the Armenian race, and was well acquainted with the fact that the Turks hated, despised, and tortured them. Were, then, these captors of theirs likely to treat Esbul leniently once they discovered that one of the trio they had laid their hands on was an Armenian? Would they treat him as an honoured captive?—as Geoff hoped would be the case with Philip and himself. Or would they drag him aside, stand him out in the open, and shoot him like a dog?—the treatment they were meting out to his brothers.
"Listen!" he told him. "Listen, Esbul; you must go, you must go now; you must slip away; you must never let them see you! Wait! I will fall to the ground and feign illness, which will create a disturbance. Go then, take advantage of the opportunity; and, later, when you are free, and perhaps have reached Bagdad, look out for me and my comrade, and search for the whereabouts of Douglas Pasha."
He pressed the hand of the faithful fellow, and then, coughing violently, suddenly fell to the ground and writhed there, rolling from side to side, groaning and creating as much noise and fuss as was possible. At once Philip leapt to his side, kneeling on the ground and bending over him.
"What's the matter?" he asked distractedly, for he was thoroughly startled by this strange occurrence.
"Shut up!" Geoff told him. "I'm shamming. I'll tell you why later."
"What ails the dog? Come, what has happened to him?"
Turks in the rear rank, drawn up behind the captives and nearest to them, had darted forward almost at once as Geoff fell to the ground, and now one of them bent over him and gripped him by the shoulder, while he bawled into his ear. A second later a figure darted from the tent—the figure of Tewfic Pasha—and, pushing men of the front rank aside unceremoniously, came upon the scene.
"Hold your tongue!" he commanded the man shouting at Geoff. "What has happened? Ah! This officer is ill. Carry him into the tent, two of you idle fellows."
Picking their burden up, the men bore him into the tent, illuminated by swinging oil-lamps, while Philip followed unbidden.
"And the third?" asked Tewfic Pasha, casting his eyes upon Geoff and Philip, and seeing them clearly for the first time since he and his men had laid hold of them. "The third, that other fellow; where is he?"