"Well, what do you want?"
The man retreated a step. Kostakes' face was purple and his eyes looked uncanny in the half light, like a cat's.
"Your men, I said, are going to the custom house."
"Bah! Tell them to go to the devil!"
The Bashi Bazouk salaamed and started away, but Mehemet caught him by the arm.
"The Effendi is in a terrible rage about Platonides. Tell the men to go up in twos and threes, and—and—to keep out of mischief."
"We are not armed, Effendi," replied the man, smiling grimly, and laying his hand upon the butt of one of the large, old-fashioned pistols in his belt. Besides these weapons, he carried a long Cretan knife in a leathern sheath, tipped with silver.
"We are not armed," he repeated, "except for dress."
"There will surely be trouble," whined Ben Sabbath, "and these foreigners are our best customers."
"What are the Christians doing now?" sneered Kostakes, standing in the door. He had passed into one of those periods of calm which manifest themselves after violent ebullitions of rage, like the fearful silences between thunderclaps.