Mehemet pointed. The British troops and the marines were drawn up in front of the custom house. Red jackets and gleaming helmet tips on one side; bare knees in a row, kilts and little caps with frisking tails on the other. Numerous Bashi Bazouks were seen standing among the throng, several of them upon its outer edge. Kostakes caught sight of the hated Platonides in company with a British officer. The guard saluted, and the Cretan raised his hat, as though the military courtesy were intended for him.
"If there is a row," chuckled Kostakes, "my men will attend to you. They'll install you!"
And he started briskly across the square, accompanied by Mehemet.
Ben Sabbath retired into the shop, trembling with fear.
"Our best customers," he muttered, "and they never forgive nor forget!" But he could not restrain his curiosity, and so, after another moment, he peeped from the door again. Everything was proceeding quietly and in order.
"Bah! There will be no trouble, with all those English there."
He tiptoed across the open space in front of the door, ready to scurry back at the least symptom of alarm. He reached the edge of the throng, and forgetting his fear, in the midst of so many friends and neighbors, pushed boldly through, arriving at the farther edge just in time to receive a bullet in his breast. Clutching at the air, he staggered a few steps into the open and fell dead, with one loud cry to Allah for help. Like many another peaceful and inoffensive man he had fallen the first victim in a scene of violence.
CHAPTER XXXIV
STILL WITH THE ARMY
Kostakes himself had been the indirect cause of Ben Sabbath's death. This is what had happened: He and the impetuous Mehemet were standing close to one end of the line of Highlanders, making insulting remarks in Greek for the benefit of Platonides and their Christian neighbors. Stung beyond endurance, the excitable Greek pulled the English officer's sleeve and pointed to his tormentors with raised arm. Kostakes stepped boldly forward and shook his fist in the direction of his enemy, whereupon one of the statues in kilts came to life and dropped the butt of his musket on the Turk's toe. The latter sprang back with a cry of pain and the exclamation in Turkish: