She wondered if she would be able to run that gauntlet of eyes
without being discovered
Panayota ran into the hall. Hope, that is always living where it seems most dead, thrilled her breast with a sudden ecstasy. If there was any opportunity of escaping from the filthy Turk and his pollution, why, then, she did not want to die. Before her was the open door of a bedroom, and upon the bed lay the black garment and veil in which Mohammedan women bundle themselves when about to walk or ride out. She pounced upon these and literally scrambled into them. Then she stepped to a window and looked down into the street. It was nearly deserted, save for the groups of women peeping from windows and half-opened garden gates. She wondered if she would be able to run that gauntlet of eyes without being questioned, discovered. At that very moment the situation was solved for her. The sound of a cannon was heard and the flight from the Turkish quarter began. When she reached the garden the gate was open, and the street was full of frightened women and children, all running in one direction. There was another roar, louder and fuller than the spiteful chatter of the rifles. It was like a giant shouting in a yard full of children, and it was followed by a general shriek from the rabble of fleeing non-combatants. Panayota had heard cannon before, they were simply one of the voices of war—in this case a mere phase of the riot of blood which had broken forth upon earth. But she was going to flee from it all. In that brief moment that she stood in the gate the great, faithful righteous mountains rose before her mind; they seemed to call and beckon her. Often had she dreamed of them in the days and nights of her captivity, but then they were far away. Now they had moved nearer, the mountains of God—her refuge. Crossing herself, she, too, plunged into the stream of humanity, was swallowed up and swept along by it.
Kostakes came back to his home; came back covered with Christian blood, and longing, like a Turk, for the Christian maiden whom he had locked up in his harem; came back cursing the Mother of God and gloating over the deed which he had resolved to do. But he found his house rent in twain, and his garden filled with a great heap of smoking rubbish. He looked into the cleft rooms as spectators at a theater behold the interior of a house, and there was no sign of any live thing save himself in all the street. There was Panayota's room, with the bed standing in the corner and her Cretan jacket hanging to a nail in the wall. But she was gone. Then a great fear seized Kostakes, and his mother's blood awoke in his heart and surged through his veins again. Trembling in every limb, and with pale face, from which the flush of passion had fled, he unconsciously crossed himself, muttering hoarsely: "It is the vengeance of the Virgin! I am accursed!"
CHAPTER XXXVI
AN INTERRUPTED RESCUE
"Ah, the shade is so delicious!" said the Turkish Major, stepping under a pine and removing his fez. Lindbohm dragged the handkerchief, tied turban-fashion, from his brow, and wiped his face with it. The cloth was black with powder-smoke and grimy with dust from previous contact with his features.
"It is always cool in the shade in this country," he observed, running his fingers through his damp pompadour, "no matter how white hot it is in the sun."
They were following a path that wound like the thread of a screw athwart the face of a hill that had been terraced with infinite pains and labor. Plateaus, from four to twenty feet in width, supported by walls of cobblestones, rose one above the other like steps of a wide stairway.