"No, I guess not. He'd give some sign if he did."
Two other Turks, with musket on shoulder, were pacing back and forth before the door of the hut where Panayota was imprisoned. Curtis could feel his heart thumping against his breast. He struck the place with his doubled fist.
"Keep still, curse you," he muttered, "and let me think. Here is the opportunity—but how? how?"
The army was crawling along a white road that streamed like a ribbon athwart the foot of a hill. The ribbon fluttered as the dust rose in the wind. The bayonets twinkled in a dun cloud.
"Four against one," mused Curtis. "Four Turks against one Yankee trick—but how?"
Kostakes plunged into the hill and disappeared, and the blazing bayonets, line after line, were extinguished in a billow of green thyme. The American looked back over his shoulder at the door of a stone hut—the one into which the wounded Bashi Bazouk had been carried.
"Hey!" he called, "you there, hey!"
The Turk left ostensibly as Curtis' servant, but actually as his guard, stepped briskly forward, and, taking in his own the American's extended hand, pulled him to his feet.
"Help me into the house," said Curtis. "Now bring me that bench."
The man complied, after which he went to the door, and, leaning against the jamb, looked wistfully at his fellows. At one end of the room was a fireplace, filled with ashes and charred pieces of log. It was a primitive concern, the only vent for smoke being a hole in the roof directly overhead. Board platforms on each side the fireplace served as couches for the family. On one of these, flat on his back, lay the wounded man.