He cast his eyes about the room. The inevitable chest, studded with brass nails stood against the wall. He opened it.
"Cleaned out, by Jove!"
He went again to his victim, and taking a large jackknife from his pocket, deliberately opened it. The man turned as white as veal, his jaws worked convulsively on the gag as he made a vain effort to plead for mercy, and a pitiful noise, a sort of gurgling bleat, sounded in his throat.
"What the devil ails you?" asked Curtis. "O—I see," and he added in Greek:
"No kill. Cut your clothes—see?"
The American thought of the Turk, and looked out
And stooping, he slitted the Turk's sleeve from wrist to shoulder. Following the seam around with the blade, he pulled away the large rectangular piece of cloth. Seizing the other sleeve, he was about to slash into it, when he thought he heard footsteps among the stones and gravel outside the hut.
"My God!" he cried, in a hoarse whisper, and jumped into the corner beside the door, just as one of the other two Turks walked boldly into the room. Without a moment's thought Curtis brought the barrel of his rifle down upon the man's head, who dropped his own gun and pitched sprawling upon his face. For fully a minute, which seemed an hour, the American stood motionless, breathless, in the attitude which had followed the blow. Every muscle was set to knotted hardness; he held the rifle in both hands, ready to throw it suddenly to his shoulder. He did not breathe, and he listened so intently that he could hear his own heart beating, and the breathing of the man at the fireplace. Suddenly his muscles relaxed like an escaping spring, and he looked nervously about for the detached sleeve. Picking it up, he stooped over the second Turk, when the latter moved his left arm several times with the palm of the hand down, feebly suggesting an effort to rise. Then the arm dropped and the hand beat a faint tattoo on the earthen floor. There was a great shiver of the whole body, a twitching of the muscles, a queer rattle in the throat, and—silence. Curtis stared with open mouth and dilated eyes, and a great, inexplicable horror came over him. "Ah!" he gasped, and, dropping upon his knees, he ran his fingers over the skull. The hair was matted with blood, and a deep, ragged-edged dent bore witness to the terrible force with which the rifle barrel had fallen.