“When I get home I’ll decide whether to put it into the fire or to publish. If it doesn’t make fuel for me it will for the critics.”
“You gave them cause enough. You’ll admit that.”
“They should have let me alone.” Gordon’s voice under its lightness hid a note of unaffected feeling, and his eyes gathered spots of fire and brown. “It wasn’t much—that first poor little college book of mine! But no! I was a noble upstart—a young fool of a peer that needed taking down! So they loosed their literary mountebanks to snap at me! Is it any wonder I hit back? Who wouldn’t?”
“At least,” averred Hobhouse, “very few would have done it so well. There was no quill-whittler left in the British Isles when you finished that Satire of yours. None of the precious penny-a-liners will ever forgive you.”
The other laughed. “I was mad, I tell you—mad!” he said with humorous ferocity. “I wrote in a passion and a sirocco, with three bottles of claret in my head and tears in my eyes. Besides, I was two years younger then. Before I sailed I suppressed it. I bought up the plates and every loose volume in London. Ah well,” he added, “one’s youthful indiscretions will pass. When I come back, I’ll give the rascals something better.”
He paused, his eyes on the stony bridle-path that led from the town. “What do you make of that?” he queried.
Hobhouse looked. Along the rugged way was approaching a strange procession. In advance walked an officer in a purple coat, carrying the long wand of his rank. Following came a file of Turkish soldiers. Then a group of servants, wearing the uniform of the Waywode—the town’s chief magistrate—and leading an ass, across whose withers was strapped a bulky brown sack. After flocked a rabble of all degrees, Turks and Greeks.
“Queer!” speculated Hobhouse. “It’s neither a funeral nor a wedding. What other of their hanged ceremonials can it be?”
The procession halted on the rock-shelf over the deep pool. The soldiers began to unstrap the ass’s brown burden. A quick flash of horrified incredulity had darted into Gordon’s eyes. The ass balked, and one of the men pounded it with his sword-scabbard. While it flinched and scrambled, a miserable muffled wail came from somewhere—seemingly from the air.
Gordon stiffened. His hand flew to the pistol in his belt. He leaped to his feet and dashed up the scraggy path toward the rock, shouting in a voice of strained, infuriate energy: