THE STORM BREAKS
Tarsus,
Friday, April sixteenth,
Nineteen-Nine.
Mother dear:
Men came here to tell Mrs. Christie trouble was coming. Offered to send a guard for our gate. They knew that Dr. Christie and Miner Rogers and Herbert—three of the four men of the mission family—had gone away to Adana. The fellows were Kurds. They looked like brigands. Mrs. Christie put them off, saying we were not afraid. This with a calm little air as if she didn't quite realize. When I asked her about it, she replied: "Didn't you see? They wanted to get hold of the college gate." What a woman she is! To-day with Armenians coming to us in greater numbers every hour, I say to myself: What if the Kurds had possession of our broad gate?
From our study window I can see the Cilician Plain stretching on and on to the Taurus. The Plain to-day looks like a monstrous Turkish rug. It is a riot of color, quantities of poppies and irises and other spring flowers. Did you ever think of this: red predominates in Turkish rugs?
* * * * * * *
Last night we learned that the train going through towards Adana had turned back at Yenidje. By this time one hundred refugees had come to us. Massacre seemed imminent. Socrates barricaded all my shutters, and watched outside my door.
This morning another telegram came from Herbert saying that he was detained, and would get back when he could. There were no trains in either direction, so we knew the whole country was upset. Rumors began to leak through about the terrible times in Adana and I knew why Herbert had not returned. This morning there were more than five hundred refugees with us.
In the course of the morning we heard that Armenians had been killed at the Tarsus station and that the station master and other employees had fled. Then there was the whistle of a train from Adana. It brought a wild mob of Bashi-bazouks. For concentrated hatred, a Bashi-bazouk is a small-pox germ. I saw the train vomiting forth its filthy burden. The men wore no uniforms. They were dressed in dirty white bloomer-things, with bits of carpet fastened up their legs with crisscross ropes, in place of shoes. They looked like worn out rag dolls. I saw them gather in a mud colored fan-shaped crowd at the flimsy entrance to the Konak, where the authorities could not be quick enough in passing out guns and ammunition and other instruments of the Devil to every one. Then Hell broke loose. The townspeople joined themselves to this mob. Along the road that crosses the space between us and the railway they went in groups of fifty, going at an easy run and brandishing their arms, uttering low weird howls that grew in a crescendo of rage. They made for the Armenian quarter, the last houses of which are only one hundred and fifty yards from us.
Shooting started and continued all day. Along with the sound of the shots we could hear the screams of the dying.