"Allah choke him!" growled the Kurd. "It is a knife in my heart that I may not stay to catch him. Yet to spit Armenians is fitter work for a Kurd than to hunt an Englishman, and be sure that few of those dogs who are fleeing to the mountains near Antioch will escape us."
"Did I dream, or did my ears hear from your lips the boast that you yourself would flay this very Englishman?" asked the captain gently: perhaps he could afford to be ironical now that Abdi was recalled for a more congenial task.
"Mashallah! would you taunt me, you pale knock-kneed son of an Anatolian cabbage?" shouted Abdi. "By the Beard, I will carve your carcase into gobbets before----"
"Peace!" said the lieutenant soothingly. "Here is supper. Let us comfort our souls in all peaceableness."
The storm blew over, and for a brief space Frank heard nothing but gobbling above him. Then the Kurd shouted for more bread.
"Peace be with you, effendim," said the woman, "but there is no more."
"No more!" roared the truculent Kurd. "What are these few crumbs that you have set before three illustrious officers, and me the most illustrious, even me, Abdi the Kurd?"
MAP OF THE SOUTHERN PART OF THE GALLIPOLI PENINSULA.
"Wallahy! noble effendim," the woman faltered, "I was but even now telling my man of the ill that befell this pious house this very night. Behold, there was a fair array of loaves fresh from the oven upon yonder stone, and I went from the house but for one moment to learn the meaning of a great outcry among my geese, and when I came in, lo! of all those fair loaves only two were left, and those two you have even now consumed, effendim. Surely an evil spirit has flown in, and stolen the loaves, and departed again secretly."