"It is well now," he said; "we have pleased the Kaimakam."
The driver clambered up on the seat again, and turned his horses' heads up the road we had left.
"Thank God," said Onik Dervichian, "that we are still alive to see it depart!"
From Chifte Khan we followed a good road, through the gorgeous vale of Bozanti, to Ak Kupru, where we pitched our camp for the night by the side of the river Chakut.
The weather broke suddenly, and we reached the place in torrents of rain.
The wind, tearing in gusts up the valley, shook the walls of the tent, and the ropes strained at the pegs. It drove the rain so hard against the white canvas that it forced the drops through almost against their will. It would have been so much easier for them just to run down the outside slope; but every force in nature seemed to be let loose to make the others worse. I moved my bed a little to try and get a clear course between two sets of drips. X surveyed my endeavours from where she sat, mechanically tilting a pool off her mackintosh rug when the accumulated drops showed signs of flowing in disastrous directions.
"It's no use trying not to be wet," she said, "when there is no way of keeping dry."
A new drip in the centre of the two original ones forced me to accept her philosophy, and we sat silently watching the scene outside. In front of us a bridge crossed the river and from it wound the road we should follow, zigzagging up until it disappeared round a corner. The Taurus Mountains rose like a black barrier in front of us, towering aloft in gigantic walls of rock; then layers of black forest and grassy slopes, then misty tops showing white snow where the clouds parted. At their feet on the other side lay the great Cilician Plain, covered with yellow crops and brown earth and clothed with mud-coloured villages. On the other side also was the Mediterranean, blue and calm; there was sun and warmth and quiet, and people quietly basking in the heat. But on this side there was turmoil and cold and wet; the earth's face was hard and bare, and over it angry waters dashed in heedless, headlong fury; angry clouds overhead vied with them, shooting down relentless torrents of rain. On the other side, the blue Cydnus wound gently in and out through the level plain, and made marshes of its low banks as its waters lazily crawled round in long, curving loops. On this side the Chakut Su, goaded on by the maddened waterfalls, rushed its black waters impatiently against obstructing rocks and turning white with fury foamed round them in angry swirls and dashed on through narrow gorges, lashing at their mocking, immovable walls.