class="center pnext">A MEETING IN THE HILLS

One afternoon in July 1914, a party of five men was making its way slowly through a defile in the hills of Armenia. The singular verb is strictly appropriate, for the five men kept close together, always in the same order, and, being mounted, might have appeared to a distant observer almost as one monstrous many-legged creature, hideously shaped.

At a nearer view, however, the spectator would probably have been interested in the various composition of the party, and in certain picturesque elements pertaining to its individual members. The foremost, preceding the rest by three parts of the length of his grey horse, was a study in colour. A black turban surmounted a copper-coloured face, the most striking feature of which was a thin aquiline nose hooked at the extremity, with finely arched nostrils, and a deep dent between bushy brows out of which gleamed sloe-black eyes. On either side of his nose streamed a long, black, fiercely twirled moustache, and his shaven chin stuck out with a sort of aggressive powerfulness. A blue tunic clothed him from shoulders to waist, where he was girt with a red sash bristling with a dagger, a long knife, and several pistols. Baggy white trousers were tucked into long red boots fitted with large spurs. In his right hand he held a long bamboo lance, from which dangled a number of black balls.

The two men who rode behind him, the necks of their horses level with the buttocks of his, were not so picturesque. On the right was a young Englishman of about twenty years, whose clean-shaven face was ruddy with health and exposure to the weather, and whose grey-blue eyes were shaded from the sun by the peak of a white pith helmet. He wore white drill, with a leather belt, and brown riding boots. His companion, a slight, sallow-faced youth of about the same age, was also dressed in white, but there was something in the cut of his garments that forbade his being supposed an Englishman. Close behind these two, mounted on mules which were laden with bundles of odd shapes, rode two sturdy bearded figures, whose dark features were markedly oriental. They wore turbans and tunics which had once been white, baggy red trousers, and heavy boots of undressed leather. Rifles were slung on their backs, and long knives stuck out of their belts.

The track was stony and tortuous, winding through a jagged cleft in the hills. On either side, at varying distances from the path, rose pinnacles of rock, through fissures in which the riders caught occasional glimpses of fertile valleys below, or of solitary fastnesses or monasteries perched high among the crags. Now and then a bend in the defile opened up a view of the distant peaks of the Taurus mountains. It was wild and desolate country, growing wilder as they advanced.

They rode almost in silence. The two muleteers addressed each other sometimes in murmurs, and it might have been gathered from the expression of their countenances that they did not relish their job and were becoming increasingly uneasy. The sun was hot, and the heat reflected from the rocks struck up into the riders' faces and made them shiny with sweat. But the uneasiness of the muleteers was moral rather than physical. They were Armenians, and their journey was taking them deeper and deeper into the wilds of Kurdistan, among the strongholds of the immemorial oppressors of their race. They were not without a lingering suspicion of their leader, the picturesque person of the hook nose. He was a Kurd, and though he had guaranteed the safety of the party, they had no great confidence in the good faith of a Kurd.

No anxieties of this kind troubled the Englishman. But as the afternoon waned he became a little impatient. Ali the Kurdish guide had assured him twenty times that the end of the journey was near, yet hour followed hour, and they had not yet arrived. Since there was no doubt that Ali knew the way thoroughly, it could only be supposed that his notion of distance was imperfect. There were camp gear and provisions on the mules' backs; Frank Forester had already spent one night in camp since leaving Erzerum, and did not view with any pleasure the prospect of a second night; in these heights, 6000 feet above sea-level, the nights, even after the hottest days, were bitterly cold.

"Come now, Ali, aren't we nearly there?" Frank said at length, addressing the Kurd in a mixture of Arabic and the local dialect.

"Very near, very near," said the man, extending his arm towards what appeared to be a blank wall of rock.

"He's a man of two words," said Frank, with a shrug, to his companion on the left. "I hope we shall get there before dark."

"Yes, before dark," repeated the youth, in a thin scrapy voice.

There was silence again. The track became rougher, the wall of rock on each side steeper. At one spot Frank noticed a number of boulders, large and small, piled on a ledge almost overhanging the track.

"That's rather dangerous," he remarked. "If they fell they would block the road."

"That is what they are there for, effendim," said Ali, turning and flashing a glance at the pile. He explained that expeditions led by Turkish governors had more than once come to grief in these hills. The Kurds knew how to deal with the Osmanli.

A few minutes afterwards Ali came to a sudden halt, and hurriedly bade the other members of the party draw in towards the left, under cover of a projecting spur.

"What is it?" asked Frank.

"Men coming towards us, ten or twelve," replied the man. "We must wait until I can see who they are."

"Have they seen us?"

"Who can say? But I think I stopped before they saw us."

"Why?"

"Do they not call me Eagle Eye?" said the man proudly.

Frank smiled. There was an amusing simplicity about Ali's self-esteem.

"Well, what do you make of them?" Frank asked after a minute or two.

The Kurd, peering round the edge of the rock, had shown more and more interest as the approaching party drew nearer.

"Wallaby! It is Abdi the cursed. I know Abdi and his evil eye. A bad man, truly, for he will sin against a true believer as readily as he will kill a Giaour. He is hated by all and feared by most. We must not meet him."

"But you don't fear him, Ali?"

"Allah knows I fear him not; but I gave my word for the safety of your nobleness and these poor creatures, and it is not well we run into danger from Abdi and his larger party. Besides, there is with him, riding by his side, the dog German----"

"What, Wonckhaus?"

"Even so, effendim. That curdles your cream, or call me a liar."

"He has stolen a march on us, Joseph," said Frank, turning to his companion. His tone expressed deep annoyance. "He wouldn't have come into these parts on any other errand, and I shall be mad if he has pulled off the deal.--I don't want to meet Wonckhaus, Ali. Can we get out of the way until he has passed?"

Ali cast a keen look around. In a few moments he discovered what he sought--a gap in which the party might remain concealed. He led them through the narrow passage between two large masses of rock, turned