The ten Kurds who had been left with us as guides and to help us keep peace among the mountains all volunteered to lend a hand in the fight, and Ranjoor Singh accepted gladly.  The hostages, on the other hand, were a difficult problem; for they detested being hostages.  They would have made fine allies for Tugendheim, supposing he had meditated any action in our rear.  They could have guided him among the mountains with all our horses and mules and supplies.  And suppose he had made up his mind to start through the storm to find Wassmuss with their aid, what could have prevented him?  He might betray us to Wassmuss as the price of his own forgiveness.  So we took the hostages with us, and when we found a place between some rocks where they could have shelter we drove them in there, setting four troopers to guard them.  Thus Tugendheim was kept in ignorance of their whereabouts, and with no guides to help him play us false.  As for the Greek doctor, we took him with us, too, for we were likely to need his services that night, and in truth we did.

We started the instant the storm began—­twenty minutes or more before it settled down to rage in earnest.  That enabled us to march about two-thirds of the way toward the Turkish camp and to deploy into proper formation before the hail came and made it impossible to hear even a shout.  Hitherto the rain had screened us splendidly, although it drenched us to the skin, and the noise of rain and wind prevented the noise we made from giving the alarm; but when the hail began I could not hear my own foot-fall.  Ranjoor Singh roared out the order to double forward, but could make none hear, so he seized a rifle from the nearest man and fired it off.  Perhaps a dozen men heard that and began to double.  The remainder saw, and followed suit.

The hail was in our backs.  No man ever lived who could have charged forward into it, and not one of the Turkish sentries made pretense at anything but running for his life.  Long before we reached their posts they were gone, and a flash of lightning showed the tents blown tighter than drums in the gaining wind and white with the hailstones.  When we reached the tents there was hail already half a foot deep underfoot where the wind had blown it into drifts, and the next flash of lightning showed one tent—­the bimbashi’s own—­split open and blown fluttering into strips.  The bimbashi rushed out with a blanket round his head and shoulders and tried to kick men out of another tent to make room for him, and failing to do that he scrambled in on top of them.  Opening the tent let the wind in, and that tent, too, split and fluttered and blew away.  And so at last they saw us coming.

They saw us when we were so close that there was no time to do much else than run away or surrender.  Quite a lot of them ran away I imagine, for they disappeared.  The bimbashi tried to pistol Ranjoor Singh, and died for his trouble on a trooper’s bayonet.  Some of the Turks tried to fight, and they were killed.  Those who surrendered were disarmed and driven away into the storm, and the last we saw of them was when a flash of lightning showed them hurrying helter-skelter through the hail with hands behind their defenseless heads trying to ward off hailstones.  They looked very ridiculous, and I remember I laughed.