Pretty badly burnt about the face and fingers, Hans von Quedlinburg crawled backward out of the fire, smelling like the devil, of singed wool.  Kagig closed on him, and hurled him back again.  This time the German plunged through the fire, and out beyond it to a space between the flames and the back wall, where it must have been hot enough to make the fat run.  He stood with a forearm covering his face, while Kagig thundered at him voluminous abuse in Turkish.  I wondered, first, why the German did not shoot, and then why his loaded pistol did not blow up in the heat, until I saw that in further proof of strength Kagig had looted his pistol and was standing with one foot on it.

Finally, when the beautiful smooth cloth of which his coat was made bad taken on a stinking overlay of crackled black, the German chose to obey Kagig and came leaping back through the fire, and lay groaning on the floor, where the kahveh’s owner’s seven sons poured water on him by Kagig’s order.  His burns were evidently painful, but not nearly so serious as I expected.  I got out the first-aid stuff from our medicine bag, and Will, who was our self-constituted doctor on the strength of having once attended an autopsy, disguised as a reporter, in the morgue at the back of Bellevue Hospital in New York City, beckoned a gipsy woman, and proceeded to instruct her what to do.

However, Hans von Quedlinburg was no nervous weakling.  He snatched the pot of grease from the woman’s hands, daubed gobs of the stuff liberally on his face and hands, and sat up—­resembling an unknown kind of angry animal with his eyebrows and mustache burned off except for a stray, outstanding whisker here and there.  In a voice like a bull’s at the smell of blood he reversed what he had shouted through the flames, and commanded his Turks to arrest the lot of us.

Kagig laughed at that, and spoke to him in English, I suppose in order that we, too, might understand.

“Those Turks are my prisoners!” he said.  “And so are you!”

It was true about the Turks.  They had not given up their weapons yet, but the gipsies were between them and the door, and even the gipsy women were armed to the teeth and willing to do battle.  I caught sight of Maga’s mother-o’-pearl plated revolver, and the Turkish officer at whom she had it leveled did not look inclined to dispute the upper hand.

“You Germans are all alike,” sneered Kagig.  “A dog could read your reasoning.  You thought these foreigners would turn against me.  It never entered your thick skull that they might rather defy you than see me made prisoner.  Fool!  Did men name me Eye of Zeitoon for nothing?  Have I watched for nothing!  Did I know the very wording of the letters in your private box for nothing?  Are you the only spy in Asia?  Am I Kagig, and do I not know who advised dismissing all Armenians from the railway work?  Am I Kagig, and do I not know why?  Kopek! (Dog!) You would beggar my people, in order to curry favor with the Turk.  You seek to take me because I know your ways!  Two months ago you knew to within a day or two when these new massacres would begin.  One month, three weeks, and four days ago you ordered men to dig my grave, and swore to bury me alive in it!  What shall hinder me from burning you alive this minute?”