ich that ominous word _Khafiyeh_
was predominant.

Then Peter fired over their heads. He had to, for a chap was pawing at
his throat. The answer was a clatter of bullets on the wall above us.
It looked as if they meant to take us alive, and that I was very clear
should not happen. Better a bloody end in a street scrap than the
tender mercies of that bandbox bravo.

I don't quite know what happened next. A press drove down at me and I
fired. Someone squealed, and I looked the next moment to be strangled.
And then, suddenly, the scrimmage ceased, and there was a wavering
splash of light in that pit of darkness.

I never went through many worse minutes than these. When I had been
hunted in the past weeks there had been mystery enough, but no
immediate peril to face. When I had been up against a real, urgent,
physical risk, like Loos, the danger at any rate had been clear. One
knew what one was in for. But here was a threat I couldn't put a name
to, and it wasn't in the future, but pressing hard at our throats.

And yet I couldn't feel it was quite real. The patter of the pistol
bullets against the wall, like so many crackers, the faces felt rather
than seen in the dark, the clamour which to me was pure gibberish, had
all the madness of a nightmare. Only Peter, cursing steadily in Dutch
by my side, was real. And then the light came, and made the scene more
eerie!

It came from one or two torches carried by wild fellows with long
staves who drove their way into the heart of the mob. The flickering
glare ran up the steep walls and made monstrous shadows. The wind swung
the flame into long streamers, dying away in a fan of sparks.

And now a new word was heard in the crowd. It was _Chinganeh_, shouted
not in anger but in fear.

At first I could not see the newcomers. They were hidden in the deep
darkness under their canopy of light, for they were holding their
torches high at the full stretch of their arms. They were shouting,
too, wild shrill cries ending sometimes in a gush of rapid speech.
Their words did not seem to be directed against us, but against the
crowd. A sudden hope came to me that for some unknown reason they were
on our side.

The press was no longer heavy against us. It was thinning rapidly and
I could hear the scuffle as men made off down the side streets. My
first notion was that these were the Turkish police. But I changed my
mind when the leader came out into a patch of light.