that it would be my
duty to find another route. And from that I went on to visualize the
consternation of my friend Jack, when I turned up with the astonishing
_entourage_ of two women and a suitcase, and informed him of my
determination. I had a tremendous desire to know, beforehand, just what
he would do and say. He would stand by an old friend of course. But how?
And while I reflected in my doorway and listened to the popping, which
went on with varying intensity, still more figures sped past the end of
my street. I recalled the perplexing fact that as we had driven into the
town past the barrier, there had been no one on guard. I learned later
that, with unbelievable stupidity, the authorities had sent the army out
toward Monastir and had left the city with a mere handful of soldiers to
deal with the revolutionaries. It was this fact, I suppose, of finding
nobody on guard, which had frightened our driver, and no sooner had we
alighted before the doorway in that steep, narrow street off the _Via
Egnatia_ than he had demanded his fare and galloped away up hill and out
of sight. 'You'll have to get another carriage,' Pollyni had told me in
an anxious voice. 'You'll find one down near the big church.' The
arrangement was that they would be ready by the time I returned.

"But I had got no further than the corner when the first shots had been
fired, and while I hesitated, a couple of soldiers had hurried along,
looking back at every other stride, until suddenly one of them had been
hit. And I had watched him die. I could still see him, an inert heap in
the gutter. And while I debated what I was to do to get out of this
unforeseen difficulty, the popping became a series of sharp, definite,
staccato cracks, and a squad of soldiers, armed with short, blunt
rifles, shuffled sideways into view. There was a species of discipline
in their movements, for they deployed out over the road and dropped on
one knee, while one of them stepped briskly to the curb and spoke in a
harsh, authoritative tone to some invisible laggard. He came into view
very slowly, dragging one leg, and halted, in the very middle of the
street, his rifle pointing up hill, his face turned toward their
assailants, his hand to his breast fumbling for cartridges. Now and
again he lurched as though wounded, but he never relaxed his defiant
glare. His hand worked quickly over the breech and he seemed about to
swing his weapon round when he must have been hit again,