Chapter XIV: Off to Egypt 183 (3)

Men came here to tell Mrs. Christie trouble was coming. Offered to send a guard for our gate. They knew that Dr. Christie and Miner Rogers and Herbert--three of the four men of the mission family--had gone away to Adana. The fellows were Kurds. They looked like brigands. Mrs. Christie put them off, saying we were not afraid. This with a calm little air as if she didn't quite realize. When I asked her about it, she replied: "Didn't you see? They wanted to get hold of the college gate." What a woman she is! To-day with Armenians coming to us in greater numbers every hour, I say to myself: What if the Kurds had possession of our broad gate?

From our study window I can see the Cilician Plain stretching on and on to the Taurus. The Plain to-day looks like a monstrous Turkish rug. It is a riot of color, quantities of poppies and irises and other spring flowers. _Did you ever think of this: red predominates in Turkish rugs?_

* * * * *

Last night we learned that the train going through towards Adana had turned back at Yenidje. By this time one hundred refugees had come to us. Massacre seemed imminent. Socrates barricaded all my shutters, and watched outside my door.

This morning another telegram came from Herbert saying that he was detained, and would get back when he could. There were no trains in either direction, so we knew the whole country was upset. Rumors began to leak through about the terrible times in Adana and I knew why Herbert had not returned. This morning there were more than five hundred refugees with us.

In the course of the morning we heard that Armenians had been killed at the Tarsus station and that the station master and other employees had fled. Then there was the whistle of a train from Adana. It brought a wild mob of Bashi-bazouks. For concentrated hatred, a Bashi-bazouk is a small-pox germ. I saw the train vomiting forth its filthy burden. The men wore no uniforms. They were dressed in dirty white bloomer-things, with bits of carpet fastened up their legs with crisscross ropes, in place of shoes. They looked like worn out rag dolls. I saw them gather in a mud colored fan-shaped crowd at the flimsy entrance to the Konak, where the authorities could not be quick enough in passing out guns and ammunition and other instruments of the Devil to every one. Then Hell broke loose. The townspeople joined themselves to this mob. Along the road that crosses the space between us and the railway they went in groups of fifty, going at an easy run and brandishing their arms, uttering low weird howls that grew in a crescendo of rage. They made for the Armenian quarter, the last houses of which are only one hundred and fifty yards from us.

Shooting started and continued all day. Along with the sound of the shots we could hear the screams of the dying.

All day there has been a procession of refugees. They seem to have gathered in little groups first, for they came in a few hundred at a time in pulsation. In the afternoon they came steadily. Mother! the sound of the feet of the multitude. Some poor things were wounded, some were looking for husbands or children that could not be found. They brought nothing with them. Sick women were carried on the backs of their husbands. Little children struggled to keep up with panic-stricken elders. Children, feeble old people, chronic invalids, the desperately ill, were possessed with supernatural strength. When they reached the goal, our gate, they were like the Durando we described in the Marathon race last summer. A big fellow in the meager guard at our gate was a host in himself. He had a hearty voice, and kept waving his arms and shouting, "Come in, everybody. Inside this gate is safety for you all! Courage, little children." Occasionally he would pick up a crying baby or a sick woman, and help them inside. It was the one cheerful kindly sight of the day--to see that soldier.

About noon from Jeanne and Henri's study I saw an attack on a house very near us. There was a low hum in the distance: then a roar, and on the second-story balcony twenty-five Bashi-bazouks climbed, bursting in the door to the house of the richest man in Tarsus. There was shooting and screaming: then flying bits of burning paper came out of the windows, followed by blue and red flames. By opening our shutters cautiously we could hear the cruel hiss of the flames and smell kerosene in the smoke. Then the rending and crashing of the floors made a deafening noise, and the sparks began to alight on our property.

This is the regular order of things,--kill, loot, burn. The Armenian quarter is the most substantial part of the city. Most of the people store cotton on the ground floor, and this, together with liberal applications of kerosene, served to make a holocaust. Now at evening-time we realize our own imminent danger.

I have made tea about twenty times during the day. What a blessing you sent those provisions. Good thing we chose from among our wedding gifts the chafing-dish and the tea-basket to bring along on our journey. I have given away everything I could spare. Things to drink out of are a vital necessity. I gave away my tooth-mug to a thirsty old woman, and reserved as my drinking cup the little china affair one keeps tooth-brushes in on a washstand. It stands unabashed beside the smart little silver tea-kettle and spirit lamp. How I miss my oranges. Mother Christie found a stray one this morning and sent it in to me. The boys brought some charcoal and made a fire in a _mangal_ in my fireplace. I have tried my hand at a _pilaf_. Kevork brought some sheep-tail grease in a bit of paper and I held my nose while I melted it and poured it into the _pilaf_. I do not see why these people do not cook with wagon grease and be done with it.

Your tins of condensed milk I have given to Mary Rogers for her baby. A mother brought her two-year-old boy to me. The poor little thing had had nothing to eat since yesterday. The whole Armenian question sums itself up for me in those big brown eyes and their kindling with sudden light as I held a bowl of warm milk to that baby's trembling mouth. I couldn't make him smile, though, for all my coaxing.

The meals of our immediate family are served in my bedroom. Mrs. Christie's house, the big dining-room, the school buildings are overflowing with refugees. It is only the most strenuous efforts of the college boys that prevent them from over-running us too. I have just my bedroom, Mary the other bedroom for herself and the baby, and Miss Talbot is in our study. Jeanne's extra bedroom eighteen women have managed to get into. Henri's study is crowded too. I am working on baby clothes to keep my mind occupied. I am making flannel nighties: there are hundreds of babies out under our trees and on the hard asphalt of the tennis court without one change of clothing.

Dear, dear, here is a woman who has been in terrible suffering all day long. Her husband and brother were with her and several times tried to flee with her. They picked her up a bit ago and started with her through the red and black streets. Overpowered, she stopped in ----'s garden and had her baby. Wrapping the baby in something and putting it in the mother's arms, the men picked her up and made the final dash for safety. We have pulled the buggy out of the carriage-house and made a place for her in the corner. She is resting nicely now.

* * * * *

Socrates came to me and said that friends of his, Greeks like himself, have invited him to join them in an attempt to escape to Mersina. They have a dead Greek's passport for him. He asked my advice. I told him I could not take the responsibility. Danger? There is little choice--staying here or trying to get away. I told him to go off by himself to think it over. He came back to tell me this: "You are alone. If you have to run away, you have nobody to go with you. Professor Gibbons--no one knows where he is. I will stay with you."[4]

* * * * *

Have been sitting on the steps leading up to the rooms of the Imers, looking out over the pathetic throng in the garden. Kevork in his snug little coat and long gingham student-apron has been sitting beside me. "You are hungry," said he. "Your future may be five minutes long. Your husband is missing. Maybe he is dead. Those telegrams were dated yesterday, you know. Your baby is not born. You cannot defend yourself or run away. _You are just like an Armenian woman._ Tell me what you think about revenge?"

* * * * *

Dostumian hunted wildly and fruitlessly for his mother and little sister among the crowd. Harutun urged that he, on account of his red hair, would not be taken for an Armenian. He could find them. When he got to the house, he put the mother on his back and ran to us before the Bashi-bazouks knew what he was up to. When he took the mother, he hid the little girl in a corner by piling sticks of wood on her. Told her to keep quiet, and wait for him to come back.

By the time he returned to excavate the youngster, and had put her on his back, and climbed to the roof of the house, the Bashi-bazouks were after him. Oh, the flat Oriental roofs! Harutun skipped from one to the other, taking amazing distances, with the child on his back. Danger is a prod. He got to a place on some roof beside which a foreign construction company had set up a pole in anticipation of the electric lighting system. Down that pole slipped Harutun. He ran like mad, and restored the youngster to her mother and her brother.

But electric lighting companies do not sandpaper their poles. Harutun's hands were cruelly torn. His first thought when he began to think of himself again was to come to me to get his hands dressed. He sat down on Herbert's steamer trunk and I picked out the splinters. I washed the wounds and bound them up with gauze and camphenol, also the palms of the hands and the wrists. He begged me to leave the fingers out so he could work. The boy was as happy as a bird: for it flooded into his brain what he had done. While his hands were still trembling from the pain and excitement, he said, "Meeses Geebons, I am not afraid to die. Dying is as natural as borning. But before I die I want to kill a Turk--just one Turk!" If his hands had not been so wrapped up in bandages, I could have shaken his right one.

After I fixed up Harutun's hands I was kept quite busy for a space with that sort of thing. A woman came and asked for some clothes for her baby and showed us the only dress she had for him. It was covered with blood--the blood of his murdered father. One dear little fellow, a favorite of Herbert's, came to me with a gash in his head. His father has been burned to death in their house and his little sister is wounded also. I prepared the bandages for a man with a gun shot wound in his neck. He was lying just outside my door. Herbert used to joke me about my emergency outfit, saying that there were enough bandages in it to do for an army, and asking how I ever expected to use sterilized catgut. Every bit of that outfit is useful now. It has saved lives!

_Friday night._

Sky red with fire. Half the horizon is in flames, the whole Armenian quarter is burning. Our native teachers and boys under the direction of Henri Imer are fighting the flames valiantly. The sparks are flying toward us, driven by a heavy wind, and eternal vigilance is required to note every spark the moment it falls, to quench it in time. The blaze is so brilliant that we can read by it. A telegram came from Herbert about eleven o'clock. I signed the receipt by the light of the flames. I cannot read it. It is a mixture of Turkish and French. What I can make out is the hour of sending--this means that twenty-one hours ago he was still alive.

Our condition is becoming desperate. The fire threatens us. The fury of the mob may lead them to attack us. We are sheltering more than four thousand refugees, a wailing, terror-stricken mass, all trying to get out of bullet range.

We have not been able to get any word to the outside world: we realize now that Adana is cut off and we feel sure that our husbands are in as desperate a plight as are we. Word must go to Mersina. We have a Turkish hand-writing teacher, a Moslem, who is faithful to us. We have sent him to-night by horse with Harutun, the senior whose courage was thoroughly tested this afternoon. They rode into the jaws of death perhaps, but there is nothing else to do. Not only our lives but those of the refugees are at stake.

_Nearly midnight._

We have prepared a few things in case we have to leave the place suddenly. Run? Where? Somebody or other remarked grimly enough: "Fix only what you can carry by yourself."

I came into the bedroom, and here I sit on Herbert's steamer chair. The wood fire has gone out. The room is chilly and looks so very large. One candle gives such a little light. The big blue rugs have been carried off for bedding. How bare the place seems. Oh, how lonely! The chafing-dish stands there unwashed and tilted crooked in its stand. I have torn the bed to pieces to get a blanket for my bundle. The baby basket all dainty and waiting is on the steamer trunk beside our bed. Will it cradle my little one? If it is born out in the open, at least it won't be cold, for I have taken from the basket the knitted blanket you sent me and the package of fragrant clothing inside the tiny sheet. For some time I have had clothes ready there for after the first bath. I tied up the bundle with our double blanket, but it was too heavy for me. I have rearranged it with a small blanket, tied corner-wise. In it are diapers, a piece of tape sterilized and a pair of surgical scissors wrapped in gauze, a length of uncut flannel, and that is all. This will be heavy enough: for I must save Herbert's thesis, and that in its filing case is a pretty solid weight. Precious thesis--it won him his fellowship, and if there is any future, that thesis must go to Paris. Poor little Mariam out there in the carriage house--how I pitied her this evening. Was it only a few hours ago they brought her in? I envy her now. Her baby is born.

My reason tells me that this bundle beside me is necessary: but it seems futile. Everything has gone. One support after another has been removed. Humanly speaking, the fact of safety is gone. Am I cold-blooded, that the sense of it remains? Sufficiency of food? Gone. Human ties? Gone. No sister, no brothers, no mother, no husband. Railway communications? Gone. There is no Consul at Mersina. No protection from my own Government. Did you ever wonder which end of your life you are living? Kevork was right a bit ago about the future looking five minutes long. My religion has suddenly become like a solid rock, and I have planted my back right against it. Religion is simple, and it works.

Tell Herbert I have not cried once, that I am not afraid. Tell him possessions mean nothing. What good can things do? There are hundreds of gold liras in the safe. What good are they? I see where life stretches beyond the place money can signify.

All this time I have boosted myself up by saying, "Don't break down yet, wait for something worse." If you wait for real trouble--then you are so busy, you have no time to worry. My religion has in one night become vitally subjective. I know--because when I reason about it, I marvel at my own calm. Shall it be with me as it was with Elsie Hodge, the Bryn Mawr girl who was killed in the Boxer uprising? All day I have been thinking about her. I am writing this and shall leave it here--in case. I cannot write the words needed to describe the fate of women in my condition at the hands of these fiends. Maybe some day I can tell you.

* * * * *

Sitting on the floor in Mary Roger's room, writing with my paper on my knee. When I left our room, I went to Herbert's wardrobe and put his overcoat on. In one pocket I stuffed Educator crackers out of the box you sent. Some fell on the floor and I left them there. A wee knitted hug-me-tight went into another, and into a third pocket I put the silk American flag Clement gave me when I was married. Miss Talbot is lying down on a cot in our study. Being a Britisher, she is able to sleep. Before I left her in the study, I got out the filing case containing Herbert's thesis. I put it down by the door here in Mary's room, right close to my feet. Then I lay down on the floor with my bundle as a pillow.

* * * * *

We, from our darkened room where that blessed baby Rogers is sleeping quietly, have been looking out of the window. Two or three Turks pushed a pump affair up in front of a house near by. "Humanity is not dead yet!" I thought, "they are going to try to limit the fire." The water streamed from the hose and it was kerosene. They soaked the roof. Little fingers of flame began waving in the wind. Heavy black smoke is hanging over the town. We can feel the hot air and smell the oil--like a gigantic smoking lamp. Sparks fell on the windowsill just now as I stood there. I patted them with my hands and put them out, but not before they burned little holes in the wood.

We closed the blinds and sat down cross-legged on the floor and talked quietly. About being widows. The boys must soon come back to us--either that, or they are dead. We wondered which one of us was a widow. Perhaps both.

Once Mary asked me: "Brownie, what are you praying for?" "Goodness, Mary, I don't know what I am praying for. Guess I have just got to live with my soul opened toward Heaven." A little later Mary spoke again, this time cheerfully, for she had thought of something: "I know, let's pray for the wind to change."

Sure enough, it was blowing in our direction. We went to the window again, never thinking of danger. _You cannot consistently keep your mind on danger to yourself._ As we looked, the flames were lying low, blue tipped with yellow, and reaching towards us. We concentrated on a change of the wind, and there was a change. The flames instead of lying low were vertical, licking and swaying. Then they lay low again, this time back on the ruined buildings. This may have been coincidence. You may think so if you like. But I believe I saw the hand of the Lord come down and forbid those flames to move farther. Never again will I have to be reasoned with to believe in miracles.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] As a result of his heroism, Socrates (that is not his real name, but never mind) has been our ward ever since. With what aid we could give ourselves, and the help of friends to whom we have told this story, Socrates finished his college course at Tarsus, took a year in medicine at Beirut, and has since been studying at the Turkish Medical School in Constantinople. Despite the difficulty of communications between Paris and Constantinople, we have been able to follow him and help him without interruption during the years of the war in Europe. Socrates will have his medical degree in the spring of 1917. He is a loyal Turkish subject, and has done splendid work in ministering to the wounded in the Balkan War and in the present war. When the Bulgarians were attacking the defenses of Constantinople, we loaned him to Major Doughty-Wylie, who was at that time in charge of the British field ambulance work. Major Doughty-Wylie recommended him for the British Red Cross medal.

LIFE AND DEATH

_Tarsus, Saturday, April seventeenth, Sometime in the morning._

Mother dear:

Once that wind changed, we slept. Mary and I slept from one to three. Baby Rogers is a good little chap. Yes, my dear, "I laid me down and slept. I awaked, for the Lord sustained me." This is the way to learn a text--live it.

When we got awake, it was daylight. Shouting again at the gate. I ran to my study window that looks down into the street outside of the gate. Excited men were pushing and struggling. Their cries were shrill. My heart sank. Was the killing to be renewed under our eyes? Then Mary said, "They are selling bread, and want six _metallics_ a loaf." The business of life goes on in spite of cataclysms. Selling bread! In the midst of life we are in death. Yes, but in the midst of death we are in life. The family goes home to dinner after the funeral. When you are living the cataclysm, however, your vision is not adjusted to the small events. The matter-of-fact things are happening because they always happen and must happen.

* * * * *

A door outside slammed. Then the door into Mary's room opened. In came Mother Christie, looking as though she hadn't slept. The steel-rimmed spectacles used indifferently by herself and Daddy Christie, were pushed away up on her forehead. She said briskly: "Another baby! a dear little boy, and not a rag to put on him!" I went to my steamer trunk to fetch three little flannel petticoats and two kimonos. Down jumped the spectacles without her putting her hand on them. "No, no, my child, I cannot take them." Before I had pressed them into her arms, she had finished her protesting. Away she went, murmuring: "Give and spend and the Lord will send. That's what you think." Well, there may be time for me to make more petticoats.

They say that eight hundred houses have been burned. Many people were still in the houses. If they showed themselves, or tried to get out by windows or roofs, they were shot. It was death either way. We fear that few Armenians are alive in Tarsus outside of our compound and in the Catholic Mission nearby. The whole Armenian quarter, right up to my windows, is burning. The bright blaze persists in many places where there is yet much to feed upon.

_Saturday afternoon._

We did not think of breakfast. Mary had fallen asleep again after nursing the baby. I munched biscuits in my bedroom, and then I undid on the bed the bundle I had made up in the night. The piece of flannel might be needed sooner than I could use it. So I stretched it out on the mattress, and cut four flannel petticoats. With the blinds barricaded, my only light was what filtered through the slits in the shutter of the side window. I had to keep doing something, and I did not want to go out to talk to any one. So I found my thread and thimble, and began to make up the petticoats.

It may have been minutes or hours. I shall never know, for I had not looked at the clock when I woke. Suddenly I heard cries outside, that were taken up by the thousands in the college yard. In the mingling of voices I caught my husband's name. "Steady now," I thought. "Is this life or death?" Then Jeanne's golden head appeared at my door.

"Herbert's here," said Jeanne.

I hurried out into the study, and ran to the window with Mary and Jeanne. Daddy Christie and Herbert were at the gate, surrounded by regular soldiers. But we did not see the tall figure of Miner Rogers. Joy and apprehension were strangely mingled. I ran first to the door leading to the balcony. Up the steps came Daddy Christie. Herbert and Henri were behind, evidently trying to keep people from following them. Daddy Christie said, "Thank God, you're safe: where is Mary?" I led him to our study. People seemed to rise up from nowhere, crowding about us. Jeanne had instinctively taken Mary into her own room, and Daddy Christie followed.

It may have been minutes or hours. I shall not know. After the lapse of a few hours, it seems to me that I am writing fiction. Perhaps I make it up as I go along. Never again shall I believe in the accuracy of testimony given on the witness-stand about what happened in moments of stress.

Turning so that I looked towards the double-doors, I saw Herbert standing there. Surging thoughts went through me. One was that I must not let these emotions reach the baby. I clinched will and muscles to safeguard the little thing. The other thought was to get over beside Herbert. As I made my way through the crowd toward the door, I thought: have I died and Herbert too? What was that I suffered last night? How can I know? Then the brain in my head told me: touch him, and if he is warm, it is not death. I took his left hand in my right and with my other hand touched his face. It was warm.

"Where is Miner Rogers?" "He is dead," came the answer. Herbert's free hand reached back of him for the door-knob. He went slowly out on the balcony, closing the door behind him, as if he did not know what he was doing.

Herbert has no recollection of this meeting. We figure out that it is because he had already been reassured about me, for he distinctly remembers seeing me at the study window as he came through the street below. The second his anxiety was relieved about me, his mind concentrated on the terrible news he and Dr. Christie were bringing to Mary.

I turned back toward the room to realize that Dr. Christie was telling Mary. This was too much for me and I went into our bedroom beyond. One sees on the stage, and reads in novels, meetings like this. Ours was not dramatic. It was natural and human. Herbert was entering the bedroom from the other door at the same moment, and when he saw me he asked: "Can you make some tea? I am hungry."

I investigated my washstand to see what I could find in the way of food. Two Turkish officers had followed Herbert into the bedroom. They were hungry, too. I took the lid off the chafing-dish. Inside were bits of bacon. The officers must have wondered why I laughed--Herbert, too. Pent-up feelings were expressed in that laugh. I realized that I had presence of mind enough not to give bacon to Moslems. The pig is an unclean beast to non-Christians. Typewriters have been smuggled into Turkey with perfect ease when packed in the middle of a box of hams.

One officer was the _Mutesarif_ of Namrun, where we spent a honeymoon month last summer. He came, I suppose, to assure us of his friendliness. You ought to see how he drank tea. Just like a Russian! And he stopped eating Uneeda biscuits only when the tin was empty. The other officer was an Albanian who spoke French. Herbert had picked him out in Adana to bring the bodyguard of soldiers that he had compelled the Vali to give him. Herbert says we can trust him. He is under Herbert's orders, with the soldiers, as long as we need him. Herbert had no time to give me details of these days. He went out with the officers as soon as he had eaten, after telling me to stay in my rooms. Miss Talbot came in. Then Jeanne and Mary. I could give them no word of what had happened in Adana. They told me about Miner.

* * * * *

Herbert came back soon with Daddy Christie. They had been arranging about posting the soldiers of Herbert's guard. But they said that the massacre was over, and no attack against us was to be anticipated. What they had feared was the fire. If that had driven us out in the mob---- But why talk of what might have happened? What did happen was terrible enough. Miner gone, and with him Mr. Maurer, a Hadjin missionary, shot dead. Herbert and Lawson Chambers, a Y.M.C.A. traveling secretary, were down in the town when the massacre started. They did not get back to the Armenian quarter at all. They telegraphed Major Doughty-Wylie. He and Mrs. Doughty-Wylie took the last train that went through to Adana. The Major was shot in the street. His arm held up in front of him saved him. Herbert says he left him this morning in bed, and with a fever. Daddy Christie told us what had happened at the Mission and in the Armenian quarter. Then Herbert began his story. He had just started when there was a knock at the door. Someone wanted Dr. Christie. He went out. In a moment he came back and called Herbert. We waited. That is woman's sphere--waiting.

Young Miner cried in the next room. Mary went to him. What a blessing she had that baby! I told Jeanne she had better go and stand by her. Herbert returned--alone. He had a bit of paper in his hand. He gave it to me, saying that it had just been brought through from Mersina. It read: "No ships yet--massacre expected any minute. Cannot rely on authorities." It had been brought by an Armenian who reported the country full of Kurds. We seemed safe for the moment in Tarsus. Herbert put it right up to me. The Albanian officer and the soldiers were under his command. The train he had seized in Adana was still at the station. He could try to get down the line to Mersina. His coming--with the soldiers--might stave off the massacre for a few hours. The ships were bound to reach Mersina soon.

I had no choice, Mother. It all seemed so simple--the only thing to do. It is still life or death, and we don't know which. But we do know each step as we go along. I put my hands on Herbert's shoulders to hold myself up. For I only pretend to strength and courage. I really have neither. And I said to him: "You are all the world to me, but I must remember that you are only one man to the world." He answered: "Of course. That's the way it is. I shall try my best to get back to-night." He kissed me and went out. We would both have lost our nerve if we had talked longer. I'm glad he hurried. I threw myself on the bed and cried. Then I remembered Mary, and was ashamed of myself.

Just for something to do I have tried to go back over the day and put it down for you. People have come in. When they saw I was writing they went away. Now Mother Christie arrives to tell me that I simply must come and eat. They have managed to get a real meal together--the first in two days. It is way after six o'clock.

_April eighteenth._

Herbert did not go to Mersina. He came back last night--or rather I brought him back. At supper--a meal of sorrow--Daddy Christie received a telegram. The lines are working. That has been a mystery these past few days. They stopped the railway, but why didn't they cut the telegraph? And, in the midst of killing and looting and burning, we have received telegrams delivered coolly by an employé who stepped over the dead to get to us. The telegram was from Adana, stating that the British cruiser _Swiftsure_ had arrived at Mersina.

I felt like a condemned man reprieved at the gallows. But had Herbert started? A little while before he had sent a soldier up from the station with a message saying that he found his locomotive gone, and had been trying to get another out from Mersina by using the railway's private wire. He might still be there. He need not undertake the trip now. Broken viaducts in the dark--rails torn up--Kurds wildly prancing around and shooting from their horses. I said nothing to the others at the table. I slipped quietly out of the room, hurried up to our apartment, put on my riding-boots and Herbert's raincoat (I am glad I am pretty tall--only the sleeves needed a tuck), and made my way to the gate. I had the barn lantern we use in the stable. I did not want to risk Socrates or any of the Armenian boys. They were still killing stray ones--especially at night. The four soldiers left remonstrated. They could not understand me any more than I could understand them. They tried to bar the way. But they did not dare touch me. So they decided to resign themselves to the inevitable. Two of them came along with me.

It was a weird mile with only the lantern to light us. One soldier went in front, finding the path, and the other was beside me. From occasional zigzags I suspected what we were avoiding. Mercifully I could not see. Finally we reached the station. Herbert and his officer and the telegraph operator were in the little ticket office. Herbert was at the end of his patience--he just couldn't get up a locomotive. When he heard my news, he was very happy. The Albanian officer was not. He was for the adventure. Doubted if the news was true. Why hadn't the Mersina operator mentioned it? Just then a message went through for Adana about a special train for the British Government. The operator told us. We knew then that it was true.

Back we went, all of us. I did not ask Herbert any more about his interrupted story of the days in Adana. I did not want to hear. He did not want to tell. We found a funny story that had been sent to us for Christmas, and of which we had read only a few chapters. We reread those--and the rest of the book, laughing ourselves to sleep to save our sanity.

WHY?

_Tarsus, April twenty-second._

Dearest Mother:

I have been sewing and helping care for the wounded.

Mrs. Christie gave me the first Relief money that came, a Turkish gold-piece, worth four dollars and forty cents. With it I bought a roll of flannel. On Jeanne's balcony I fixed a hand-run sewing machine. There I basked in the sunshine as I worked on baby night-gowns all day Sunday. When I tell you that I made twelve nighties in a day you know the machine did speed-work. Our caldrons are all in use heating water so that mothers can wash their children and their children's clothes, and take advantage of the sunshine to dry things. Every time I finish a nightie, it means another baby can have a bath. We have contrived sanitary arrangements, and small trenches have been dug for drainage. Queer the Turks never thought of turning off our water. It could have been done easily through the surface pipes.

Dr. Peeples of the Covenanter Mission was the first doctor to come through. He got here before his supplies. I shall never forget his face when I showed him my table with the Red Cross kit. He appropriated the medicine-case and some bandages and marched off with them. Dr. Peeples and I dressed wounds. But Mother Christie stopped that on account of "my condition." Afterwards we compromised. I installed a table inside my door and worked away preparing medicines and dressings. I handed these out to the doctor on a tray, curving my wrist around the door-jamb and so was spared the pain of seeing the patients. I do not take stock in the popular notion that I might "mark the child." Only the pleasant things that happen to me can touch that child.

The arrival of the British battleship _Swiftsure_ has saved Mersina. Yesterday the commander went to Adana by special train. On his return he stopped at Tarsus and invited Dr. Christie and Herbert to accompany him to Mersina. They accepted with alacrity. Early this morning Herbert boarded the _Swiftsure_ and had a chat with the captain. As a result, the captain allowed six officers to come to Tarsus with Herbert by special train to-day. We had them for lunch and took them all over the city, showing them the work of the mob. When the refugee children saw these officers arrive, the poor kiddies were terrified. Many ran and hid, and the wee ones found their mothers as quickly as possible. The officers' uniforms were the cause, according to the kiddies' own words. How is that for proof that Turkish soldiery helped in the massacring!

We believe that one hundred were killed in Tarsus and four hundred in villages nearby. Adana's murders are in the thousands. The killing of Miner brings the tragedy right into our mission family. Mary is supernaturally calm and brave. Not only does she do everything for her baby, but she is in the midst of all the relief work.

While Herbert was in Mersina, Mrs. Dodds of the Covenanter Mission urged him to take me there so as to get me away from the danger of contracting some disease. She also urged that the discomfort of our now crowded quarters at Tarsus was not good for me. We have nearly five thousand refugees on the college grounds. If railroad communication is reestablished before my baby comes, we are going to accept the invitation of Mrs. Dodds. I do not know from day to day and cannot plan.

Mother, if I am not ready for the skeptics, and for those who smile and jeer, yes, jeer is the word, at missionaries! The stick-in-the-muds who thought we came all this long way because we wanted adventure must be wagging their narrow little heads and wagering that we are getting more than we bargained for. I am a great believer in letting every one have his point of view. But generally one finds that the people who boast that they are liberal and broad-minded are the most bigoted people on earth. They assert their point of view, but are unwilling to admit another's right to his. One does not have to believe in missions or want to be a missionary. But one does not have to ridicule missionary effort and missionaries, either. Among the missionaries here, women as well as men, not a single one has shown the white feather. Quite the contrary, I doubt if any other score of Americans in the United States would have upheld better the glorious traditions of our race for coolness, resourcefulness, and ability to grapple suddenly with a crisis. The American women here are made of the same stuff as my several times great-grandmother in Lebanon Valley, who carried the gun around the room together with the broom as she did her sweeping.

I can never think of the Armenians without a stirring of the heart in affection and admiration. How can Americans resist the call to help people who have the courage to die for their faith? One has to be brought to their level of suffering, to be put into the situation in which they have lived during centuries of Turkish oppression, to understand them. Mother, they are heroes--these Armenians, children and grand-children of heroes. It is nothing spectacular that they have done, except in periods of massacre like this. But all along _they have kept the faith_, they have preserved their distinct nationality, when an easy path lay before them, were they willing to turn from Christ to Mohammed. I see now so vividly what they have been born to, what they grow up from early childhood fearing. Is not the greatest heroism in the world the silent endurance of oppression that cannot be remedied, the bending of the neck to the yoke when there is no other way, the living along normally under the shadow of a constant and justified fear of death and worse?

What saved the Tarsians the other night? Any dread of international complications? Any respect for our Government? What do the Kurds know about us? Nothing. Last summer when we were camping far up in the Taurus mountains above the timber-line, a fellow of the type who has been doing the dirty work for the party in power at Stambul, came along to talk with us. We had chopped down a scrub pine-tree to build a fire and were sitting around the fire after supper. We were eating walnuts. I offered him some. With them I gave salt. He took both walnuts and salt, touched them to his forehead by way of thanks, and began to eat. Socrates expressed satisfaction that the man had done this--said we could be surer now that he would not turn fierce dogs loose the next day, when we broke camp. In talking to the man, I asked him what he knew about my country. He was a shepherd, and had never seen a town bigger than Tarsus. He replied, "There are a great many Americans in America, at least five thousand, all very rich and all very kind."

What saved the Tarsians? St. Paul's College. Those people have had the vision held up before them, and some of its light must have got into their dark hearts. I keep thinking of the way Jesus forgave people because they just didn't know what they were doing. I do not believe for a minute that it was the American flag that saved the Christian population of this town. The Stars and Stripes mean nothing to them. It is the way Daddy and Mother Christie have lived before these Turks all these years that did it.

Listen to this, and you will see what I mean. Three hundred refugees owe their lives directly to one act of thoughtful kindness. Sometime before the massacre, Dr. Christie heard that the only son of a village Sheik had died. He got on his horse and went straight out to comfort the old father. The news came late in the day, so that Daddy Christie was obliged to make the trip in the night. I have seen the Sheik several times myself. He came one day and invited Herbert and me to go hunting with him. He is a superb specimen. In the midst of the heat and hatred of last Friday, the Sheik appeared with some three hundred Armenians. The order to massacre had come, "and a massacre is good hunting, you know," he blandly remarked. "As I was about to go forth, I reflected that the people here were Dr. Christie's friends. Cannot see why you like them," he added, "but seeing you do, here they are." The old man, of course, is a Moslem. He told us he found some of those he brought in hiding in the swamps, not far from his home, "lying in the water, with just their noses sticking out to breathe," he laughingly explained.

ABDUL HAMID'S LAST DAY

_Mersina, April twenty-fifth._

Mother dear:

I wish you knew right now that we are at the Dodds in Mersina. It would relieve your mind of anxiety that must be weighing on you. But we cannot send an optimistic, reassuring cablegram. In the first place it would not be true. Then no message must go out whose chance publication in the newspapers would tend to make the world believe that danger here is passed. The Powers might relax what diplomatic pressure they are exercising at Constantinople--might even recall warships or stop others that we hear are coming. Herbert is getting out the news by smuggling to Cyprus. He feels the responsibility of every word that is telegraphed. So we send you no message at all. There is still fear of a second and a worse outbreak. The massacre is not over yet.

Early yesterday morning we learned that a train would go down the line to Mersina at the usual hour. I packed what baby things I had left, and a steamer trunk with a few of our clothes. Miss Talbot said she was ready. My Armenian physician saw that the chance was excellent to get to the coast in our company. He had a valid reason for accompanying me. We took his whole family under our wing. His brother, a boy just turning into the twenties, has lost his mind--we hope only temporarily--as a result of the strain we have been under. The boy got it in his head that I alone could save him. He has been camping outside our door, and fumbling with our shutters at night. My Sub-Freshmen kept an eye on him, but I have had to humor him. As he is my physician's brother, and there has been no way of secluding him, I have had to do this. The boy insisted on sitting in my compartment on the journey yesterday. He kept me in sight. Once arrived in Mersina, they were able to take him away to a friend's house.

We reached Mersina in time for lunch, where Mrs. Dodds--the soul of kindness and solicitude--had kept rooms for us in her apartment. Mrs. Dodds' little daughter, Mary, is a wonderful child--just like her mother in wanting to be constantly doing things for other people. The atmosphere of this home is so sweet and wholesome that it makes me proud of my Covenanter ancestry and wonder if certain religious beliefs I have always thought were narrow and absurd have not their place and their reason. I asked Herbert about Covenanters last night, and found that he knew less than I did. For a parson just out of Princeton Seminary, my husband is astonishingly ignorant of theology. He doesn't seem to know or care any more about doctrines than I do. Until last night, we had never talked about theology, and then the conversation languished after a few sentences.

Just after lunch two Turkish transports appeared off Mersina. They came inside the line of warships, and began to disembark troops in the barges that went out immediately to greet them. From the windows of the Dodds' living-room we could see the barges returning laden with soldiers. My eyes would not shut tight enough to dim the flash of the sunshine on the waves and on the blood-red fezzes. Herbert declared that he must go down to the _scala_ to see them land. I did not want to prevent him, for I felt just as he did. Why couldn't I go too? It didn't seem to be "just the thing for one in my condition," but you know, Mother, that I can't live without exercise, and I have been impressing now for nearly a year upon Herbert two things: that I need out-of-doors as much as a fish needs water; and that I can go anywhere and do anything he does. I shall never let him get the idea into his head that I am barred from phases of his life just because I am a woman! Not a bit of it! Herbert had to take his wife along.

A disreputable looking lot they were, wretchedly clad and shod, and topped off with mussy, faded fezzes. We were told that they had come from Beirut to restore order in Cilicia. They had taken part in the Macedonian movement last summer, and were regiments whose officers adhered to the "Young Turk" movement, and could be relied upon to check any attempt to renew the massacres. There was much effervescence in the town. Groups were talking excitedly. Herbert and I were crazy for news. The last we heard was that Mahmud Shevket Pasha's army was moving on Constantinople. The regiments lined the main street on the way to the railway station. Something was going on--we could not tell what. Suddenly they cheered--all together. The cheering was taken up by the crowd. The band began to play. The regiments wheeled from attention, and continued their march.

We went into a Greek shop. "What does all this mean?" we asked. The proprietor eyed us in astonishment. "Don't you understand?" he answered. "Abdul Hamid has been deposed, and his imprisoned brother proclaimed sultan. The soldiers are cheering for Mohammed V. The authorities here kept back the news. They didn't want to make the announcement until the troops unquestionably loyal to the New Régime were landed."

There was much anxiety during the rest of the afternoon. The Christians were nervous, Greeks and Syrians as well as Armenians. The British have landed a few marines, and established a wig-wag station on top of a house near us. People began to come for refuge to the American mission at nightfall.

We have rumors of a second massacre at Adana this morning.

THE YOUNG TURKS AND THE TOY FLEET

_Mersina, April twenty-ninth._

Dear Mother:

I suppose that baby doesn't come because I'm too busy and the time is not propitious. There are more important things to think about and to do. Sounds unmaternal and abnormal, doesn't it? But just like other girls I had my dreams of how these days of waiting would be. And up to several weeks ago I plied the needle vigorously, and thought a lot about how many of each wee garment would be necessary, and what sort of blanket would wash best. I hesitated a long time before deciding which dress was the prettiest for IT to be baptized in. Now I don't know how many garments I have. I haven't even made a complete inventory of what we brought from Tarsus. We are too engrossed in the duties and problems that each day brings forth to think at all about the morrow. Honestly, Mother, during the four days we have been in Mersina, maternity hasn't had much of a place in my mind--I mean, of course, my own maternity. Heaven knows we have the babies coming in abundance all the time around us, and there is everything to be done for them.

I wrote you of the landing of the Turkish regiments from Beirut on the day we learned of Abdul Hamid's deposition. They went to Adana the same day, and started that night a second massacre more terrible than the first. The Armenians had given up their arms. On the advice of the foreign naval officers--trusting in the warships here at Mersina--they accepted the assurance of the Government that the "rioting" was over. So they were defenseless when the Young Turk regiments came. The butchery was easier. I spare you details. I wish to God I could have spared them to myself. Most of our Adana friends who escaped the first massacre must have been killed since last Saturday. The few who have reached Mersina are like the messengers that came to Job. Adana is still hell. The soldiers set fire to the French Mission buildings, and are going each night after other foreign property. The American Girls' Boarding School was evacuated. The teachers and some girls who were saved arrived yesterday, and are with us. One of our American teachers has typhoid, and reached us on a stretcher.