The mob greeted these words with a savage yell, raised Patrona on its shoulders, and carried him away through the arcades of Bezesztan piazza.  Everyone hastened away to close his booth, and the whole city seemed to be turned upside down.  It was just as if a still standing lake had been stirred violently to its lowest depths, and all the slimy monsters and hideous refuse reposing at the bottom had come to the surface; for the streets were suddenly flooded by the unrecognised riff-raff which vegetates in every great town, though they are out of the ken of the regular and orderly inhabitants, and only appear in the light of day when a sudden concussion drives them to the surface.

Yelling and howling, they accompanied Halil everywhere, only listening to him when his escort raised him aloft on their shoulders in order that he might address the mob.

Just at this moment they stopped in front of the house of the Janissary Aga.

“Hassan!” cried Halil curtly, disdaining to give him his official title, and thundering on the door with his fists, “Hassan, you imprisoned our comrades because they dared to murmur, and now you can hear roars instead of murmurs.  Give them up, Hassan!  Give them up, I say!”

Hassan, however, was no great lover of such spectacles, so he hastily exchanged his garments for a suit of rags, and bolted through the gate of the back garden to the shores of the Bosphorus, where he huddled into an old tub of a boat which carried him across to the camp.  Then only did he feel safe.

Meanwhile the Janissaries battered in the door of his house and released their comrades.  Then they put Halil on Hassan’s horse and proceeded in great triumph to the Etmeidan.  The next instant the whole square was alive with armed men, and they hauled the Kulkiaja caldron out of the barracks and set it up in the midst of the mob.  This was the usual signal for the outburst of the war of fiercely contending passions too long enchained.

“And now open the prisons!” thundered Halil, “and set free all the captives!  Put daggers in the hands of the murderers and flaming torches in the hands of the incendiaries, and let us go forth burning and slaying, for to-day is a day of death and lamentation.”

And the mob rushed upon the prisons, tore down the railings, broke through bolts and bars, and whole hordes of murderers and malefactors rushed forth into the piazza and all the adjoining streets, and the last of all to quit the dungeon was Janaki, Halil’s father-in-law.  There he remained standing in the doorway as if he were afraid or ashamed, till Musli rushed towards him and tore him away by force.

“Be not cast down, muzafir, but snatch up a sword and stand alongside of me.  No harm can come to you here.  It is the turn of the Gaolers now.”

In the meantime Halil had made his way to that particular dungeon where the loose women whom the Sultan had been graciously pleased to collect from all the quarters of the town to herd in one place were listening in trembling apprehension.