I took Abraham to interpret for me and went to talk with our ten hostages, who were herded together apart from the other ten armed Kurds.  They seemed to regard themselves as in worse plight than prisoners and awaited with resignation whatever might be their kismet.  So I asked them were they afraid lest Gooja Singh might meet with violence, and they replied they were afraid of nothing.  They added, however, that no man could say in those mountains what this day or the next might bring forth.

Then I asked them about Wassmuss, and they rather confirmed Ranjoor Singh’s guess about his being practically a prisoner.  They said he was ever on the move, surrounded and very closely watched by the particular tribe of Kurds that had possession of him for the moment.

“First it is one tribe, then another,” they told me.  “If you keep your bargain with our chief and he gets this gold, we shall have Wassmuss, too, within a week, for we shall buy the allegiance of one or two more tribes to join with us and oust those Kurds who hold him now.  Hitherto the bulk of his gold has been going into Persia to bribe the Bakhtiari Khans and such like, but that day is gone by.  Now we Kurds will grow rich.  But as for us”—­they shrugged their shoulders like this, sahib, meaning to say that perhaps their day had gone by also.  I left them with the impression they are very fatalistic folk.

There was no means of knowing how long we might have to wait there, so Ranjoor Singh gave orders for the best shelter possible to be prepared, and what with the cave at the rear, and plundered blankets, and one thing and another we contrived a camp that was almost comfortable.  What troubled us most was shortage of fire-wood, and we had to send out foraging parties in every direction at no small risk.  The Kurds, like our mountain men of northern India, leave such matters to their women-folk, and there was more than one voice raised in anger at Ranjoor Singh because he had not allowed us to capture women as well as food and horses.  Our Turkish prisoners laughed at us for not having stolen women, and Tugendheim vowed he had never seen such fools.

But as it turned out, we had not long to wait.  That very evening, as I watched from between two great boulders, I beheld a Turkish convoy of about six hundred infantry, led by a bimbashi on a gray horse, with a string of pack-mules trailing out behind them, and five loaded donkeys led by soldiers in the midst.  They were heading toward the hills, and I sent a man running to bring Ranjoor Singh to watch them.

It soon became evident that they meant to camp on the plains for that night.  They had tents with them, and they pitched a camp three-quarters of a mile, or perhaps a mile away from the mouth of our defile, at a place where a little stream ran between rocks.  It was clear they suspected no treachery, or they would never have chosen that place, they being but six hundred and the hills full of Kurds so close