Fred swiftly gathered himself a company of his own, the older men electing to follow his lead.  Gloria had the cream of the younger ones—­men who in an earlier age would have gone into battle wearing a woman’s glove or handkerchief—­twenty or thirty youths blazing with the fire of youth.  Will went hot-foot after her with most of the English-speaking contingent from the mission schools.  Kagig had the faithful few who had rallied to him from the first—­the fighting men of Zeitoon proper, including all the tough rear-guard who had sent the warning and remained faithfully in touch with the enemy until their chief should come.

That left for me the men who knew no English, and Ephraim was enough of a politician to see the advantage to himself of deserting Fred’s standard for mine; for Fred could talk Armenian, and give his own orders, but I needed an interpreter.  I welcomed him at the first exchange of compliments, but met him eye to eye a second later and began to doubt.

“I’m going to hold these men in reserve,” I told him, “until I know where they’ll do most good.  You know this country?  Take high ground, then, where we can overlook what’s going on and get into the fight to best advantage.”

“But the others will get the credit,” he began to object.

“I’ll ask Kagig for another interpreter.  Wait here.”

At that he yielded the point and explained my orders to the men, who began to obey them willingly enough.  But he went on talking to them rapidly as we diverged from the path the others had taken and ascended a trail that wild goats would have reveled in, along the right flank of where fighting was likely to take place.  I did not doubt be was establishing notions of his own importance, and with some success.

Firing commenced away in front and below us within ten minutes of the start, but it was an hour before I could command the scene with field-glasses, and ten minutes after that before I could make out the positions of our people, although the enemy were soon evident —­a long, irregular, ragged-looking line of cavalry thrusting lances into every hole that could possibly conceal an Armenian, and an almost equally irregular line of unmounted men in front of them, firing not very cautiously nor accurately from under random cover.

It became pretty evident, after studying the positions for about fifteen minutes and sweeping every contour of the ground through glasses, that the enemy had no chance whatever of breaking through unless they could outflank Kagig’s line.  I held such impregnable advantage of height and cover and clear view that the men I had with me were ample to prevent the turning of our right wing.  Our left flank rested on the brawling Jihun River that wound in and out between the rice fields and the rocky foot-hills.  There lay the weakness of our position, and more than once I caught sight of Kagig spurring his horse from cover to cover to place his men.  Once I thought I recognized Fred, too, over near the river-bank; but of Will or of Gloria I saw nothing.