But our chief danger was from the mounted scoundrels who were so busy murdering women and children and wounded men half a mile away to the rear.  They had come along working the covert like hunters of vermin, driving lances into every possible lurking place and no doubt skewering their own wounded on occasion, for which Armenians would afterward be blamed.  We could hear them chorusing with glee whenever a lance found a victim, or when a dozen of them gave chase to some panic-stricken woman in wild flight.  Through the glasses I could see two Turkish officers with them, in addition to their own nondescript “tin-plate men”; and if officers or men should get sight of us it was easy to imagine what our fate would be.

That thought, and knowledge that Gloria Vanderman and Will and Fred were engaged in an almost equally desperate venture within a mile of me (evidenced by dozens of wild bullets screaming through the air) suggested the idea of taking a longer chance than any I had thought of yet.  A moment’s consideration brought conviction that the effort would be worth the risk.  Yet I had no way of communicating with my men!

I pointed to the Turkish officers clustered together watching the effort of their firing-line.  From where we lay to the horses would be three hundred yards; from the horses to those officers would be about two hundred and fifty yards farther at an angle of something like forty degrees.  Counting their orderlies and hangers-on we outnumbered that party by two to one; and “the fish starts stinking from the head” as the proverb says.  With the head gone, the whole Kurdish firing-line would begin to be useless.

I tried my stammering Turkish, but the men were in no mood to be patient with efforts in that loathly tongue.  None of them knew a word in English.  I tried French—­Italian—­smattering Arabic—­but they only shook their heads, and began to think nervousness was driving me out of hand.  One of them laid a soothing hand on my shoulder, and repeated what sounded like a prayer.

To lose the confidence of one’s men under such circumstances at that stage of the game was too much.  I grew really rattled, and at random, as a desperate man will I stammered off what I wanted to say in the foreign tongue that I knew best, regardless of the fact that Armenians are not black men, and that there is not even a trace of connection between their language and anything current in Africa.  Zanzibar and Armenia are as far apart as Australia and Japan, with about as much culture in common.

To my amazement a man answered in fluent Kiswahili!  He had traded for skins in some barbarous district near the shore of Victoria Nyanza, and knew half a dozen Bantu languages.  In a minute after that we had the plan well understood and truly laid; and, what was better, they had ceased to believe me a victim of nerves—­a fact that gave me back the nerve that had been perilously close to vanishing.