“Now, effendim, one of you down to the defenses, please!  There is risk my men may use too many cartridges.  Talk to them—­restrain them.  They might listen to me, but—­” His long fingers suggested unhappy fragments of past history.

“You, Fred!” said Monty, and Fred hitched his concertina to a more comfortable angle.

Fred was the obvious choice.  His gift of tongues would enable him better than any of us to persuade, and if need were, compel.  We had left our rifles leaning by the wall at the castle entrance, and in his cartridge bag was my oil-can and rag-bag.  I asked him for them, and he threw them to me rather clumsily.  Trying to catch them I twisted for the second time the ankle I had hurt that morning.  Fred mounted and rode out through the echoing entrance without a backward glance, and I sat down and pulled my boot off, for the agony was almost unendurable.

“That settles your task for to-day,” laughed Monty.  “Help him back to the top of the tower, Will.  Keep me informed of everything you see.  Will—­you go with Kagig after you’ve helped him up there.”

“All right,” said Will.  “Where’s Kagig bound for?”

“Round behind Beirut Dagh,” Kagig announced grimly.  “That’s our danger-point.  If the Turks force their way round the mountain—­” He shrugged his expressive shoulders.  Only he of all of us seemed to view the situation seriously.  I think we others felt a thrill rather of sport than of danger.

I might have been inclined to resent the inactivity assigned to me, only that it gave me a better chance than I had hoped for of watching for signs of Maga Jhaere’s promised treachery.  Will helped me up and made the perch comfortable; then he and Kagig rode away together.  Presently Monty, too, mounted a mule, and rode out under the arch, and fifteen minutes later fifty men marched in by twos, laughing and joking, and went to saddling the horses in the semicircular stable below me.  After that all the world seemed to grow still for a while, except for the eagles, the distant rag-slitting rattle of rifle-fire, and the occasional bursting of a shell.  Most of the shells were falling on the clay ramp, and seemed to be doing no harm whatever.

Away in the distance down the pass, out of range of the fire of our men, but also incapable of harm themselves until they should advance into the open jaws below the clay ramp, I could see the Turks massing in that sort of dense formation that the Germans teach.  Even through the glasses it was not possible to guess their numbers, because the angle of vision was narrow and cut off their flanks to right and left; but I sent word down to Monty that a frontal attack in force seemed to be already beginning.