Page:A child of the Orient (IA childoforient00vakarich).pdf/218

 A few hours later my cousin's husband arrived from Constantinople. The boats, fortunately, had not been injured and were all running. He was an official and brought out with him three young men, his subordinates, two Greeks and a Turk. They told us that the damage in the town was even worse than on the islands, so that we could expect to receive no tents from the government that night.

The heat of the day had changed to cold, which, in our nervous condition, we felt severely, and the two Greeks set about building a fire and preparing something for us to eat.

Chakendé went up to the young Turk and spoke to him; then she came to me.

"This young man is going to help me bury the maid," she said. Both to me and to the Turk she spoke in French, but it was not a day to think of such trifles. "We have already carried her into the laundry-house, and now we are going to dig a grave."

Chakendé and the Turk went off to bury the Christian maid. It was an odd fact that during this whole earthquake, while all other nationalities were thinking of the living, it was the Turks mostly who thought of the dead.

When they came back to me, who still had the care of the children, for both my cousin and the maids were too hysterical to attend to them, Chakendé said: