Page:A child of the Orient (IA childoforient00vakarich).pdf/302

 too. The conversation of the young softas was full of the sanguine colour. This was shortly after 1897. Turkey had just defeated Greece, and the old feeling of arrogance was uppermost in the breasts of Mahomet's followers.

"Fork them out! Fork them out, the giaours." cried the younger of the two. "They are only fit for fodder, those Christian dogs."

I should have liked to linger over my boughatcha, but the tension of the tone betrayed a heat above the normal. I paid my kourous, and left the shop, praying both to the Christian God and to the Mohammedan one that they might let these misguided children see stretches of peaceful green, instead of always red.

Slowly, slowly, now, I walked to the Galata Bridge, and turned to the right, just behind the karakol which houses the main body of the Galata police. I was on my way to hunt up old Ali Baba, my boatman, him with whom years ago I had shared the raptures of the Byzantine History. My heart was beating fast. Would Turkey play me false this once? Would the one living landmark of my past be chosen as the one to mark a change in that changeless country?

Hastening, I yet found myself lingering in my haste. If his place were to be empty, if he were really gone, having himself been rowed over the river Styx, would it not be better for me not to