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THE CASTLE 81
shade temperature must have been in the eighties.
I had felt considerable respect for Achmet before,
but this day's experience greatly increased it. His
shoes were ever slipping off, and sometimes caused
him a return of twenty or thirty feet to recover
them. He lost his breath. He was elephantine
upon rock, and sometimes fell. Having slipped he
sometimes rolled. But whatever happened he always
made light of difficulty and stuck grimly to his work.
And at the summit, when climbing about on broken
walls became necessary, he seemed to make it a
point of honour to go wherever I went, though he
might well have sat down and waited.
Even Timur, great in sieges, found this castle
beyond his power to take. He could get at it only
by a narrow causeway ; it was provisioned for years,
and had a tunnel to a deep well in the heart of the
mountain. For seven months the siege went on and
made no progress, yet only one other place of arms
ever foiled the Asiatic Napoleon. The greater portion
of the castle is
in ruins, and what remains intact
is chiefly blank masonry, notable only for its careful
workmanship. There is Roman work in it, too, and
I brought away a piece of Roman brick and a small
shapeless fragment of bronze.
You may indeed find almost anything within reason
if you have good fortune when among the ancient
sites of Asia Minor. It is a belief that seizes you and
becomes an obsession as you wander among walls and
excavations which have stood for two or three thousand
years ; stood on ground, moreover, that has been fought
upon often since the days when men first recognised
advantages of position. You know that such sites have
been open to the yearly washing of heavy rain ; that
in centuries of sunlight many thousands of eyes have
searched, prompted by the same thoughts as yours, and
yet you are hopeful always. You have, indeed, good
reason for being hopeful, though likely to go without
reward. You know that every year many articles
are so found ; and may, perhaps, have seen some of
F