acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

192 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
standing the contract that he should feed himself,
and hoped in this way to keep him going.
But these fears changed as soon as he had done
embracing and kissing my feet and knees. By a very
singular change in manner, not entirely unconscious
I fancied, he seemed to become another person. He
seated himself cross-legged on the floor and produced
his arms : first a nine-inch dagger, and then a silverplated
Smith & Wesson revolver with ivory stock,
a mighty weapon, '44 calibre, and long in the barrel.
He handled it as readily and familiarly as a spoon,
threw it open, extracted and replaced the cartridges,
and altogether showed that he knew everything
about his arms. Next he dived into the recesses
of his girdle for spare cartridges, and produced
twenty- seven, all that he possessed. While groping
for these he pulled out also an old English
silver snuff-box which he used for tobacco, and an
English silver watch. All these things he had got
at Beirut, he said, having been there often. By
this time all traces of his earlier manner had vanished,
and he was flashing out like a man used to
authority ; a man, moreover, who had laid a certain
reserve upon himself and now and then forgot it. I
asked what he had been, for no one more certainly
showed signs of having seen an interesting past. He
had been a soldier, a sort of sergeant, and served five
years in the Yemen. As an incidental piece of information,
he volunteered that two of his sons had
perished in that grave of Turkish manhood.
The time of year in which I travelled reduced the
chances of contracting malarial fever, but as a further
safeguard I dosed myself each day with quinine.
This precaution notwithstanding, fever took me the
second day after I reached Kaisariyeh. I thought
at first it was a feverish chill, and expected soon to
get rid of it ; but days passed into a week, and I grew
worse instead of better. I got up and went into
Talas to see the doctor, but he was out, and rather
than wait I returned to Kaisariyeh to effect my own