blood-curdling that Suydam put his mattress on the sofa and his
sleeping-bag on top of that, and, shutting himself in, defied them. The
incomparable Levy was Italian by his birth and cheerfulness, Jewish on
his father's side, Turkish by the fez he wore and a life spent in
guiding strangers about Constantinople. He had the face of a dean of a
diplomatic corps or one of those comfortable old gentlemen in spats who
have become fixtures in some city club.

It was his employer's humor to befriend and defend him in private, but
to his face assume, with the most delicate irony, that this marvel among
men was always late, forgetful, rattle-brained, and credulous. And it
was Levy's gift to play up to this assumption, to hang on his employer's
words with breathless anxiety, to relax into a paternal smile when safe,
and to support his omelets and his delays with oaths and circumlocutions
stranger even than the dishes themselves. They were odd enough, those
dinners, sitting in our little oasis of light in that deserted town, not
knowing what the next hour might bring.

Next day we again went to Lapsaki, and, although the entire industrial
resources of the place had apparently been cornered in the meantime by a
Dardanelles Jew, returned with several more mattresses and the promise
of the remainder. We found the hostages more cheerful. With the relief
money Philip had distributed the day before, and the food they had been
able to buy, they had shaken themselves together, gifted cooks had
turned up, they had made a baseball out of rags, painted humorous signs
on the doorways of their rooms--they had actually begun to sing.

And now, with that curious subsequentness with which things sometimes
happen in Turkey, the mutesarif discovered half a dozen mattresses
himself, and announced that to-morrow there would be enough for all.