"Neye geldin?" he growled in Turkish. "Wherefore didst thou come?
To cackle like a barren hen that sees another laying? Nichevo,"
he added, turning his back on me. And that was insolence in Russian,
meaning that nobody and nothing could possibly be of less importance.
He seemed to keep a separate language for each set of thoughts.
"Let us go below. Let us stop these fools from making too much trouble,"
he added in English. "One man ought to stay on the roof. One ought
to be sufficient."

Since he had said I did not matter, I remained, and it was therefore
I who shouted down a challenge presently in round English at a party
who clattered to the door on blown horses, and thundered on it as
if they had been shatirs* hurrying to herald the arrival of the sultan
himself. There was nothing furtive about their address to the decrepit
door, nor anything meek. Accordingly I couched the challenge in
terms of unmistakable affront, repeating it at intervals until the
leader of the new arrivals chose to identify himself.

-----------------
* Shatir, the man who runs before a personage's horse.
-----------------

"I am Hans von Quedlinburg!" he shouted. But I did not remember
the name.

"Only a thief would come riding in such a hurry through the night!"
said I. "Who is with you?"

Another voice shouted very fast and furiously in Turkish, but I could
not make head or tail of the words. Then the German resumed the