close quarters almost never help straight aim, especially when in
a hurry. There is a shooting as well as a camera focus, and each
man has his own.

Pretty badly burnt about the face and fingers, Hans von Quedlinburg
crawled backward out of the fire, smelling like the devil, of singed
wool. Kagig closed on him, and hurled him back again. This time
the German plunged through the fire, and out beyond it to a space
between the flames and the back wall, where it must have been hot
enough to make the fat run. He stood with a forearm covering his
face, while Kagig thundered at him voluminous abuse in Turkish.
I wondered, first, why the German did not shoot, and then why his
loaded pistol did not blow up in the heat, until I saw that in further
proof of strength Kagig had looted his pistol and was standing with
one foot on it.

Finally, when the beautiful smooth cloth of which his coat was made
bad taken on a stinking overlay of crackled black, the German chose
to obey Kagig and came leaping back through the fire, and lay groaning
on the floor, where the kahveh's owner's seven sons poured water
on him by Kagig's order. His burns were evidently painful, but not
nearly so serious as I expected. I got out the first-aid stuff from
our medicine bag, and Will, who was our self-constituted doctor on
the strength of having once attended an autopsy, disguised as a reporter,
in the morgue at the back of Bellevue Hospital in New York City,
beckoned a gipsy woman, and proceeded to instruct her what to do.

However, Hans von Quedlinburg was no nervous weakling. He snatched
the pot of grease from the woman's hands, daubed gobs of the stuff
liberally on his face and hands, and sat up--resembling an unknown