Kagig remained seated in the midst of his mess of blankets by the
hearth; and I think he slept in that position, and that I was the
last to doze off. But none of us slept very long.

There came a shout from the roof again, and once again a thundering
on the door. The move--unanimous--that the gipsies' right hands
made to clutch their weapons resembled the jump from surprise into
stillness when the jungle is caught unawares. A second later when
somebody tossed dry fagots on the fire the blaze betrayed no other
expression on their faces than the stock-in-trade stolidity. Even
the women looked as if thundering on a kahveh door at night was nothing
to be noticed. Kagig did not move, but I could see that he was breathing
faster than the normal, and he, too, clutched a weapon. Von Quedlinburg
began shouting for help alternately in Turkish and in German, and
the owner of the place produced a gun--a long, bright, steel-barreled
affair of the vintage of the Comitajes and the First Greek War.
He and his sons ran to the door to barricade it.

"Yavash!" ordered Kagig. The word means slowly, as applied to all
the human processes. In that instance it meant "Go slow with your
noise!" and mine host so understood it.

But the thundering on the great door never ceased, and the kahveh
was too full of the noise of that for us to hear what the Zeitoonli
called down from the roof. Kagig arose and stood in the middle of
the room with the firelight behind him. He listened for two minutes,
standing stock-still, a thin smile flickering across his lean face,
and the sharp satyr-like tops of his ears seeming to prick outward
in the act of intelligence.