"But even from the standpoint of a detached and isolated event, there was nothing about it that a rational being could lay hold of for comfort. It was just one blind evil chance out of a million possible ones. I did not even see it happen. I was doing something which has no connection with my past or following existence--watching an Ottoman soldier, probably an Anatolian, crumple up and expire in the gutter of the _Via Egnatia_. I was watching with the close attention one inevitably bestows upon one's first violent death--as a matter of fact, I had never seen any one die, even in bed--and remaining securely wedged in a doorway a few yards up the street. I remember him as he paused for an instant in a sort of ecstasy, his face turned up toward the harsh bright glare of a naked electric bulb that hung from a trolley pole, his body momentarily poised as though defying his destiny. And then he twisted about in an extraordinarily complicated manner and fell, all of a piece, while a number of extremely active persons tore past him without any sound save a popping noise far down the street. That would be near the market, I reflected in my doorway. And as we should have to go that way in order to reach the ship, it struck me that it would be my duty to find another route. And from that I went on to visualize the consternation of my friend Jack, when I turned up with the astonishing _entourage_ of two women and a suitcase, and informed him of my determination. I had a tremendous desire to know, beforehand, just what he would do and say. He would stand by an old friend of course. But how? And while I reflected in my doorway and listened to the popping, which went on with varying intensity, still more figures sped past the end of my street. I recalled the perplexing fact that as we had driven into the town past the barrier, there had been no one on guard. I learned later that, with unbelievable stupidity, the authorities had sent the army out toward Monastir and had left the city with a mere handful of soldiers to deal with the revolutionaries. It was this fact, I suppose, of finding nobody on guard, which had frightened our driver, and no sooner had we alighted before the doorway in that steep, narrow street off the _Via Egnatia_ than he had demanded his fare and galloped away up hill and out of sight. 'You'll have to get another carriage,' Pollyni had told me in an anxious voice. 'You'll find one down near the big church.' The arrangement was that they would be ready by the time I returned.