The next morning, Saturday, I was roused before six o’clock by a member of our country household. “I don’t know,” he said, “but do you hear anything?” I listened. I heard a light air in the garden trees, a pervading twitter of birds. Then it seemed to me that I heard something else in the distance, something faintly crackling, followed occasionally by something more deeply booming. It sounded like firing, and I suddenly remembered my friends of the white leggings. Yet the morning was so delicious, the sky was so soft, the garden so full of birds. By the time I got down to the wharf a few people were gathered there, talking gravely in low voices. The shots we heard did not altogether break the tension of the last few days. My friend the ticket seller gave me serious advice. “Go back to your house,” he said. “Sit in your garden, and be at peace. Lead falls into the sea like rain at Beshiktash. No steamers run. They have all been sent back.” I was disinclined to believe him. It seemed incredible that anything particular was happening—on such a day, after so many overtures to the Macedonians. Among those at the _scala_ I saw Habib the boatman, whom all men know for a liberal and a reader of papers. “Habib,” I said, “let us row to the city. It is necessary for me to go, and there seem to be no steamers. I will pay you a dollar.” Habib regarded me as one might regard a lunatic for whom one entertains friendly sentiments. “_Effendim_,” he replied, “what do you say? They are fighting at Yîldîz, and not for one or for many dollars will I go. What have you to do in town to-day?” I began to be rather annoyed. I had to get some films, and there was no reason why I shouldn’t, if they were fighting at Yîldîz. It didn’t occur to me that there could be trouble anywhere else in the town. But neither boat nor boatman could be induced to go down the Bosphorus.