As we went away a line of buffalo carts, piled with nondescript furniture, began to creak down the avenue where the imperial guard used to parade at _Selamlîk_. A Macedonian gendarme stood in the great arched gateway of the Palace court and checked them as they passed. Behind him a monkey sat in the coil of a black tail, surveying the scene with bright, furtive, troubled eyes. XVI WAR TIME 1912-1913 I.—THE HORDES OF ASIA “The hordes of Asia....” That phrase, fished out of what reminiscence I know not, kept running through my head as the soldiers poured through the city. Where did they all come from? On the night of the 3d of October the streets began to resound portentously with drums, and out of the dark the voices of criers called every man, Moslem or Christian, married or single, to leave his house and defend his country. Then the crowded transports began to stream down the Bosphorus, sometimes as many as seven or eight a day. Opposite each village the whistle blew, the men cheered, and the people on shore waved handkerchiefs and flags. When the transports came down after dark it was more picturesque. Bengal lights would answer each other between sea and land, and the cheering filled more of the silence. It somehow sounded younger, too. And it insensibly led one into sentimentalities—into imaginations of young wives and children, of old parents, of abandoned fields, of what other fields in Thrace and Macedonia. [Illustration: Arriving from Asia] [Illustration: Reserves]