My grey horse, which Osman was riding, still went very lame; so I limited our march to six hours, and stopped at the little village of Daili. Here there were only fifteen houses. Many camels and herds of cattle were grazing in the neighbourhood, and the ground appeared to have been cultivated for a considerable distance. On this occasion the fortune of travellers gave us better quarters. The house in which we were lodged was clean. A raised dais of wood was set apart for the servants. Mattresses with cushions were reserved for the proprietor and his guests. There were some Turkomans in the village, and when the news was spread that an Englishman had arrived, several of them came to see me. "We are so glad to see an Englishman," said an old man, the spokesman for their party. Osman now interrupted him. "Effendi, they want to tell you that they hate the Muscovites, and that they hope England will not allow the Tzar's soldiers to massacre them like they (the Russians) massacred the Teke Turkomans." "Were many women and children belonging to the Teke Turkomans killed by the Russians?" The old man shook his head. "Many! many!" he replied. "The women were violated by the soldiers. The little boys and girls were abused and then murdered. The men took pleasure in these awful crimes. The Muscovite is a beast! He is worse than a hyena; the hyena sucks the blood of his victim, but the Russian satisfies his lust first, and then tears to pieces the object of his pleasure." "We hear," he continued, "you have as Padishah, a lady. What does she think of this way of treating the Turkoman's little ones?"[13] "And what do you think yourself?" he added. "Should not you like to cut the throats of all the Russians?" This was rather a strong way of dealing with the question. However, if I had been a Turkoman, and my own sisters had been treated by the Russians in the way the Turkoman women have been, I should have looked upon the matter from a Turkoman point of view. "They are not all equally guilty," I replied. "Equally guilty! Yes they are. From the Tzar upon his throne to the soldiers who do his bidding they are a nation of assassins! What is the best way to get rid of a wasp's nest?" he now inquired. "Smoke it, and destroy the young ones," I replied. "Well, that," said the Turkoman, "is what we must do with the Russians. We must kill them all. And Allah will be with us; for He knows who began the butchery." "Have many men gone from this village to the army?" I asked. "Every able-bodied man is serving, and we are now, all of us, going to the front; greybeards as well as boys. We feel that it is a war of extermination. If we do not defend our homesteads, woe betide us!"