In three days' time, John was setting out with his father for England. Of that journey and the wonder that awaited him at the end of it, John had talked for months, and Ali eagerly listened to every detail of the new life his friend would soon be living. England, to Ali, was a country of fabulous wealth, where great lords lived in wonderful houses; most of them were soldiers, and the country in which they lived was so small that open spaces were almost unknown. It was from John that he gained his first conception of a public school, which seemed something very unlike the great schools in Constantinople where his father would send him one day. As the two boys rested in the shade they were busy with their own thoughts. Below them, almost under the high rock where they lay, crouched the town of Amasia. They had a bird's-eye view down the gorge, and across to the opposite precipice walling in the valley. They could see the course of the winding river until it abruptly turned from sight in the bend of the valley; they counted the bridges intersecting its silver stream, and saw behind the trees fringing its banks, the flat-topped houses, the slender minarets, dwarfed by the height from which they looked, and the patternless maze of baths, domes, khan courtyards, and mosques covering the narrow valley. Far up the eastern precipice they could follow the winding highway, climbing like a white ribbon, until it reached even higher than the rock where they lay, and disappeared over the pass leading to Marsovan. As they watched and half dreamed, they heard the muezzin calling to prayer. Ali straightway arose, and as if John had not been present, performed his elaborate genuflections, bowing his head to the ground. John did not watch Ali closely. On such occasions he always felt a little awkward and hardly knew what he should do. He did not wish to give Ali an impression of irreverence; on the other hand, he was English and a Christian, and felt he had something which he should uphold. He pretended therefore, whenever Ali performed his religious exercises, not to be aware of them. The subject was one they never discussed, each avoiding it with caution. When Ali had finished, he stood up and looked at John in silence for a minute. His friend lay on his back, one leg crossed over the other, with a brown arm propping up the sunburnt face and head. As if aware that Ali was watching him, John sat upright. "Ali," he said, "let's have a bathe, I'm baked! Is there any water near?" "There's a stream half a mile down, it runs into the Iris, I've often bathed there--shall we go?"