He tried to hold back the impetuous man, appealing and swearing in a breath. From below, the children watched the scene with a look of bewilderment and despair. The unknown strangers were quarrelling, then! What hope of mercy had they if this went on? This must have been in their minds when Maryska, climbing nimbly as a cat, slipped by her father and leaped down among the Turks. She was kissing and hugging some of the children and telling them in a tongue they understood that all would be well with them; doing this, and defying the snarling troopers before a man could have counted ten. Then the men at the window lost sight of her, the throng closing about her as water filling the vortex of a falling stone. "Good God, man, aren't you going now?" Paleologue licked his lips, a little astonished, perhaps, not to find a cigarette between them. He caught up a great planter's hat and clapped it on the side of his head; then, without a word, he clambered over the casement and pushed his way among the soldiers. Of course, Faber was upon his heels, treading so close on his tracks that they stumbled into the press together and were instantly swallowed up by it. Instructed to deal patiently with the strangers, none of the sentries fired upon them, but all swarmed about them and tried to pull them back. The village itself had by this time become a Golgotha, from whose wretched houses came the groans of butchered men and the screams of women in an agony of fear and shame. Their terrible cries were echoed up and down the streets from many a group which stooped about an infamy; while at the far end near the church, flames spurted from an isolated house, and the wood burned with a detonation heard closely upon the still air. The outposts of the legions of hell had begun their work; they would do it thoroughly enough before their chief returned to call them off. "Where's my daughter? What have you done with her?" Paleologue's voice rose to a shrill pitch as he pushed and fought his way into the crowd and was thrust forward and still forward by the wiry American at his heels. Faber had never imagined such a scene as this, nor could he have believed it possible. The heat and clamour of the street, the sweat of the fighting men; here and there a girl caught in a man's arms and held firmly as a wild beast holds its prey; smoke of the burning house coming down upon the wind--the crazy organ still rolling out its dirge-like waltzes. All this and the fierce oaths of the maladroitly butchered--the horrid, gashed corpses in the gutters--the rearing, terrified horses of Alussein's lieutenants; and, above it all, the serene sky and the desolate mountains lifting their scarred summits in savage menace. What an inferno, what a hell of human creation! And into this the girl Maryska had plunged, headlong as a bold swimmer into a raging sea which has engulfed a child.