Petrobey flushed angrily. He was not a meek man, and had no stomach for insults; so he sat down again, leaving Ali standing, and crossed one leg over the other. "I make no conditions," he said, "except this one: I will order no general massacre; at the same time, it would be safer for all of you not to assume insolent and overbearing airs." Ali raised his eyebrows, and before speaking again sat down and beckoned to the page who carried his pipe. "You will not give us a safe conduct to Tripoli, for instance?" "No." "You will not allow us to retain our arms?" Petrobey laughed. "Such is not my intention. All I will do"--and his anger suddenly flared up at the perfectly unassumed insolence of the man--"all I will do is to forbid my men to shoot you down in cold blood. You will be wise to consider that, for we may not care to grant such terms, no, nor yet be able to enforce obedience to them if we did, on the day when Tripoli is crushed like a beetle below our heel." Ali shrugged his shoulders and took his chibouk from the hands of the page who carried it. "Oblige me with a piece of charcoal," he said to one of the Greeks who stood by, and he lit his pipe slowly and deliberately before replying. "Your terms are preposterous," he said; "I do not, however, say that I will not accept them, but I wish for five hours more for consideration." "Five hours more for relief from Tripoli, in my poor judgment," remarked Petrobey. "I am afraid that will not be convenient to me. I require 'yes' or 'no'; neither more nor less." Ali inhaled two long breaths of smoke. "If I will give neither 'yes' nor 'no,' what then?" "This. You shall go back in safety, and then when you are starved out, or when we take the place, I will not grant any terms. And we have a long score against you. Your rule has not been popular among my countrymen; those who have lived here under you are full of very pretty tales." "I suppose the dogs are. I accept your terms." Petrobey rose. "Consider yourself my prisoner," he said, not even looking at him. "Take charge of him, Christos, and Yorgi, and order all three corps out, Yanni." "Another piece of charcoal, one of you," said Ali. "This tobacco is a little damp." In half an hour's time all the Turkish soldiers and civilians were defiled out of the citadel unarmed between the lines of the Greeks. They were instantly divided up among the different corps, and from that moment became the property of the soldiers as much as the Greek slaves in the last years had been the property of their Turkish masters. Many who had friends were ransomed, many became domestic slaves, and many, in the Greek phrase, "the moon devoured." The flag of Greece was hoisted on the towers, and the work which Mitsos had cried aloud in fire from Taygetus to Bassae had begun. [Illustration: "MIXED WITH THE NOISE OF THE SINGING, ROSE ONE GREAT SOB OF A THANKFUL PEOPLE BORN AGAIN"]