On my way to Sadik Pasha's abode I saw a Turkish soldier wearing a very fine pair of Russian high boots that had evidently belonged to a Russian officer, and without inquiring too closely how they had been procured I proceeded to do a deal. My own boots were thin patent leather riding-boots, which looked very nice, but were quite unsuitable for walking; so I persuaded the Turk to accept them, together with three piastres, or sixpence, in return for the more useful if less ornamental pair. The faithful servant of the Prophet was delighted with his bargain, and strutted about in my fashionable Bond Street patent leathers admiring himself, while I, for my part, had changed my nationality by stepping literally into the boots of a Russian. Old Sadik Pasha gave me a warm welcome. I found him squatting on his haunches, with a praying-mat under him, looking the picture of contented cheerfulness. As the weather was pretty hot, he had rigged an awning over the top of his subterranean domicile to keep the sun off, and Kronberg and I squatted down beside him to hear all the news. It was like dropping in to see a man at his club--with one or two slight differences. Sadik Pasha ordered coffee for three; and though we were six feet underground, the Roumanians in the Grivitza redoubt must have divined instinctively that we were having refreshments, for they decided to serve dessert. Finding it impossible to do much with the ordinary shells, they had pressed a mortar into the service, and just as the man was coming with the coffee they fired another projectile from this ingenious engine of warfare. Now the specific charm of the mortar is that it throws a shell with a very high trajectory, so that the projectile can soar like a hawk into the heavens and swoop down perpendicularly upon its prey. With all their ingenuity the Turks had not succeeded in devising a protection from this mode of annoyance; and as the Turkish soldier was coming along like a well drilled waiter with a tray on his arm containing three cups of coffee, the mortar-shell exploded in the redoubt. No one was killed, but a fragment of the casing knocked the tray and the cups and saucers into smithereens, and Sadik Pasha had to order "The same again, please." This time the coffee reached the consumer without any interruption in transit; and I was in the act of drinking mine when another shell exploded in the redoubt about ten feet distant from where we were sitting, and made a hole in the ground big enough to bury a man in. I was so startled that I poured the greater part of my coffee over my breeches instead of into my mouth, and old Sadik Pasha chuckled mightily over my want of _sang-froid_. He gave me a cordial invitation to come and stop with him for a week, assuring me that I would soon get used to little accidents like that.