The Turks further showed their contempt for Persian authority by seizing the telegraph office at Sarab and kicking out the detachment of Persian Cossacks who held the place in the name of the Shah and did police duty in the district. These Cossacks, in common with the rest of their brigade, were under {175} the command of a Russian officer. He evidently harboured some extraordinary view as to his duty towards the Shah's Government, for he accepted with meek submissiveness the imperative orders of the Turks to take himself and his command out of Eastern Azerbaijan without any unnecessary delay. The Persian Cossacks, the "paid protectors of the poor," to give them one of their official designations, rarely "protected" anybody unless as a financial investment, and their brutality and greed for illicit gain caused them to be as much dreaded by the Persian peasant and bazaar shopkeeper as were those brutal, plundering ruffians, the Turkish Bashi-bazouks whom the senior partner in the Pan-Islamic firm had let loose in upper Azerbaijan. To counteract enemy activity round Sarab and Ardabil a small mounted force was despatched from our post at Karachaman under Captain Basil Cochrane of the 13th Hussars. Cochrane had with him about forty British enlisted Sowars of Khalkhal Shahsavans. Moving across the mountains, he boldly rode into Sarab. The Turks, assuming his to be but the advance guard of a large British force, scattered at his approach. The Governor and the townsfolk welcomed him effusively, and promised him military support. But Persian promises are not always redeemable, as we had already found to our cost. Turkish cavalry were advancing afresh and threatening his rear, so Cochrane, who was fifty miles as the crow flies from the nearest British post, {176} had to let go his hold on Sarab, and retire towards the south. Then a veil of silence enshrouded his movements; and at Mianeh headquarters it was feared that he had been cut off and killed with his whole party. I had just come back from a long trek, and had stretched my weary self out on a camp bed and gone fast to sleep, booted and spurred, when someone shook me vigorously. I awoke and found it was Wagstaff, chief of the Mission, with orders for me to take out a mounted party and go in search of Cochrane. I mustered the available Sowars of the station, about fifty in all. They were recruited from the Shahsavan tribesmen, and we had had hitherto no reason to suspect their fidelity. But immediately they divined that trouble was brewing and that they might get a "dusting" from the Turk, they decided that Mianeh was a healthier place than Sarab, and mutinied to a man. Neither threats nor persuasion could move them. Having, so to speak, thrown in their hands, they dismounted from their shaggy, fleet-footed hill ponies, and stood sullenly with folded arms, refusing obedience to all orders.