So narrow was the space between the board and the floor that, lying flat, he could not lift his head more than two or three inches without striking it. To this grovelling posture he saw himself condemned for an indefinite period. He groaned in spirit. What an ass he had been! He breathed dust and smells; the air was stifling; how long could he endure it? Suppose he sneezed!--the very thought made his blood run cold, and he pinched his nose in anticipation.
Meanwhile the three officers above him were conversing until their meal should be ready. Frank's attention was distracted from his woes to the conversation rumbling on above his head.
"Mashallah! It is useless," he heard one say: he thought it was Abdi.
"But the shells do enormous damage when they hit," said the Anatolian captain.
"True, but what do they hit? It is marvellous, I grant you, that they hit anything at all--anything of value--when the guns are miles away and the gunners can see no mark, and without their aeroplanes they would have wrought less havoc even than they have done. But what then? They cease bombarding, and our engineers repair the damage with exceeding swiftness."
"Taught by the Germans," remarked the lieutenant.
"Not so, by the Beard! We Kurds will never own them as masters. They are great men of war, truly, great devisers of machines; no soulless man, such as you Anatolians and the English, can stand against them. But if they think to crush the free spirits of us Kurds in their machinery--wallahy! I hate them."
"Think you the English have no souls?" asked the captain. "That wily fellow we are hunting has, methinks, a spirit free as yours."
"Allah choke him!" growled the Kurd. "It is a knife in my heart that I may not stay to catch him. Yet to spit Armenians is fitter work for a Kurd than to hunt an Englishman, and be sure that few of those dogs who are fleeing to the mountains near Antioch will escape us."
"Did I dream, or did my ears hear from your lips the boast that you yourself would flay this very Englishman?" asked the captain gently: perhaps he could afford to be ironical now that Abdi was recalled for a more congenial task.
"Mashallah! would you taunt me, you pale knock-kneed son of an Anatolian cabbage?" shouted Abdi. "By the Beard, I will carve your carcase into gobbets before----"