said: 'A weak brew? Well, perhaps, but a good dash
of hate gingers up the worst cocktail; moreover; if
they trust their leader they will fight. The worm
that is baited too long may turn and surprise, its
tormentors by becoming a scorpion.5 And then he
had whistled a bright little tune, which meant that:
the brief conversation was ended. ./;
A queer medley the Legion d'Orient; the Syrians,
fine looking fellows for the most part, with thfe dignity
of the Arab race and the eyes of those who look out on
wide spaces. The Armenians as different from each
other in type as a carrion crow from a mountain eagle;-
some tall, finely featured, agile and brave; some
squat; some resembling Jewish pawnbrokers; a people
that while struggling to find itself had been marred
in the making by persecution, but a people that never
lost sight of its wrongs or despaired of a possible day
of vengeance.
Christophe sat with his rifle across his knees; he
appeared to be staring intently at nothing. On one
side of him Jan was telling his beads, his face tense
with a kind of fanatical rapture; on the other a weedy
Armenian crouched — Toto, he was nick-named,
after the lice that revelled in his greasy and tender
skin; it was all but impossible to de-louse him. Toto
flinched at every burst of a shell and he talked in a
rapid, hysterical whisper. His French was fluent but
execrable, and while he whispered he scratched his
armpits:
'My mother, I think of her,5 he was saying, 'my
mother lay hidden for two days in a dung-heap, and she
big with child, her time almost come — that was in
1896 when my father was murdered at Constantinople.
Men, women and children they bludgeoned to death,
my father's brains were splashed on the pavement.
I was born with the taste of dung in my mouth, oh,
yes, but I was baptized a Christian. My poor people
470