CHAPTER XVIII
Brigand Hunting: The Capture of Yanni
EACH week came news of robberies and murder
and villages raided and men held to ransom, but
we could do nothing, for we were not ready.
The authorities grew impatient, and when news came
of a raid on the Jewish settlement village of Yahoudi
Chiflik on the last day of July, we decided to declare
war on the brigands, though we were but half prepared.
Of exact details of the raid we had none. The small
boy who came secretly with the news could not say
who sent him. Before dawn on the ist of August we
set out to investigate. The smell of heat lay heavy in
the air and the house was still grey with the shadow
of night as I came down my rickety stairs. From the
Yeni Mosque by the pier the muezzin was calling to
prayer.
A golden quarter of the moon, half toppling out of
the sky, was sinking low over Stambul. For a minute it
threw the minarets and mosques into black relief against
a sky of fathomless blue and then dipped into the grey
morning mist. We looked down on the park with its
tiny ponds and .dilapidated bandstand to the Golden
Horn, where they were closing Galata Bridge. The
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