Memoirs of an Armenian Revolutionary, Volume 1 — Chapter 9: Duman and Saint Thaddeus

That same night a courier came from Ghalasar. Samson was calling Sargis, Dashnaktsakan Khecho and the rest to him; and Sarbaz Khecho and me he ordered to cross over to Khoy at once. For Sargis and his companions the thing was easy: they had only a few kilometers of road to cover, and however tired and broken they might be, they could make the move without trouble. The road Sarbaz and I had was a long one, and my eye had taken fright at that exhausting ride I had been put through a few weeks before.

— Your horse wounded, mine done in, — said Sarbaz, turning to me, — he might at least have written why we are to start at once... Pokhik jan, can you let us have two fresh horses, and doctor ours till we come back?

— Is that a thing to ask? On my eyes,^t1 answered Pokhik,

and gave orders to Gre and Sahak, who were Assyrians,^t2 to make two horses ready for us.

— If that is so, we must sleep a little. Do not let us sleep more than two hours. By daybreak we must be past the "getatuk."^t3

It was still dark when we are already on the horses. Gre and Sahak have come to see us as far as the "getatuk." That is Pokhik's delicacy. Sahak's nose is large, and gives his face the look of a fighting ram;^t4 Gre's neck is short, and his broad-backed body is like a solid stump that it is impossible to break. Both speak Armenian smoothly, and you would never think them anything but our own. There was no time, in any case, to talk with them, for they rode ahead of us, and we could hardly keep up behind, we were so tired. By daybreak we had passed the dangerous point and were standing at the head of the "getatuk." We kissed, and parted. That parting was the final one: within a week or two they were to leave this world for good. Neither they nor we foresaw that they would be killed with Pokhik. Of that we will tell later.

We cover the road under the sun. You would think Sarbaz Khecho was the overseer of the roads: he asks every man he meets how he does, and has a sweet word for him. I play the part of his serving-lad; I hold my tongue like a bride, put on a smile, and go along behind Sarbaz. And now we are in the streets of Khoy. We open the door of "our house" and go in.

But what do we see... At the head of the stairs stands Thados.^t5 When he caught sight of us, it was as though he had seen a ghost escaped out of the other world. He set up a fearful noise and ran into the room, and we after him. There we saw Doctor Zavriev, who had come out on the road to meet us; and we saw Nikol Duman, stretched out in the bed with a quiet face. Zavriev and Thados kissed us like men who had found what was lost, while Nikol, putting out his hand, invited us to sit down beside him.

Thados and Sarbaz were so moved that they could not have their fill of telling each other everything. That was as well, since Zavriev could not speak Armenian, Nikol, as it was, did not want to speak, and I was so tired and so happy that I felt no need of speaking. I listened in silence to what Thados told, and understood how they had escaped certain death and come down into Khoy.

— The evening attack on our position had been made by regular troops; it was in that attack that our horses fell, which we had tied below the positions. They cut us off from the other positions and dug themselves in fifty to a hundred paces away. They were shouting "taalim."^t6 Avo had long since been killed, and the three of us could not hold out against an enemy that grew stronger minute by minute. In the dark they came at us from all four sides, and we were all mixed up together. Our rifles on our shoulders, we fought with the "tens." Nikol suddenly called out, "Za mnoy" (follow me),^t7 and sprang out of the position, and we after him. He struck so suddenly that a road opened under his fire, and we, leaping from rock to rock, passed through the line and, running down the mountain, reached the gorge. In a cleft of a rock we found one another, and Nikol gave the order: "not another explosion and not another rifle-shot; move fast down this gorge, with the run of this water, road or no road, and pay no attention to anything." Two hours we moved quickly forward, and then halted. Nikol told us we were either in Persia or somewhere near its border. There was still rifle-fire from the place of our fight, but nobody was pursuing us.

All night we went forward at a tortoise's pace, and at daybreak we came out on a highroad; but there was no strength left to walk, we had fallen sick. We hired a donkey from the passers-by, and at last we dropped ourselves down here. Now, Sarbaz jan, do you tell what happened to you. Sarbaz scratched the nape of his neck and said:

"Biz eski sarbaz ak, biz ham scharak, ham kacharak" (We are old soldiers: we both befoul ourselves and run away).^t8

Laughter took us all; even Nikol laughed from the heart at this Persian saying, while Dr. Zavriev kept asking, — What, what did he say?

Sarbaz told the whole affair in detail, not forgetting even what had passed between Arakel and me — which drew a word out of Nikol, or rather an oath, at Arakel's address. With what Thados and Sarbaz told, the whole picture of our fight was complete, and Nikol said with satisfaction:

— I did not think we should get off so lightly. Two men and five horses, in such a storm, is not so great a loss.

I listened like one struck dumb. I do not know why, but I too spoke:

— I remember Serob's^t9 last words, which Suren and this Sarbaz here turn into a joke. "Serob, Serob," said he, "I — your grandfather's ——…^t10 Where have you come to? What business have you in these mountains?..." Not one of us knew any better than Serob where we were going in that fight, or why, or who was against us, or where we were. To this minute I have no answer to those questions.

I remember shooting the boy. There was one boy, a Kurd, who obstinately stayed below our positions and, passing from rock to rock without a stop, came closer and closer to us and galled us badly with his fire. He was already within fifty paces when I fired and nailed him to the ground. From a distance a piteous cry went up — "lao, lao;^t11 for God's sake, do not shoot, my child is dead" — and crying so, leaping from rock to rock, he flew down upon his son's body. My hands shook; but Suren took aim, and — father or whoever he was — added him to the boy's body. In the course of the fight I forgot it; but toward evening, when I saw Mato, that Mato who saved us by giving his own life, my conscience began to torment me. At present I cannot understand what it is that we have done.

Neither can I understand Pokhik. Before we went to the fight I took him for a vindictive and savage man. When we came back from the fight, he had turned into an angel. He was tender with us, he held our vow "accepted," and he has vowed to go our road and be martyred. Why this vow? I do not understand. Perhaps I am tired and dazed; but all this remains past my understanding.

Apparently I was speaking in agitation. Zavriev came over and stroked my head:

— Golubchik moy, ty stradayesh... (my little dove, you are suffering),^t12 sleep, sleep and rest.

*

I slept a heavy, unbroken sleep till the next day. When I opened my eyes I was hungry. I ate, and became a perfectly sound man again. Already I was repenting what I had let out the day before. I thought I might perhaps have wounded Nikol. But I saw that this dry man too is changed: he treats me as an equal treats an equal; he takes me neither for an unbroken calf^t13 nor for a puppy, but for a man whose opinion he asks. He had written several letters to Salmast (no doubt those letters are not lost, and may one day come to light among the Minaret^t14 bundles), and he gave them to me to read.

— Am I to read the whole, or only certain parts? I asked.

— Read parts, and you will understand nothing.

One letter had to do with the survivors of our band, who were to be got away from Salmast to Tabriz at once, and without being noticed. Nikol too was to leave for Tabriz. He wrote that this had to be done so as not to fall into the disaster of Mahlam.(*)^t15

(*) After the Khanasor Expedition, under threat from the Turkish government, the Persian authorities were compelled to take measures against the Armenian revolutionaries. Seven innocent villagers, who had had no connection whatever with the Khanasor Expedition, were beheaded, becoming scapegoats to Turkish caprice.

The second letter had to do with Pokhik and with the bands crossing into the Land. "It was folly, once the thing was past mending," Nikol wrote, "to be training cadres and to be making my own attempt at crossing into the Land — which I made under compulsion. That is why I refused to take many with me, and Pokhik among them. Sasun is no more, all the leaders are killed, the fighters are straining to escape out of the Land, and it is likely that what is left of them will show itself in these parts before long. In such conditions, is it not madness, this notion of Pokhik's of crossing into the Land, of which the lads who have come to me give me their assurances?"

Nikol asked me what my opinion was — what consequences these letters would have.

— It is not hard to guess at the consequences; but it is hard for me to judge what you have written, because there are points in it I do not understand. For instance, if your undertaking was folly, then why did you begin it, and what was it that compelled you? And if Sasun is no more, are we then to wash our hands of everything?

— Leave all that to one side; give me your opinion of the consequences.

— I find your caution right — to leave Salmast and go over to Tabriz. But if an exception can be made in my case, I should rather go over to the Monastery of the Apostle Thaddeus, and from there to Van; I should prefer to pursue my original purpose, if I have your consent to it and you give me recommendations. As to the question of Pokhik and the other bands crossing into the Land, I do not think your negative opinion will meet with agreement. That work will go on until you write this letter from inside the Land, or until the comrades in the Land themselves grasp that your view is the expedient one. So long as the cries of "Help, help" are

heard from the Land, they will all go out to meet them, and they will not listen to you.

Nikol's embittered eyes fell upon mine; but he did not grow angry, and said in a voice like thunder:^t16

— Yes, they will not listen. Desire and feeling, that reckon nothing up, are stronger than reason and reckoning. Let them think what they please, but let these letters go. They will say that Nikol's eye has taken fright; that Nikol himself did not succeed, and out of envy will not have others succeed... No matter; let them say it.

And the letters went.

Next day Nikol set out for Tabriz with his companions. He left me at Khoy, to go, as I wished, to the Monastery, and from there to Van. I learned that Sargis and Dashnaktsakan Khecho, taking with them what was left of our band, had likewise gone over to Tabriz, according to Nikol's instruction, and had joined him. Because of an incident that occurred in the Armenian village of Muzhumbar,^t17 they were scattered away toward Transcaucasia. I did not meet them again until the Ottoman Constitution. Of our band, only Suren had stayed at Salmast, with Pokhik. Before long the two of them too were to be killed.

*

All these events had worked upon me beyond measure, and they were a turning-point in my life. I began to come at questions with a critical eye. I drew away from the idea of "being martyred," and set the work, and the result got from the work, above it. Nikol's half-confidential talk with me on that last day had helped me toward this; but Nikol's credit had fallen with me. I kept asking myself how it was that this man, endowed with such natural intelligence, with so wide a preparation, so much courage and so much magnetism, could take part in an undertaking that he himself did not believe in — that he even held to be harmful. Nikol sought no justification

and gave no explanation. It was that which astonished me.

It was only years afterward, from the letters out of Sasun and from what others told, that I was to understand the true reason for the step he took. Much later still, in 1918, when we had gone to Trebizond to negotiate with the Turks, Nikol's close friend Kachaznuni(*)^t18 told the whole story of the forming of our band, and made plain the character of Nikol Duman.

In 1904 the Land was in a grave case. Vaspurakan had been left without a head, and Sasun was under siege. In those days of extremity they remembered Duman; they called upon him to come and take over the leadership of Vaspurakan.

But that invitation came when "the thing was past mending." In May of 1904 the rising of Sasun had been crushed, Hrayr had been shot down, the fighters were scattered, and the shadow of death hung over the Land. It is just then that Nikol Duman receives the order to leave his post at Baku and set out for the Land.

"When they laid the state of the Land before Nikol," Kachaznuni told us, "many of the very men who had written those letters were already killed, and those who were left alive had scattered and were looking for a way of escape out of the Land. And now they invite Nikol to go into the Land and take the whole responsibility upon himself — and on condition that he save it, at that. The thing was enough to make a man rebel. Nikol asked me:

— Is this a thing to do? Hayrapet makes the wedding, and Karapet is to take the punishment?^t19 I was there; they knew my address. In these five years, instead of blowing the zurna, they might at least have asked my opinion of what was and what was not, since at the last minute they meant to come to me. They ought, from the first,

(*) Kachaznuni was a colleague of Nikol's in the oil company at Baku.

to have given weight to Hrayr's warnings. There was sense in coming to me a year ago at least; then it might have been possible to make the Hayrapets understand that without a bride there is no wedding. Now, when the wedding has been held — even if without a bride — what am I to go and do?

"Dodging the question he had put, I said:

— Nikol, you are the experienced one; you know better than the rest of us.

"There are men who take a decision and afterward think about the means of carrying it out and about the consequences; such men decide easily, but as a rule they stop half-way and take new decisions, and new ones again. And there are men who take a decision with great difficulty, and take it only when they have pictured to themselves in detail the means of carrying it out and the consequences of those means. Such men take two decisions within themselves — one for the case of success, one for the case of failure — and their decisions are past examining and are final: they are no longer subject to any counsel or any opinion. Of this last type was Nikol; and nobody knew what he would do, or how, or through whom, to accomplish the purposes his comrades had hung upon his neck.

"Nikol looked me in the face and said nothing. But when Zavriev began his sermon in Russian — that one must not waver for the sake of the dead and the dying, that one must go and be sacrificed — Nikol darkened, pressed his long hands hard on the table, and said drily:

— Cut it short, Yasha (Hagop),^t20 everything is finished. If you have all fixed your eyes on me, then it is from there that I will begin, — and turning to me: — If there is to be a going into the Land, let me go this hour, before they reach our frontier. There is no time for falling this way and that. Since I have decided to cross into the Land without more ado, it will be senseless if I do not take suitable men with me.

As we must move fast, and my own strength is in pain and weakened, both I and the comrades I take must be mounted. Every horseman, with all his equipment, will cost about a thousand roubles. Now then, Ohannes: you will settle the account with the Bureau, and you will write the letters. But today, by ten o'clock, from wherever it may be, you will have fifteen to twenty thousand roubles ready. At that hour Khecho and Thados will come and take the money from you. Your business is done. Go now, and get the money ready.

"Then he turned to Zavriev:

— Yasha, I accept all your exhortations about taking the responsibility upon oneself. No doubt you too are convinced of the counsels you give. Therefore you will be with me, exempt from penalty,^t21 under my command.

"Zavriev sprang up and kissed Nikol, who had grown colder still, as though he had turned into a statue.

— Since you agree, you will do the following at once:

A. — Until daylight you will shut yourself up in your house and write your will — above all to those comrades and friends of yours in Petersburg who have risen to great positions in the empire. Explain your views to them, so that they may know that in the name of our cause it is not only brigands like me who are killed, but noblemen and educated men like you.

B. — In the morning you will see Thados and take money for your purchases and your expenses.

C. — Today you will get your passport ready; the next morning you will set out and go to Persia, to Tabriz, and there you will wait for my orders.

"Hard as it was for me to find twenty thousand roubles at once, in less than two hours I had found sixteen thousand and given them to Thados. Hard as it was for Dr. Zavriev, too, to write his will and to be on the road within thirty-six hours, the next day he was on the Tabriz road. On the fourth day Nikol was no longer to be seen in Baku.

"Nikol was an uncommon man. Man and beast are one and the same thing. Man is ashamed to confess it, and for that very reason he is the baser of the two. The purpose of the existence of both — be it by instinct, be it by reason — is one thing only: to secure their own existence and that of their offspring. That is to say: to keep the belly full by every means, to tremble for life, to guard oneself from dangers, to breed, to lay up a store against the hard day and to cling to it as to one's own person and one's own offspring. Nikol was an exception among them. Life for him was a veg^t22 that he played with. Position, wealth, glory he held to be empty things. The established order and the accepted customs seemed not to concern him.

"He was no ordinary man in another way as well. Baku is a place of contradictions. One day you see the hut turned into a palace; the next day you see the palace burnt down and turned to ashes. One man you see swimming in gold, and the next day in the mud. You see one whose belly is bursting with fat, and another whose belly, from emptiness, is stuck to his ribs. The swollen bellies trample the weak and pass on. Man has become a wolf to man, and eats him. And before such spectacles some men are moved, and look for a remedy. But not one of these shattering contradictions worked upon Nikol: he looked on as though he were in a theater, as though the whole thing did not concern him in the least. He watched them as a man watches the scene of their fist-fight^t23 in passing, and followed their fall and their rise almost with indifference. One day I wanted to understand what this strange man felt. And what does he go and answer?

— Ohannes, I took you for a serious man; I see that you are like the rest. Men have come out to a contest — whether that is good or bad I do not know. Some sow wheat and fill the granary with the grain, without knowing whether they will be able to eat it and finish it. The buffalo lies in its

avutanots,^t24 eating and chewing away, without knowing that the one who will slaughter it is rejoicing.^t25 The donkey eats the thistles at the edge of the fields; if it eats the lucerne it gets a blow. The goat has gone up the rocks and eats branch and leaf, feeling that there is nobody there to lay a hand on it. So each is at his own business, according to his taste. They are the actors, and I a spectator who pays nothing. Think of the day when the wolves will come out and tear every kind of beast to pieces. Then this drama of self-forgetfulness may come to an end...

"But that was not the line that decided Nikol's character. His strangeness, his hyunarb^t26 — the gift of resourcefulness — lay in another thing. When the packs of wolves came down from their dens into the public square; when all the beasts were thrown into confusion; when the heroes of the fair day and the chattering magpies turned into hens fallen in the water; when the rich man with his nose in the air and the poor man alike lost hand and foot, and, creeping into their holes, begged for help — then Nikol appeared. He was calm and silent. He looked to the right, he looked to the left, and came down into the middle of the square as though a leopard had come out into the open. His appearing caused fear and astonishment, admiration and awe together. Enemy or friend, a man was nailed where he stood in spite of himself, and awaited his will. That idle world was now the spectator, and Nikol the actor.

"I have told you how, in his travail over going into the Land, he found the way out of what he had to do. He was able to compel me to pay out money without a request and without an order. He was able to make Dr. Zavriev write his will. These are small things; the more important ones will be told from Van, from Boghaz-Keasan,^t27 and from this place and that in Persia. I did not see them with my own eyes. What I saw with my own eyes was in the days of the Armeno-Tatar fighting, when the collaboration of Tatar and Russian against the Armenians became plain, when the veil was torn from that fable that "Christian tsarist Russia

is the pledge of the Armenians' happiness." You should have seen what confusion, what disappointment and despair had come over the Armenian bourgeois, clerical and intellectual classes. They had become a boat without sail and without rudder. At the sight of the Tatar storm they read curses and blasphemies over the crooked Russian cross that yesterday they had worshipped. And in spite of themselves they turned their eyes toward us. You should have seen the so-called "left" and the so-called "revolutionaries," and how absurdly they reasoned, given over to terror at the sight of the Tatar mob that was threatening to wipe out every Armenian without distinction.

"It is natural, they said, that reactionary tsarist Russia should join hands with the reactionary Tatar mob. Our salvation is in a revolutionary, free Russia, and that is what you do not understand. Let the Dashnaktsutiun leave off its passivity and put itself at the head of the revolution, and a Russia in revolution will destroy this reactionary mob.

"Our own people too, at that moment of responsibility, had lost themselves and did not know what they were to do: they struck now at the nal (the horseshoe), now at the nail.^t28 But the time was not passing idly. Heart-wearing news came every minute, and paralyzed us the more. It was at that moment that I understood who the true leader is, the man of the crisis. It was Nikol, who always listened in silence. He rose from his place, calm and hard, and turned to the right — toward the clerics, the bourgeois and the talkative intellectuals — and said:

— Cut off your voices. Understand at last that the selap (the flood)^t29 will carry away all the work you have done to this day. Your calculations are wrong from the foundation. What I tell you, that also you are to do.

"Then he turned to the left:

— You too, straining your heads, talk verasia, verasia (things on credit, things without foundation).^t30 Within a few

hours, if we do not stop it, every one of your mothers will be weeping. Go on, go and look for the sweetness of garlic and onion! There is no sweetness in them. And if it is revolution you want, there is nobody holding your hand. Here is your gubernator (the provincial governor), here are your commanders, joined with their dogs to the Muslim Tatar mob, and they mean to butcher you like cattle. Get up, kill them, and I will say aferim^t31 to you.

"He turned to us:

— The enemy is armed, and he has already passed Ermenikend and reached Parapet.^t32 And you sit there beating your chanke (your jaw).^t33

"At last, addressing them all, he said:

— Disperse, and let every man go to his work. The women to the house; whoever has bolojik (kidneys, courage)^t34 let him go down into the street. What I do, what I say, that also you are to carry out — unless you want your wool taken off you, beneficently.^t35

"They all turned into lambs. Without any resolution being passed, Nikol had become the head of them all. Within the hour we had word that Nikol was in the fighting, and that he had fallen upon the Tatars and was cutting them down. We waited for his victory without a fear.

"This is the leader — the man who can change everything in a single hour."

*

Why our band did not go from Salmast by the straight and short road; who the forces were that fought against us; and what losses we inflicted upon them — all this was soon made clear through the frontier troops, and through the Kurds and the Armenians who had taken part in the fighting. First, as to the road. Nikol had known that the Turkish representative at Dilman had reported our band's crossing from Salmast to Van; it was known too that we were being waited for by the Thakortsi and the Maghriktsi

ashirets^t36 and by the Turkish troops. Taking that into account, Nikol changes the road from the mountain of Araul (where we had spent the night), and decides to reach Mount Varag by way of the heights above Kotur, through the points of Radi and Salakhaneh.^t37 Those who fought against us until midday had been men of the Mlantsi and the Haidarantsi tribes, and the local people and the frontier troops as well; afterward the troops of Saray came up. Their number is to be reckoned ten times ours. It was our luck that they had not been waiting for us in the neighborhood of Radi. The losses they suffered were eight soldiers and frontier guards and twenty-three Kurds. What we saw with our own eyes we could not count at more than seventeen bodies. Be that as it may, we owed our lives to Nikol's quickness.

*

At Khoy I was under the guardianship of two aged veteran field-workers. Both were blue-eyed and of middle height, and over both of them the years seemed to be passing rather to temper them than to wear them out. The only thing that betrayed their age was the white threads that had come into their chek^t38 hair; but for that, I should have taken them for grown young men.

One of them was named Rouben, and his surname was Derdzakian.^t39 I will not vouch, however, for the genuineness of either. He said he was a man of Constantinople and by descent of Taron — which likewise stood in need of verification. It is beyond doubt that he had taken part in Kukunian's band and had been exiled to Sakhalin, from which he escaped after various adventures and came to Persia and joined his Sakhalin comrades — Yeprem, Balajan, Movsesian — whose story, taken man by man, might turn into a legendary novel; part of it Amurian has written down.^t40

In those days this fugitive from Siberia was a "doctor" (more exactly, he had the repute of a doctor), and a man much sought after in the province of Artaz. He was conscientious, disinterested, devoted to the people. If he had no medical diploma, still, between Sakhalin and Persia, he had treated — and no doubt killed — so many men that he might have stirred the envy of many a man of science.

But all this was so much pretext for carrying on his revolutionary work as a legal man. The Sardar of Maku^t41 held him to be a person indispensable to the province.

Doctor Rouben was a living man; he seethed like boiling water. If there was no work to do, he would talk, joke, scuffle and swear as they swear in Sakhalin.

My other guardian was called Vardan, and his surname was Shahbaz.^t42 He too had old histories behind him. Doctor Rouben connected his past with the affair of the Ottoman Bank,^t43 but Shahbaz himself was displeased at this and kept silent about it. As a rule he was against talking, and held everything to be "warbling." He was thoughtful, and only by moving the lashes of his eyes rapidly did he betray how highly strung he was. Vardan had lately come out of the Land. After passing an agitated life in Vaspurakan, he had shouldered the name of "Jatak"^t44 and had come out with Yerkat^t45 to go to the General Assembly. Returning from it, he had fallen into Doctor Rouben's hands, so that he might get him to Van by way of the Monastery of the Apostle Thaddeus.

Such were the two experienced men I was with. There was nothing for me either to think out or to do. "With their waters I can find my road," I thought, and I was easy.

We stayed a few days at Khoy, and Doctor Rouben began to be bored. Once he turned to Vardan and said:

— True, the times are confused and there are conflicting reports in plenty; but the work that has to be done is better done sooner. We take five horses, two for the loads, three to ride. We take the stocks of the rifles off the barrels and lose them among the loads. To you I give "varandil"^t46 rifles, as being my servants. I go in front, and you behind me, as my gholams (servants).^t47 We go by way of Zeyva, of Zurava, of Teghnut.^t48 Before we reach Teghnut we turn by way of Krghltagh and go to the Monastery of Thaddeus. The whole district is sons of dogs. Is it agreed?

Vardan was silent, and at last answered:

— Let it be as you say.

Doctor Rouben, dissatisfied, looked at me questioningly. I answered:

— Let what you say be.

Doctor Rouben grew angry:

— Dogs, sons of dogs, what is the difference between the two things you have said? Say something, that we may understand something.

And he said it in such a way that laughter took us.

— Very well; if it is a quarrel you want, then let it not be as you say, answered Vardan.

But the question, and what we were to do, had been settled already; and the next day, in broad daylight, as the doctor's servants, with the "varandil" rifles thrown over our shoulders, we were going through the bazaar, dragging two pack-horses after us. We went always toward the north-west, along the banks of the streams that were making^t49 to spill into the Tghmut. The mountains were forested,^t50 and here and there there were gorges. Often we came upon wretched little villages lost in the ravines, many of whose names were Armenian, though the inhabitants were every one of them Tatars or Kurds. In spite of that, Doctor Rouben, who rode ahead of us, appeared to be known to them all. Crying "Hakim Bashi,"^t51 they want to swallow him whole; but he promises to call on his way back. Zevan and Zuravan behind us, we come near to Teghnut, where we halt, to rest the horses and to settle the road we are to take.

There is sun in the sky still. Vardan has put together the parts of the "Mosin" rifles, and we have changed our weapons. Skirting the village of Krghl-Tagh, we climb its mountain; and leaving behind us the barking of the dogs and the sound of a stray rifle-shot here and there, we come out upon a tableland whose waters flow not southward to the river Tghmut but northward, in the direction of Maku — that is, into the river Gaylatu. Our climbing and descending lasted several hours, and was tiring, above all for the horses. "From here on it is freedom," Doctor Rouben kept saying; "ride as you please; in two hours we can reach the monastery."

The morning star shines above the grassy field; the horses snort and graze, panting. Leaning against the loads, we eat cheese wrapped in lavash.^t52 From far off, from very far off, comes the sound of a bell. The sky turns blue, and the blue mixes with orange, and with the paling stars. It is the bells of the monastery, ringing in the mildness of the morning. It is the Monastery of Thaddeus, calling the Christians to prayer and to faith. Nowhere can a bell sound so full of mystery and so beautiful. Here its voice comes from the other world, from heaven, and it has another accent, a hopeful one of a different kind, as though it were calling the dead to their feet.

It was there, at the place from which that voice comes, that the Apostle Thaddeus was killed two thousand years ago by our unbelieving King.^t53 And every morning the bells sound, and nobody comes to pray. This country has remained unbelieving; all are Muslims, and enemies of that ringing. Yet for centuries the bells go on sounding, and you do not know who it is that rings them, or why they ring. It is as though they rang to proclaim the victory of justice — but justice there is none, and none.

— The horses have eaten their measure of grass, said Doctor Rouben, and rose from his place; let them pray a little longer in the monastery, so that the black-robe^t54 may not be left alone.

When the sky had turned to red cast iron, and the cocks were calling their last cock-a-doodle-doo, we saw the dome of the magnificent monastery. It was like a shepherd fleeing the hail.