CHAPTER IX

THE TRIAL

The prisoners remained silently standing in the spot where the soldiers had left them, too troubled to speak, too frightened to move. They were guilty of no other offense than that of being Armenians, yet the tales which they had heard of Turkish prison life made them shudder, and they wondered what their punishment was to be. When their eyes became accustomed to the darkness, they looked about them. The cell was absolutely bare, without even a plank for a bed, and the stone floor was damp.

Takvor tried to think. Had his father known when he was coming, he would have been on the quay to meet him, and he would have sought influence to obtain his freedom, but now all communication with the outside world was severed, and weeks or months might pass before relief came. Tired and hungry, for he had eaten nothing since the early morning, he was thoroughly discouraged. Reaching out his hand to touch the wall, that he might lean against it, he felt a moving object. He started back and saw a great black scorpion crawling along the slimy bricks. Fearing he should be stung, he groped his way to the other end of the cell, where the wall itself was as damp as the floor. At last, wearied with waiting, he sank down exhausted on the wet stones.

The other prisoners tried to be cheerful, for to them life had ever meant little more than persecution. The sun went down; light no longer entered the cell, and the men crouched on the floor in silence.

Late in the night the harshly grating door of the cell was opened and two soldiers, flashing a light in the prisoners’ faces, ordered them to follow. They filed from the room, up the stairs, and into the office, where a pompous Turk was to examine them again, thinking that in their dazed condition they might be brought to confess complicity in some plot for the overthrow of the government. Takvor, whose European dress again secured for him more consideration than was shown to the others, was the first to be searched. He was asked the same questions as in the afternoon. When the examination was finally ended, a soldier seized him by the arm, and led him down stairs, where the jailor, a gigantic Turk, stood grinning with delight at the prospect of another prisoner.

“Here is a good one for you,” the soldier called out.

“I can find room for him.”

He pushed Takvor through a doorway, into a narrow passage, and holding the lantern close to his face, scanned him closely.

“Off with that coat!” he growled; and as Takvor did not obey, he set his lantern down, and stripped it from him; and then, seizing him by the neck, forced him along the passage and into a cell guarded by a heavy grated door.

“In there, you dog of a Christian!” and he gave him a push.

Takvor stumbled and fell; from the darkness about him arose a din of voices, some of laughter, others of pity.