Page:Ravished Armenia.djvu/146

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138
RAVISHED ARMENIA

soldiers and crossed the river. She could hear screams from the other side. Once zaptiehs on the raft taking them across the river broke into a loud guffaw. The oarsmen steered the raft so as to escape two floating objects, and it was these which amused them. Mme. Roth saw the bodies of two of her girls floating down the river from where the screams came.

“Look—look there,” shouted a laughing zaptieh; “two more Christians whom their Christ forgot!” On the other side Mme. Roth found all who were left of her sixty or more pupils—only seventeen. Their lives were saved only because the zaptiehs had become weary. They were, too, the least pretty of the original party. Mme. Roth took them all back to Malatia, where the Kaimakam insisted that she house them. They were living there in constant fear of being taken away again when I was taken from the city.

It was said by those who knew, that Mme. Roth refused to receive Eimen Effendi when he called upon her after her return with her surviving pupils. It is said she sent word to him that she was no longer German, and would ask no protection except that which she could buy with gold liras as long as she could obtain them from her relatives.

In every open space in the city and in every empty building Armenian refugees were camped, hungry, footsore and dying, with little food or water. In all