THE RED RUGS OF TARSUS
This morning there were more than five hun- dred refugees with us.
In the course of the morning we heard that Armenians had been killed at the Tarsus sta- tion and that the station master and other em- ployees had fled. Then there was the whistle of a train from Adana. It brought a wild mob of Bashi-bazouks. For concentrated hatred, a Bashi-bazouk is a small-pox germ. I saw the train vomiting forth its filthy burden. The men wore no uniforms. They were dressed in dirty white bloomer-things, with bits of carpet fastened up their legs with crisscross ropes, in place of shoes. They looked like worn out rag dolls. I saw them gather in a mud colored fan- shaped crowd at the flimsy entrance to the Ko- nak, where the authorities could not be quick enough in passing out guns and ammunition and other instruments of the Devil to every one. Then Hell broke loose. The townspeople joined themselves to this mob. Along the road that crosses the space between us and the rail- [113]
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