"In the
mountains they rob for arms. They assassinate the Turkish soldiers
even. It is better to go unarmed unless you mean to fight for
it. . . . Have you got arms?"
"Just a revolver," said Benham.
But it was after that that he closed with Giorgio.
If they found no robbers in Albania, they met soon enough with
bloodshed. They came to a village where a friend of a friend of
Giorgio's was discovered, and they slept at his house in preference
to the unclean and crowded khan. Here for the first time Amanda
made the acquaintance of Albanian women and was carried off to the
woman's region at the top of the house, permitted to wash, closely
examined, shown a baby and confided in as generously as gesture and
some fragments of Italian would permit. Benham slept on a rug on
the first floor in a corner of honour beside the wood fire. There
had been much confused conversation and some singing, he was dog-
tired and slept heavily, and when presently he was awakened by
piercing screams he sat up in a darkness that seemed to belong
neither to time nor place.
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