, and at
the foot a shallow ledge running to the left into a pit of darkness.
Hussin gripped my arm and pointed down it. 'Follow it,' he whispered,
'and you will reach a roof which spans a street. Cross it, and on the
other side is a mosque. Turn to the right there and you will find easy
going for fifty metres, well screened from the higher roofs. For
Allah's sake keep in the shelter of the screen. Somewhere there I will
join you.'

He hurried us along the ledge for a bit and then went back, and with
snow from the corners covered up our tracks. After that he went
straight on himself, taking strange short steps like a bird. I saw his
game. He wanted to lead our pursuers after him, and he had to multiply
the tracks and trust to Stumm's fellows not spotting that they all were
made by one man.

But I had quite enough to think of in getting Blenkiron along that
ledge. He was pretty nearly foundered, he was in a sweat of terror,
and as a matter of fact he was taking one of the biggest risks of his
life, for we had no rope and his neck depended on himself. I could
hear him invoking some unknown deity called Holy Mike. But he ventured
gallantly, and we got to the roof which ran across the street. That
was easier, though ticklish enough, but it was no joke skirting the
cupola of that infernal mosque. At last we found the parapet and
breathed more freely, for we were now under shelter from the direction
of danger. I spared a moment to look round, and thirty yards off,
across the street, I saw a weird spectacle.

The hunt was proceeding along the roofs parallel to the one we were
lodged on. I saw the flicker of the lanterns, waved up and down as the
bearers slipped in the snow, and I heard their cries like hounds on a
trail. Stumm was not among them: he had not the shape for that sort of
business. They passed us and continued to our left, now hid by a
jutting chimney, now clear to view against the sky line. The roofs
they were on were perhaps six feet higher than ours, so even from our
shelter we could mark their course. If Hussin were going to be hunted
across Erzerum it was a bad look-out for us, for I hadn't the foggiest
notion where we were or where we were going to.

But as we watched we saw something more. The wavering lanterns were
now three or four hundred yards away, but on the roofs just opposite us
across the street there appeared a man's figure. I thought it was one
of the hunters, and we all cr