CHAPTER V

THE HIDDEN ARMS


When I finally reached Zicron-Jacob, I found rather a sad state of
affairs. Military law had been declared. No one was supposed to be seen
in the streets after sundown. The village was full of soldiers, and
civilians had to put up with all kinds of ill-treatment. Moreover, our
people were in a state of great excitement because an order had recently
come from the Turkish authorities bidding them surrender whatever
fire-arms or weapons they had in their possession. A sinister command,
this: we knew that similar measures had been taken before the terrible
Armenian massacres, and we felt that some such fate might be in
preparation for our people. With the arms gone, the head men of the
village knew that our last hold over the Arabs, our last chance for
defense against sudden violence, would be gone, and they had refused to
give them up. A house-to-house search had been made--fruitlessly, for
our little arsenal was safely cached in a field, beneath growing grain.

It was a tense, unpleasant situation. At any time the Turks might decide
to back up their demand by some of the violent methods of which they
are past masters. A family council was held in my home, and it was
decided to send my sister, a girl of twenty-three, to some friends at
the American Syrian Protestant College at Beirut, so that we might be
able to move freely without the responsibility of having a girl at home,
in a country where, as a matter of course, the women-folk are seized and
carried off before a massacre. At Beirut we knew that there was an
American Consul-General, who kept in continual touch with the battleship