CAUGHT BY THE TURKS

BY

FRANCIS YEATS-BROWN

WITH PORTRAITS AND PLANS

LONDON

EDWARD ARNOLD

1919

[All rights reserved]

To

LADY PAUL

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CAUGHT BY THE TURKS

CHAPTER I

CAPTURE

Half an hour before dawn on November the thirteenth, 1915. . . .

We were on an aerodrome by the River Tigris, below Baghdad, about to start out to cut the telegraph lines behind the Turkish position.

My pilot ran his engine to free the cylinders from the cold of night, while I stowed away in the body of the machine some necklaces of gun-cotton, some wire cutters, a rifle, Verey lights, provisions, and the specially prepared map—prepared for the eventuality of its falling into the hands of the Turks—on which nothing was traced except our intended route to the telegraph lines west and north of Baghdad. Some primers, which are the explosive charges designed to detonate the gun-cotton, I carefully stowed away in another part of the machine, and with even more care—trepidation, indeed—I put into my pockets the highly explosive pencils of fulminate of mercury, which detonate the primers which detonate the gun-cotton.

Then I climbed gingerly aboard, feeling rather highly charged with explosives and excitement.

For some time the pilot continued to run his engine and watch the revolution meter. The warmer the engine became, the colder I got, for the prelude to adventure is always a chilly business. Unlike the engine, I did not warm to my work during those waiting moments. At last, however, the pilot waved his hand to give the signal to stand clear, and we slid away on the flight that was to be our last for many a day. The exhaust gases of our engine lit the darkness behind me with a ring of fire. I looked back as we taxied down the aerodrome, and saw the mechanics melting away to their morning tea. Only one figure remained, a young pilot in a black and yellow fur coat, who had left his warm bed to wish us luck. For a moment I saw him standing there, framed in flame, looking after us regretfully. Then I saw him no more, and later they told me (but it was not true) that he had died at Ctesiphon.

We rose over the tents of our camp at Aziziah, all silver and still in the half-light, and headed for the Turkish outposts at El Kutunieh. Their bivouac fires mounted straight to heaven. It was a calm and cloudless dawn, ideal weather for the business we had been sent out to do.

At all costs, we had been told, the telegraphic communications west and north of Baghdad must be cut that day. Von der Goltz and a German battery of quick-firing guns were hasting down from Mosul to help their stricken ally, and reinforcements of the best Anatolian troops, magnificently equipped and organised by the Germans, were on their way from Gallipoli, whence they came flushed with the confidence of success.

Our attack on Ctesiphon was imminent. It was a matter of moments whether the Turkish reinforcements would arrive in time. Delay and confusion in the Turkish rear would have helped us greatly, and the moral and material advantage of cutting communications between Nur-ed-Din, the vacillating Commander-in-Chief defending Baghdad, and Von der Goltz, the veteran of victories, was obvious and unquestionable. But could we do it in an old Maurice Farman biplane?

Desperate needs need desperate measures. The attempt to take Baghdad was desperate—futile perhaps—and contrary to the advice of the great soldier who led the attack in the glorious but unsuccessful action of Ctesiphon. And so also, in a small way, ours was a desperate mission. Our machine could carry neither oil nor petrol enough for the journey, and special arrangements had to be made for carrying spare tins of lubricant and fuel. With these we were to refill at our first halt. While I was destroying the telegraph line, my pilot was to replenish the tanks of his machine. According to the map this should have been feasible, for the telegraph lines at the place we had selected for our demolition ran through a blank desert, two miles from the nearest track. That the map was wrong we did not know.

All seemed quite hopeful therefore. We had got off "according to plan," and the engine was running beautifully.

It was stimulating to see the stir of El Kutunieh as we sailed over the Turks at a thousand feet. They ran to take cover from the bombs which had so often greeted them at sunrise; but for once we sailed placidly on, having other fish to fry, and left them to the pleasures of anticipation. Far behind us a few puffs from their ridiculous apology for an anti-aircraft gun blossomed like sudden flowers and then melted in the sunlight above the world. Below, in the desert, it was still dark. Men were rubbing their eyes in El Kutunieh and cursing us.

But for us day had dawned. As we rose, there rose behind us a round cheerful sun, whose rays caught our trail and spangled it with light, and danced in my eyes as I looked back through the propeller, and lit up the celluloid floor of the nacelle as if to help me see my implements. That dawn was jubilant with hope—I felt inclined to dance. And I sang from sheer exhilaration—a sort of swan song (as I see it now) before captivity. The desert seemed barren no longer. Transmuted by the sunrise those "miles and miles of nothing at all" became a limitless expanse where all the kingdoms of the world were spread out before our eyes. Away to the east the Tigris wound like a snake among the sands; to westward, a huddle of houses and date-palms with an occasional gleam from the gold domes of Kazimain, lay the city of the Arabian Nights, where Haroun al Raschid once reigned, and where now there is hope his spirit may reign again. Baghdad nestled among its date-palms, with little wisps of cloud still shrouding its sleep, all unconscious of the great demonstration it was to give before noon to two forlorn and captive airmen. To the north lay the Great Desert with a hint of violet hills on the far horizon. To the south also lay the Great Desert, with no feature on its yellow face save the scar of some irrigation cut made in the twilight time of history.

But the beauties of Nature were not for us: we were intent on the works of man. There was unwonted traffic across the bridge over the great Arch of Ctesiphon. The enemy river craft were early astir, and so were their antediluvian Archies. These latter troubled us no more than was their wont, but the activity at Qusaibah and Sulman Pak was disquieting. Trains of carts were moving across the river from the right to the left bank. Tugs, gravid with troops, were on their way from Baghdad. In trenches and gun emplacements feverish work was in progress. Like ants at a burrow, men were dragging overhead cover into place. Lines of fatigue parties were marching hither and thither. New support trenches were being dug.

As always, when one saw these things, one longed for more eyes, better eyes, an abler pencil, to record them for our staff. An observer has great responsibilities at times: one cannot help remembering that a missed obstruction, a forgotten emplacement may mean a terrible toll of suffering. Our men would soon attack these trenches, relying largely on our photographs and information. . . . When, a week later, there rose above the battle the souls of all the brave men dead at Ctesiphon, seeing then with clearer eyes than mine, I pray they forgave our shortcomings and remembered we did our best.

We could not circle over Ctesiphon, in spite of the interest we saw there, until our duty was performed, and had to fly on, leaving it to eastward.

On the return journey, however, we promised ourselves as full an investigation as our petrol supply allowed, and had we returned with our report on what we had seen and done that day, things might have been very different. But what's the use of might-have-beens?

After an hour's flying we sighted the telegraph line that was our objective, but when we approached it more closely a sad surprise awaited us, for instead of the blank surface which the map portrayed, we found that the line ran along a busy thoroughfare leading to Baghdad. Some ten thousand camels, it seemed to my disappointed eyes, were swaying and slouching towards the markets of the capital. We came low to observe the traffic better, and the camels craned their long necks upwards, burbling with surprise at this great new bird they had never seen. The ships of the desert, it seemed to me, disliked the ship of the air as much as we disapproved of them.

Besides the camels, there were ammunition carts and armed soldiers along the road, making a landing impossible. Our demolition would only take three minutes under favourable conditions, but in three minutes even an Arab soldier can be trusted to hit an aeroplane and two airmen at point-blank range.

So we flew westward down the road, looking for a landing ground. Baghdad was behind us now. On our right lay a great lake, and ahead we got an occasional glimpse of the Euphrates in the morning sun. At last—near a mound, which we afterwards heard was Nimrod's tomb—we saw that the telegraph line took a turn to northward, leaving the road by a mile or more. Here we decided to land. Nimrod's tomb was to be the tomb of our activities.

While we were circling down I felt exactly as one feels at the start of a race, watching for the starting gate to rise. It was a tense but delightful moment.

We made a perfect landing, and ran straight and evenly towards the telegraph posts. I had already stripped myself of my coat and all unnecessary gear, and wore sandshoes in case I had to climb a post to get at the insulators. The detonators were in my pocket, the wire clippers hung at my belt. I stooped down to take a necklace of gun-cotton from the floor of the 'bus, and as I did so, I felt a slight bump and a slight splintering of wood.

We had stopped.

I jumped out of the machine, still sure that all was well. And then——

Then I saw that our left wing tip had crashed into a telegraph post. Even so the full extent of our disaster dawned slowly on me. I could not believe that we had broken something vital. Yet the pilot was quite sure.

The leading edge of the plane was broken. Our flying days were finished. It had been my pilot's misfortune, far more than his fault, that we had crashed. The unexpected smoothness of the landing ground, and a rear wind that no one could have foreseen, had brought about disaster. Nothing could be done. I stood silent—while hope sank from its zenith, to the nadir of disappointment. Nothing remained—except to do our job.

With light feet but heart of lead, I ran across to another telegraph post, leaving the pilot to ascertain whether by some miracle we might not be able to get our machine to safety. But even as I left him I knew that there was no hope; the only thing that remained was to destroy the line and then take our chance with the Arabs.

By the time I had fixed the explosive necklace round the post, a few stray Arabs, who had been watching our descent, fired at us from horseback. I set the fuse and lit it, then strolled back to the machine, where the pilot confirmed my worst fears. The machine was unflyable.

Presently there was a loud bang. The charge had done its work and the post was neatly cut in two.

Horsemen were now appearing from the four quarters of the desert. On hearing the explosion the mounted men instantly wheeled about and galloped off in the opposite direction, while those on foot took cover, lying flat on their faces. To encourage the belief in our aggressive force, the pilot stood on the seat of the 'bus and treated them to several bursts of rapid fire.

Meanwhile, I took another necklace of gun-cotton and returned to my demolition. This second charge I affixed to the wires and insulators of the fallen post, so as to render repair more difficult. While I was thus engaged, I noticed that spurts of sand were kicking up all about me. The fire had increased in accuracy and intensity. So accurate indeed had it become that I guessed that the Arabs (who cannot hit a haystack) had been reinforced by regulars. I lit the fuse and covered the hundred yards back to the machine in my very best time (which is about fifteen seconds) to get cover and companionship. A hot fire was being directed on to the machine now, at ranges varying from fifty to five hundred yards. It was not a pleasant situation, and I experienced a curious mixed feeling of regret and relief: regret that there was nothing more to do, relief that something at least had been accomplished to earn the long repose before us. On the nature of this repose I had never speculated, and even now the fate that awaited us seemed immaterial so long as something happened quickly. One wanted to get it over. I was very frightened, I suppose.

Bang!

The second charge had exploded, and the telegraph wires whipped back and festooned themselves round our machine. The insulators were dust, no doubt, and the damage would probably take some days to repair. So far so good. Our job was done in so far as it lay in our power to do it.

"Do you see that fellow in blue?" said the pilot to me, pointing to a ferocious individual about a hundred yards away who was brandishing a curved cutlass. "I think it must be an officer. We had better give ourselves up to him when the time comes."

I cordially agreed, but rather doubted that the time would ever come. It speaks volumes for Arab marksmanship that they missed our machine about as often as they hit it.

I destroyed a few private papers, and then, as it was obviously useless to return the fire of two hundred men with a single rifle, we started up the engine again, more with the idea of doing something than with any hope of getting away.

The machine, it may be mentioned, was not to be destroyed in the event of a breakdown such as this, because our army hoped to be in Baghdad within a week, and it would have been impossible for the Turks to carry it with them in the case of a retreat.

The Arabs hesitated to advance, and still continued to pour in a hot fire. Feeling the situation was becoming ridiculous, I got into the aeroplane and determined to attempt flying it. Now I am not a pilot, and know little of machines. The pilot had pronounced the aeroplane to be unflyable, and very rightly did not accompany me.

But I was pigheaded and determined "to have one more flip in the old 'bus." After disentangling the wires that had whipped round the king posts, I got into the pilot's seat and taxied away down wind. Then I turned, managing the operation with fair success, and skimmed back towards the pilot with greatly increasing speed. But all my efforts did not succeed in making the machine lift clear of the ground. Some Arabs were now rushing towards the pilot, and a troop of mounted gendarmes were galloping in my direction. I tried to swerve to avoid these men, but could not make the machine answer to her controls. Then I pulled the stick back frantically in a last effort to rise above them. She gave a little hop, then floundered down in the middle of the cavalry.

Somehow or other the 'bus was standing still, and I was on the ground beside it.

Mounted gendarmes surrounded me with rifles levelled, not at me, but at the machine. I cocked my revolver and put it behind my back, hesitating. Then an old gendarme spurred his horse up to me and held out his right hand in the friendliest possible fashion. I grasped it in surprise, for the grip he gave me was a grip I knew, proving that even here in the desert men are sometimes brothers. Then, emptying out the cartridges from my revolver in case of accidents, I handed it to him. Not very heroic certainly—but then surrendering is a sorry business: the best that can be said for it is that it is sometimes common sense.

At that moment the gentleman in blue, whose appearance we had previously discussed, suddenly appeared behind me and swinging up his scimitar with both hands, struck me a violent blow where neck joins shoulder. This blow deprived me of all feeling for a moment. On coming-to I discovered that my aggressor was not dressed in blue at all; he wore no stitch of raiment of any description, but whether he was painted with woad or only tanned by the sun I had no opportunity of enquiring. Whether, again, the kindly gendarme had turned the blow or whether the ghazi had purposely hit me with the flat of his weapon, I never discovered; but of this much I am certain, that except for that kindly gendarme—to whom may Allah bring blessings—this story would not have been written.

I made my way to the pilot as soon as I was able to do so, and found him bleeding profusely from a wound in the head, surrounded by a hundred tearing, screaming Arabs. Every minute, the number of the Arabs was increasing, and the gendarmes had the greatest difficulty in protecting us. All round us excited horsemen circled, firing feux de joie and uttering hoarse cries of exultation. We were making slow progress towards the police post about a mile distant, but at times, so fiercely did the throng press round us, I doubted if we should ever come through.

Once, yielding to popular clamour, the police stopped and parleyed with some Arab chiefs who had arrived upon the scene. After a heated colloquy of which we did not understand one word, in spite of our not unnatural interest, the Turkish gendarmes shrugged their shoulders and appeared to accede to the Arabs' demands. Several of the more ruffianly among them seized the pilot and pulled his flying coat over his head. The memory of that moment is the most unpleasant in my life, and I cannot, try as I will, entirely dissociate myself from the horror of what I thought would happen. Even now it often holds sleep at arm's length. Not the fact of death, but the imagined manner of it, dismayed me. I bitterly regretted having surrendered my revolver only to be thus tamely murdered.

Meanwhile I had been also seized and borne down under a crowd of Arabs. We fought for some time, and I had a glimpse of the pilot, who is a very clever boxer, upholding British traditions with his fists. . . .

Suddenly the scene changed from tragedy to farce. We were not going to be murdered at all, but only robbed. And the pilot had given our ghazi friend a black eye—blacker than his skin.

At length I got free, minus all my possessions except my wrist watch, which they did not see, and saw that the pilot also had his head above the scrimmage, still "bloody but unbowed." The worst was over. That had been the climax of my capture.

All that happened thereafter, until chances of escape occurred, was in a diminuendo of emotion.

All I really longed for now was for something to smoke. My cigarette case had gone.

The gendarmes, who had stood aside through these proceedings, now returned and hurried us towards the police post, while most of the captors remained behind disputing about our loot. All this time the machine had been absolutely neglected, but now I saw some Arabs stalking cautiously up to it and discharging their firearms. Feeling the machine would be damaged beyond repair if they continued firing at it, and so rendered useless to us after our imminent capture of Baghdad, I tried to explain to the gendarmes that it was quite unnecessary to waste good lead on it, its potentiality for evil having vanished with our surrender. The impression I conveyed, however, was that there was a third officer in the machine, and a large party adjourned to investigate. During this diversion I tried to jump on to a white mare, whose owner had left her to go towards the machine, but received a second nasty blow on the spine for my pains. Again the kindly gendarme came to my rescue, seeing, I suppose, that I was looking pretty blue. He addressed me as "Baba," and—may Allah give him increase!—gave me a cigarette.

At last we got to the police post, and, as we entered and passed through a dark stable passage, the gendarme on my left side, noticing my wrist watch, slyly detached it and pocketed it with a meaning smile. As the price of police protection I did not grudge it.

Big doors clanged behind us and our captivity proper had begun: what had gone before had been more like a scrum at Rugger, with ourselves as the ball.

We examined our injuries and bruises, and I tried to dress the wounds on the pilot's head, with little success, however, for our guardians could provide nothing but the most brackish water, and disinfectants were undreamed of. We discussed our future at some length, and agreed that our best plan was to be recaptured in Baghdad on the taking of that city. To this end we decided that it would be advisable to make the most of our injuries, so that when the Turkish retreat took place we would not be in a fit condition to accompany it. To feign sickness would not, indeed, be difficult. I felt that every bone in my body was broken, and my pilot was in an even worse condition.

Meanwhile there was a great clamour and "confused noises without," which seemed to refer insistently and unpleasantly to us. On asking what the people were saying, we were informed that the Arabs wanted to take our heads to the Turkish Commander-in-Chief at Suleiman Pak, whereas the gendarmes pointed out that there would be far greater profit and pleasure in taking us there alive. We cordially agreed, and did not join the discussion, feeling it to be more academic than practical, as we were quite safe in the police post.

We had neither hats nor overcoats, but we each still retained our jackets and breeches, though in a very torn condition. I was still in possession of my sandshoes, probably because the Arabs did not think them worth the taking.

Considering things calmly, we felt that we were lucky. This bondage would not last. We would surely fly again, perhaps soon. But for a week or so we must accustom ourselves to new conditions. Everything was strange about us, and it struck me at once how close a parallel there is between the drama of Captivity and the drama of Life. In each case there is a "curtain," and in each case a man enters into a new world whose language and customs he does not know. Almost naked we came to our bondage, dumb, bloody, disconcerted by the whole business. So, perhaps, do infants feel at the world awaiting their ken: it is taken for granted that they enjoy life, and so also our captors were convinced that we should feel delighted at our situation.

"We saved you from the Arabs," we understood them to say, "and now you are safe until the war is over. You need do no more work."

Such at any rate was my estimate of what they said, but being in an unknown tongue, it was only necessary to nod in answer.

Tea was brought to us, sweet, weak tea in little glasses, and we made appreciative noises. Then the kindly gendarme—may he be rewarded in both worlds—brought each of us some cigarettes, in return for which we gave him our brightest smiles, having nothing else to give.

But one could not smile for long in that little room, thinking of the sun and air outside and the old 'bus lying wrecked in the desert. We would have been flying back now; we would have reconnoitred the Turkish lines; we would have been back by nine o'clock to breakfast, bath, and glory. . . .

"It's the thirteenth of the month," groaned the pilot, whose thoughts were similar to mine.

For a long time I sulked in silence, while the pilot, with better manners or more vitality than I, engaged the gendarmes in light conversation, conducted chiefly by gesture. About an hour later (a "day" of the Creation, it seemed to me—and it was indeed a formative time, when the mind, so long accustomed to range free, seeks to adjust its processes to captivity and adapt itself to new conditions of time and space) there occurred at last a diversion to interrupt my gloom.

The Turkish District Governor arrived with two carriages to take us to Baghdad. He spoke English and was agreeable in a mild sort of way, except for his unfortunate habit of asking questions which we could not answer. He told us that news of our descent and capture had been sent to Baghdad by gallopers (not by telegram, I noted parenthetically) and that the population was awaiting our arrival. I said that I hoped the population would not be disappointed, and he assured us with a significant smile that they certainly would not.

"Whatever happens," he was kind enough to add, "I will be responsible for your lives myself."

His meaning became apparent a little later, when we approached the suburbs of Baghdad and found an ugly crowd awaiting our arrival, armed with sticks and stones. When we reached the city itself the streets were lined as if for a royal procession. Shops had put up their shutters, the markets were closed, the streets were thronged, and every window held its quota of heads. The word had gone out that there was to be a demonstration, and the hysteria which lurks in every city in a time of crisis found its fullest scope. Our downfall was taken as an omen of British defeat, and the inhabitants of Baghdad held high holiday at the sight of captive British airmen.

Elderly merchants wagged their white beards and cursed us as we passed; children danced with rage, and threw mud; lines of Turkish women pulled back their veils in scorn, and putting out their tongues at us cried "La, la, la," in a curious note of derision; boys brandished knives; babies shook their little fists. No hated Tarquins could have had a more hostile demonstration. We were both spat upon. A man with a heavy cudgel aimed a blow at my pilot which narrowly missed him, another with a long dagger stabbed through the back of the carriage and was dragged away with difficulty: I can still see his snarling face and hashish-haunted eyes. Our escort could hardly force a way for our carriage through the narrow streets. All this time we sat trying to look dignified and smoking constant cigarettes. . . . State arrival of British prisoners in Baghdad—what a scene it would have been for the cinematograph!

Arrived at the river, a space was cleared round us, and we were embarked with a great deal of fuss in a boat to take us across to the Governor's palace. Before leaving, I said goodbye to the kindly gendarme who had helped a brother in distress, and once more now, across the wasted years of captivity and the turmoil of my life to-day, I grasp his hand in gratitude.

Our first interview in Baghdad was with a journalist. He was very polite and anxious for our impressions, but I told him that the Arabs had given us quite enough impressions for the day, and that words could not adequately express what we felt at our arrival in Baghdad. We chiefly wanted a wash.

That afternoon we were taken to hospital, and to our surprise (for, being new to the conditions of captivity, we were still susceptible to surprise) we found that we were very well treated there. Two sentries, however, stood at our open door day and night to watch our every movement. When the Governor of Baghdad came to see us that evening (thoughtfully bringing with him a bottle of whisky) I politely told him (in French, a language he spoke fluently) that so much consideration had been shown to us that I hoped he would not mind my asking whether we could not have a little more privacy. The continual presence of the sentries was a little irksome. He understood my point perfectly—much too perfectly. Taking me to the window, he spoke smoothly, as follows:

"I am so sorry the sentries disturb you, but I feel responsible for your safety, and should you by any chance fall out of that window—it is not so very far from the ground, you see—you might get into bad hands. I assure you that Baghdad is full of wicked men."

The Governor was too clever. There was no chance with him of securing more favourable conditions for escape, so we turned to the discussion of the whisky bottle. As in all else he did, he had an object, I soon discovered, in bringing this forbidden fluid. His purpose, of course, was to make us talk, and talk we did, under its generous and unaccustomed influence, for it had been some time since we had seen spirits in our own mess at Azizieh. I would much like to see the report that the Turkish Intelligence Staff made of that wonderful conversation. Several officers had dropped in—casually—to join in the talk, and we told them we had lost our way; then our engine had stopped, and we landed as near to some village as we could. We knew nothing of an attack on Baghdad, we did not know General Townshend, but had certainly heard of him. We had heard a rumour that he had defeated the Turks at Es-sinn a month previously, and would like to know the truth of the matter. Eventually the bottle was exhausted, and so were our imaginations. We parted with the utmost cordiality and a firm intention of seeing as little of each other as possible in the future.

In the street below our window were some large earthenware jars, like those in which the Forty Thieves had hidden aforetime in this very city, and for about a day we considered the story of Aladdin, in regard to the possibility of escape by getting into these jars; but just as we had made our plans the jars were removed, being taken no doubt to the support trenches, which were found by our troops excellently provided with water.

As the day grew near for our attack, we saw many thousand Arabs being marched down to Ctesiphon. It was no conquering army this, no freemen going to defend their native land, but miserable bands of slaves being sent into subjection. Down to the river bank, where they were embarked on lighters, they were followed by their weeping relatives. There was no pretence at heroism. They would have escaped if they could, but the Turks had taken care of that. They were tied together by fours, their right hand being lashed to a wooden yoke, while their left was employed in carrying a rifle. These unfortunate creatures were taken to a spot near the trenches and were then transferred, still securely tied together, to the worst dug and most-exposed part of the line. Machine guns were then posted behind them to block all possible lines of retreat. In addition to minor discomforts such as bearing the brunt of our attack, the Arabs, so I was told, were frequently unprovided with provisions and water, so it is small wonder that their demeanour did not show the fire of battle. But Kannonen-futter was required for Ctesiphon, and down the river this pageant of dejected pacifists had to go.

After the attack had begun, shiploads of these same men returned wounded, and arrived in our hospital in an indescribably pitiable condition. There were no stretchers, and the wounded were left to shift for themselves, relying on charity and the providence of Allah. The blind led the blind, the halt helped the lame.

Later, wounded Anatolian soldiers began also to arrive, and their plight was no less wretched than that of the Arabs, though their behaviour was incomparably better. One could not help admiring their stoicism in the face of terrible and often unnecessary suffering. The utter lack of system in dealing with casualties was hardly more remarkable than the fortitude of the casualties themselves. When a proclamation was read to the sufferers in our hospital, announcing the success of the Turkish arms at Ctesiphon, the wounded seemed to forget their pain and the dying acquired a new lease of life. I actually saw a man with a mortal wound in the head, who a few minutes previously had been choking and literally at his last gasp, rally all his forces to utter thanks to God, and then die.

Never for a moment had we thought that the attack on Ctesiphon could fail. The odds, we knew, were heavily against us, but we firmly believed that General Townshend would achieve the impossible. That he did not do so was not his fault nor the fault of the gallant men he led. But this is a record of my personal experiences only, and I will spare the reader all the long reflections and alternations of anxiety and hope which held our thoughts while the guns boomed down the Tigris and the fate of Baghdad—and our fate—was poised in the balance.

At six o'clock one morning we were suddenly awakened and told that we must leave for Mosul immediately. By every possible means in our power we delayed the start, thinking our troops might come at any moment. But the Turkish sergeant who commanded our escort had definite orders that we were to be out of the city by nine o'clock. We drove in a carriage through mean streets, attracting no attention, for now the Baghdadis realised their danger. Before leaving, our sergeant paid a visit to his house, in order to collect his kit, leaving us at the door, guarded by four soldiers. His sisters came down to see him off and (being of progressive tendencies, I suppose) they were not veiled. It were crime indeed to have hidden such lustrous eyes and skin so fair.

CHAPTER II

A SHADOW-LAND OF ARABESQUES

Some breath of reality, some call from the outer world of freedom came to us from the presence of these girls. They seemed the first real people I had seen in my captivity, femininity incarnate, human beings in a shadow-land of arabesques. They were happy and healthy and somehow outside the insanities of our world. For a moment they gazed at us in awe, and for another moment in complete sympathy: then they retired with little squeaks of laughter and busied themselves with their brother's baggage.

When our preparations were complete and we set off on our long journey, they stood for a space at the casement window and waved us goodbye, looking quite charming. I vowed that if Fate by a happy chance were to lead us back to Baghdad with rôles reversed, so that they, not we, were captives in the midst of foes, my first care would be to repay their kindly, though unspoken, sympathy. They were too human for the futilities of war, too amiable to have a hand in Armageddon.

Only prisoners, I think, see the full absurdity of war. Only prisoners, to begin with, fully realise the gift of life. And only prisoners see war without its glamour, and realise completely the suffering behind the lines: the maimed, the blind, the women who weep. Only by a few of us in happy England has the full tragedy of war been realised. Mere words will never record it, but prisoners know "the heartbreak in the heart of things." To us who have been behind the scenes, far from the shouting and the tumult and the captains and the kings, the wretchedness of it all remains indelible. Nothing can make us forget the broken men and women, whose woes will haunt our times.

But I was on the threshold of my experiences then, and the maidens of Baghdad soon passed from memory, I fear—vanishing like the mists of morning that hung over the river-bank at the outset of our journey.

We travelled in that marvellous conveyance, the araba. To generalise from types is dangerous, but the araba is certainly typical of Turkey. Its discomfort is as amazing as its endurance. It is a rickety cart with a mattress to sit on. A pole (frequently held together by string) to which two ponies are harnessed (frequently again with string) supplies the motive power, which is restrained by reins mended with string, or encouraged by a whip made of string. The contrivance is surmounted by a patchwork hood tied down with string. A few buckets and hay nets are strung between its crazy wheels. Such is the araba. How it holds together is a mystery as inscrutable as the East itself. If all the vitality expended in Turkey on starting upon a journey and continuing upon it were turned to other purposes, the land might flourish. But the philosophy which makes the araba possible makes other activities impossible.

A full two hours before the start, when the world is still blue with cold, travellers are summoned to leave their rest. Then the drivers begin to feed their ponies. When this is done they feed themselves. Then, leisurely, they load the baggage. Finally, when all seems ready, it occurs to somebody that it is impossible to leave before the cavalry escort is in saddle. "Ahmed Effendi" is called for. Everyone shouts for "Ahmed Effendi," who is sleeping soundly, like a sensible man. He wakes, and, to create a diversion perhaps, accuses a driver of stealing his chicken. The driver replies in suitable language. Meanwhile time passes. The disc of the sun cuts the horizon line of the desert, disclosing us all standing chill and cramped and bored and still unready. A pony has lain down in his harness, in an access of boredom, no doubt. A goat has stolen part of my scanty bread ration and is now browsing peacefully in the middle distance. Far away a cur is barking at the jackals. Some of our escort have retired to pray, others are still wrangling. Two or three are engaged in kicking the bored pony.

After recovering from the goat my half-loaf, which is so much better than no bread in the desert, I watch with amazement the Turkish treatment of the pony. A skewer is produced and rammed into the unfortunate animal's left nostril. So barbarous does this seem that I am on the point of protesting, when suddenly the animal struggles to its feet, and stands shivering and wide-eyed and apparently well again. After the wound has been sponged and the pony given a few dates, it seems equal to fresh endeavour. The blood-letting has cleared its brain—and no wonder, poor beast.

At length all seems ready. We climb into the araba. But we are not off yet. We sit for another hour while the drivers refresh themselves with a second breakfast. A rhyme keeps running through my frozen brain:

"Slow pass the hours—ah, passing slow— My doom is worse than anything Conceived by Edgar Allan Poe."

But I did not realise then how lucky we were to be travelling by carriages at all. Nor did I realise what an honour it was to be presented to the local governors through whose districts we passed. It was only late in captivity, when merged in an undistinguished band of prisoners, that I understood the pomp and circumstance of our early days. Late in 1915 a prisoner was still a new sort of animal to the Turks. They were curious about us, and to some extent the curiosity was mutual. One kept comparing them with the descriptions in "Eöthen."

Proceedings generally opened in a long low room. The local magnate sat at a desk, on which were set a saucer containing an inky sponge, a dish of sand, and some reed-pens. A scribe stood beside the kaimakam and handed him documents, which he scrutinised as if they were works of art, holding them delicately in his left hand as a connoisseur might consider his porcelain. Then with a reed-pen he would scratch the document, still holding it in the palm of his hand, and after sprinkling it carefully with sand would return it to the scribe. All this was incidental to his conversation with us or with other members of the audience. There were never less than ten people in any of the rooms in which we were interviewed, and as they all made fragmentary remarks, one quoting a text from the Koran, another a French bon mot, and a third introducing some question of local politics, and as the governor asked us questions and signed papers and kept up a running commentary with his friends, one felt exactly like Alice at the Hatter's tea party.

"A Turk does not listen to what you are saying," I have since been told, "he merely watches your expression." That this is true of the uneducated I have no doubt, and if correct about the educated Turk I daresay it is not to his discredit. Demeanour in Oriental countries counts for much.

But at Samarra our demeanour was sorely tried. We had been travelling about three days in the desert, when we arrived at this desolate and dishevelled spot. I longed to lie down and shut my eyes, and forget about captivity for a bit, but no!—there came a summons to attend the ghastly social function I had already learned to loathe.

The Governor of that place was a tout à fait civilisé Young Turk, sedentary, Semitic, and very disagreeable.

"Is it true that you dropped bombs on the Mosque at Baghdad?" he asked.

And—

"Do you know that the population of Baghdad nearly killed you?"

And—

"Do you know that in another month the English will be driven into the Persian Gulf?" . . . and so on.

We denied these soft impeachments, and then his method became more direct.

"Some of your friends have been killed and captured," he said—"the commandant of your flying corps, for instance."

Seeing us incredulous, he accurately described the Major's appearance.

"And there is someone else," the kaimakam continued in slow tones that iced my blood. "Someone who may be a friend of yours. A young pilot in a fur coat."

My heart stood still.

"He was killed by an Arab," the kaimakam added. . . .

Here I will skip a page or two of mental history. The defeat of my country, the death of my friend, the crumbling of my hopes: little indeed was left. . . . . .

Let five dots supply the ugly blank. There is sorrow and failure enough in the world without speculating on tragedies that never happened. Baghdad was taken later, my friend proved to be captured, not killed, and I write this by Thames-side, not the Tigris.

The inhabitants of Samarra are, I believe, the most ill-balanced people in the world. This trait is well known to travellers, and we found it no traveller's tale. On first arriving at Samarra, we halted in the rest-house on the right bank of the river, and were enjoying our frugal meal of bread and dates when a sergeant came to us from the Governor with orders that we were to be instantly conveyed to his residence, which is situated in the town across the river. We demurred, and our own sergeant protested, but the Governor's emissary had definite orders, and we were hurried down in the twilight. Here we found that there was no boat to take us across. The Samarra sergeant shouted to a boatful of Arabs, floating down the river, but they would not stop. Louder and louder he shouted, till his voice cracked in a scream. Growing frantic with rage, he fired his revolver at the Arabs. Of course he missed them, but the bullets, ricochetting in the water, probably found a billet in the town beyond. The Arab occupants merely laughed in their beards. We also laughed. Then the sergeant declared that we would have to swim, and we urged him in pantomime to show the way.

Eventually he spied a horse-barge down river, with a naked boy playing beside it. Reloading his revolver, a few shots in his direction attracted the lad's attention. Then an old man came out of a hut by some melon beds, to see who was firing at his son.

Another shot or two and the old man and the boy were prevailed upon to take us across. We had secured our transport at last, and the whole transaction seemed (in Samarra) as simple as hailing a taxi.

I bought a melon from the boy, and he snatched my money contemptuously. To take things without violence is a sign of weakness in Samarra. I noticed afterwards that all the boys and girls in this happy spot were fighting each other or engaged in killing something. And their elders keep something of the feckless violence of youth. I do not think that there are any good Samarratans.

After the interview with the Governor already mentioned, which ended by a refusal on our part to speak with him further, we were sent to pass the night in a filthy hovel, whose only furniture consisted of a bench and a chair. Our sergeant was sitting on this chair when an officer rushed in and jerked it from under him, leaving him on the floor. As a conjuring trick it was neat, but as manners, deplorable. We were glad to get away from the place.

Very few incidents came to diversify the monotony of our desert travel. One day, however, we met some Turkish cavalry going down to the siege of Kut. They were a fine body of troops, a little under-mounted perhaps, but thoroughly business-like. Their officers were most chivalrous cavaliers. Here in the desert, where luxuries were not to be had for money or for murder, they frequently gave us a handful of cigarettes, or a parcel of raisins, or else halted their squadron and asked us to share their meal. With these men one felt at ease. They were soldiers like ourselves. They did not ask awkward questions, and were told no lies. I remember especially one afternoon in the Marble Hills when we sat in a ring drinking tea and smoking cigarettes, with the panorama of the desert spread out before us, from the southward plains of Arabia to the hills of the devil-worshippers, misty and mysterious, in the north. We talked about horses all the time. A modern Isaiah delivered himself of the following sentiment, in which I heartily concur:

"Where there is no racing the people perish."

The first-line Turk has many fine qualities, of which generosity and gallantry are not the least. Something in Anglo-Saxon blood is in sympathy with the adventure-loving, flower-loving Turk. But, alas! there is another type of Ottoman, with the taint of Tamerlane. "When he is good he is very very good, but when he is bad he is horrid."

In the latter category I must regretfully place the sergeant who commanded our escort. He came of decent stock (to judge by his charming sisters, and his own appearance indeed) but his mind was all mud and blood. He had been Hunified. Turkey would always be fighting, he said. The English were almost defeated. The Armenians were almost exterminated. But the Greeks remained to be dealt with, and the cursed Arabs. Finally the Germans themselves. In an apotheosis of Prussianism Turkey was to turn on her Allies and drive them out. Such was his creed. But a glow of courage lit the dark places of his mind. He loved fighting for the sheer fun of the thing. A few days beyond Samarra we were attacked by some wandering Arabs, who swept down on us in a crescent. Our guards panicked, but he stood his ground, and, seizing a rifle, dispersed the enemy by some well-directed shots. Whether we were near deliverance or death on that occasion I do not know, but that the panic amongst our escort was not wholly unreasonable was evinced by the fact that only a few hours earlier we had passed the headless trunk of a gendarme, strapped upon a donkey. He had been decapitated as a warning to the Samarratans that two can play at the game of savagery.

The sight of the corpse had unnerved our guard, and as for myself, I did not know whether to be glad or sorry when the Arabs attacked us. To be taken by them meant either going back to the English or to the dust from which we came. The alternative was too heroic to be agreeable. Contrariwise, I was much disappointed when our sergeant finally drove them off. That evening, as if to point the moral, we found the body of another gendarme, also murdered, lying on a dung-heap outside the rest-house. This was at Shergat, the former capital of the Assyrians, and now a squalid village, where, however, the widows of Ashur were still "loud in their wail."

Here we dined with the fattest man I have ever seen. He was really a pig personified, but as we both gobbled out of the same dish and ate the same salt, I will not further enlarge on his appearance.

In the upper reaches of the Tigris there are wild geese so tame that they come waddling up to inspect the rare travellers through their land. I thought it might be possible to catch one of these animals on foot. Coquettishly enough they kept a certain distance. "We don't mind your looking at us," they seemed to say, "but we do object to being pawed about." With the coming of the railway I am afraid a gun will destroy their belief in human kind.

The geese appeared to enjoy the smell of sulphuretted hydrogen, which prevails in these regions. The whole country is rich in natural oils and bitumen. One day it will make somebody's fortune, no doubt, and then the geese will waddle away from perspiring prospectors. . . .

Before we arrived at Mosul we stopped for a bath at the hot springs of Hammam-Ali, where we met (in the water) a patriarch with a white beard, who confidently assured us that he was a hundred years old and would continue to live for another hundred, such were the beneficent properties of the water. Before his days are numbered he may live to see a Hydro at Hammam-Ali—poor old patriarch. He told us a lot about Jonah (whose tomb is at Nineveh, just opposite Mosul, on the other side of the river), and I am not sure that he did not claim acquaintance with that patriarch. He was quite one of the family.

Mosul, he told us, was a heaven on earth, a land flowing with milk and honey, where we should ride all day on the best horses of Arabia, and feast all night in gardens such as the blessed houris might adorn.

It was with a certain elation, therefore, that I saw the distant prospect of Mosul next morning, set in its surrounding hills. A fair city it seemed, white and cool, with orange groves down to the river and many date-trees. But a closer acquaintance brought cruel disappointment, as generally happens in the East. The blight of the Ottoman was everywhere; there was dirt, decrepitude, and decay in every corner. Children with eye-disease, and adults with leprosies more terrible than Naaman's jostled each other in the mean streets. Whole quarters of the city had given up the ghost, and become refuse heaps, where curs grouted amongst offal. Mosul, like our escort-sergeant's mind, seemed a muddle of mud and blood.

With sinking hearts we drove to the barracks, and were shown into a dark, gloomy office, where our names were taken. Thence we were led to a still murkier and more mouldering room, inhabited—nay, infested—by some ten Arabs. Through this we passed into a cell with windows boarded up, which was, if possible even damper, darker, and more dismal than anything we had yet seen. After the sunlight and great winds of the desert we stood bewildered. Death seemed in the air.

Then out of the gloom there rose two figures. They were British officers, who had been captured about a month previously. So changed and wasted were they that even after we had removed the boards from the little window we could hardly recognise them. One of these officers was so ill with dysentery that he could hardly move, the other had high fever.

Our arrival, with news from the outer world, bad though it was, naturally cheered them considerably, for nothing could be worse than their present plight.

The ensuing days called for a great moral effort on our part. It was absolutely imperative to laugh, otherwise our surroundings would have closed in on us. . . . We cut up lids of cigarette boxes for playing cards. We inked out a chessboard on a plank. We held a spiritualistic séance with a soup-bowl, there being no table available to turn. We told interminable stories. We composed monstrous limericks; and we sang in rivalry with the Arab guard outside, who made day hideous with their melody and murdered sleep by snoring.

But when there is little to eat and nothing to do, time drags heavily. Two cells with low ceilings that leaked were allotted to the four of us. In these we lived and ate and slept, except for fortnightly excursions to the baths. We were allowed no communication with the men, who lived in a dungeon below. Their fate was a sealed book to us. We had nothing to read. Under these conditions one begins to fear one's brain, especially at night. It was then that it began to run like a mechanical toy. Like a clockwork mouse, it scampered aimlessly amongst the dust of memory, then suddenly became inert, with the works run down. I grew terrified of thinking, especially of thinking about my friend in the fur coat.

The night hours are the worst in captivity. One lies on the floor, waiting for sleep to come, but instead of blessed sleep, "beloved from pole to pole," thoughts come crowding thick and fast on consciousness, thoughts like clouds that lower over the quiescent body. Each second then seems of inconceivable duration. But there is no escape from Time.

During the day, however, things were more bearable, and occasional gleams of humour enlivened the laggard moments.

Among our guard there were several sentries who (I thought) might conceivably help us to escape. One dark night, one of these men whispered the one word "Jesus," and made the sign of the Cross, as I passed him. After this introduction I naturally hoped that he might be of use. He was a fine figure of a man, with a proud poise of head, and aquiline nose, as if some Assyrian god had been his ancestor. I was gazing at him in admiration the next day, and gauging his possibilities through my single eye-glass, when a curious thing happened.

Our eyes met. He seemed mesmerised by my monocle. For a long time we stared at each other in silence, then, thinking the sergeant of the guard would notice our behaviour, I discreetly dropped my eye-glass and looked the other way. The sentry's mouth quivered as if I had made a joke, but instead of smiling, he burst suddenly into a storm of tears. The sergeant of the guard (a swart, sturdy little Turk) rushed out to see what had happened. There was the big sentry, wailing, and actually gnashing his white teeth. I stood awkwardly, looking as innocent as I felt. The sergeant bristled like a terrier, pulled the sentry's poor nose, and boxed his beautiful ears, while the victim continued to blubber and look piteously in my direction.

But I could not help him at all. I had not the slightest idea what was the matter, nor do I know now. Hysteria, I suppose.

Eventually that great solvent of perplexity, nicotine, came to relieve the awkward situation. First the sergeant accepted a cigarette, then, more diffidently, the sentry. Later I put in my eye-glass again, and convinced them, I think, that its use did not involve the weaving of any unholy spell.

This eye-glass, by the way, survived all the fortunes of captivity. Through it I surveyed the moon-lit plains beyond the Tigris when I planned escape in Mosul, as shall be told in the next chapter. Later it scanned the desert's dusty face for any hope of release. At Afion-kara-hissar it helped me search for a pathway through our guards. At Constantinople it was still my friend. Through it, a month before escape, I looked at the slip of new moon that swung over San Sophia on the last day of Ramazan, wondering where the next moon would find me. And when the next moon came, I watched the sentries by its aid, on the night of our first escape. And it was in my eye when I slipped down the rope to freedom.

But this chapter is getting "gaga." It has a happy ending, however.

One evening when the

". . . little patch of blue, That prisoners call the sky"

had turned to sulky mauve, and the air was heavy with storm, and our fellow-prisoners were depressed, and the Arab guard was bellowing songs outside, and we were peeling potatoes for our dinner by the flicker of lamp-light, and life seemed drab beyond description, there came great news to us. Two other officers had arrived.

Next moment they peered into our den, even as we had done. And they were angry, amazed, unshaven, bronzed by the desert air, even as we had been. There in the doorway, ruddy and fair and truculent like some Viking out of time and place, stood the young pilot I had last seen at Aziziah. He was alive, my friend in the fur coat.

The desert had delivered up its dead!

CHAPTER III

THE TERRIBLE TURK

One draws a long breath thinking of those days of Mosul. But bad as our case was, it was as nothing compared with that of the men.

Some two hundred of them lived in a cellar below our quarters, through scenes of misery, and in an atmosphere of death which no one can conceive who does not know the methods of the Turk. Even to me, as I write in England, that Mosul prison begins to seem inconceivable. Huddled together on the damp flag-stones of the cellar, our men died at the rate of four or five a week. Although the majority were suffering from dysentery they not only could not secure medical attention, but were not even allowed out of their cells for any purpose whatever. Their pitiable state can be better imagined than described. Many went mad under our eyes. Deprived of food, light, exercise, and sometimes even drinking water, the condition of our sick and starving men was literally too terrible for words.

It is useless, however, to pile horror on horror. Sixty per cent. of these men are dead, and this fact speaks for itself. No re-statement can strengthen, and no excuse can palliate, the case against the Turks. Our men in this particular instance were killed by the cynical brutality of Abdul Ghani Bey, the commandant of Mosul, and his acquiescent staff.

There is an idea that "the Turks treated their own soldiers no better than our prisoners"; but this is a fallacy—at any rate with regard to hell-hounds such as Abdul Ghani Bey. He took an especial pleasure in inflicting the torments of thirst, hunger, and dirt upon the miserable beings under his care. Animals, in another country, would have been kept cleaner and better fed.

Never shall I forget the arrival in January 1915 of a party of English prisoners from Baghdad. About two hundred and fifty men, who had been captured on barges just before the siege of Kut, had been taken first to Baghdad and thence by forced marches to Kirkuk, a mountain town on the borders of the Turko-Persian frontier. Why they were ever sent to Kirkuk I do not know, unless indeed it was thought that the sight of prisoners suitably starved would re-assure the population regarding the qualities of the redoubtable English soldier. After being exhibited to the population of Kirkuk our men continued their journey, through the bitter cold of the mountains, barefoot and in rags, arriving at last at Mosul shortly after the New Year. Only eighty men then remained out of the original two hundred and fifty, but although their numbers had dwindled their courage had not diminished.

First there marched into our barrack square some sixty of our soldiers in column of route. They were erect and correct as if they were marching to a king's parade. Surely so strange a column will never be seen again. All were sick, and the most were sick to death. Some were barefoot, some had marched two hundred miles in carpet slippers, some were in shirt-sleeves, and all were in rags; one man only wore a great-coat, and he possessed no stitch of clothing beneath it. But through all adversity they held their heads high among the heathen, and carried themselves with the courage of a day "that knows not death." Silently they filed into the already crowded cellar, out of our sight, and many never issued again into the light of the sun.

After these sixty men had disappeared the stragglers began to stagger in. One man, delirious, led a donkey on which the dead body of his friend was tied face downwards. After unstrapping the corpse he fell in a heap beside it. Dysentery cases wandered in and collapsed in groups on the parade ground. An Indian soldier, who had contracted lockjaw, kept making piteous signs to his mouth, and looking up to the verandah, where we stood surrounded by guards. But no one came to relieve those sufferers, dying by inches under our eyes.

That night we managed, by bribing the guards, to have smuggled upstairs to us at tea-time two non-commissioned officers from among the new arrivals. Needless to say, we spent all our money (which was little enough in all conscience) in providing as good a fare as possible, and our famished guests devoured the honey and clotted cream we had to offer. Then one of them suddenly fainted. When he had somewhat recovered he had to be secretly conveyed below, and that was the end of the party—the saddest at which I have ever assisted. The officer who carried the sick man down spent several hours afterwards in removing vermin from his own clothes, for lice leave the moribund, and this poor boy died within a few days.

Sometimes, when our pay was given us, or there occurred an opportunity to bribe our guard, it was our heart-breaking duty to decide which of the men we should attempt to save, by smuggling money to them out of the slender funds at our disposal, and which of their number, from cruel necessity, were too near their end to warrant an attempt to save.

Something of the iron of Cromwell enters one's mind as one writes of these things. If we forget our dead, the East will not forget our shame. Sentiment must not interfere with justice. Abdul Ghani Bey, who shed our prisoners' blood, must pay the penalty. He is the embodiment of a certain type—perhaps not a very common type—of Turk, but common or not, he is one of the men responsible for the terrible death-rate among our soldiers. A short description of him, therefore, will not be out of place.

He was a small man, this tiny Tamerlane, with a limp, and a scowl, and bandy legs. His sombre, wizened face seemed to light with pleasure at scenes of cruelty and despair. He insulted the old, and struck the weak, and delighted in the tears of women and the cries of children. This is not hyperbole. I have seen him stump through a crowd of Armenian widows and their offspring, and after striking some with his whip, he pushed down a woman into the gutter who held a baby at her breast. I have seen him pass down the ranks of Arab deserters, lashing one in the face, kicking another, and knocking down a third. I have seen him wipe his boots on the beard of an old Arab he had felled, and spur him in the face. I hope he has already been hanged, because only the hangman's cord could remove his atavistic cruelty.

His subordinates went in deadly fear of him, and while it was extremely difficult to help our men, it was practically impossible to help ourselves at all in the matter of escape. Yet escape was doubly urgent now, to bring news of our condition to the outer world.

After much thought I decided that a certain wall-eyed interpreter who came occasionally to buy us food was the most promising person to approach. My friend and I laid our plans carefully. After a judicious tip, and some hints as to our great importance in our own country, we evinced a desire to have private lessons with him in Arabic, enlarging at the same time upon the great career that a person like himself might have had, had he been serving the English and not the Turks. Gradually we led round to the subject of escape. At first we talked generalities in whispers, and he was distinctly shy of doing anything of which the dear commandant would not approve; but eventually, softly and distinctly, and with a confidence that I did not feel, I made a momentous proposal to him, nothing less than that he could help us to escape. He winced as if my remark was hardly proper, and fixed me with a single, thunder-struck eye. Then he quavered:

"This is very sudden!"

We could not help laughing.

"This is no jesting matter," he said. "I will be killed if I am caught."

"But you won't get caught. With the best horses in Arabia and a guide like you. . . ."

"Hush, hush! I must think it over."

For several days he preserved a tantalising silence, alternately raising our hopes by a wink from his wonderful eye, and then dashing them to the ground by a blank stare.

We lived in a torment of hope deferred.

But time passed more easily now. The nights took on a new complexion, flushed by the hope of freedom. From our little window I could see across a courtyard to a patch of river. Beyond it, immense and magical under the starlight, were the ruins of former civilisation—the mounds of Nineveh, the tomb of Jonah, and the rolling downs that lead to the mountains of Kurdistan. To those mountains my fancy went. If sleep did not come, then there were enthralling adventures to be lived in those mountains, adventures of the texture of dreams, yet tinged with a certain prospective of reality. . . . We had bought revolvers, our horses were ready, we had bribed our guard. We rode far and fast, with our wall-eyed friend as guide. By evening we were in a great forest. . . .

But reality proved a poor attendant on romance. A sordid question of money was our stumbling-block, and a high enterprise was crippled—not for the first or last time—by want of cash. We had already given the interpreter five pounds (which represented so much bread taken out of our mouths), but now he stated that further funds were indispensable to arrange preliminaries. This seemed reasonable, for arms and horses could not be secured on credit in Mosul. Unfortunately, however, funds were not available. We could not, in decency, borrow from other prisoners to help us in our escape. At this juncture our guide, philosopher, and friend lost—or embezzled—a five-pound note that had been entrusted to him by another prisoner to buy us food. Whether he lost it carelessly or criminally I am not prepared to state, but the fact remains he lost it. Our fellow-prisoner very naturally complained to the Turks, as the absence of this five pounds meant we could buy no food for a week.

The Turks arrested the interpreter. He grew frightened, invented a story about the complainant having asked him to help in an escape, then recanted, vacillated, contradicted himself, and got himself bastinadoed for his pains.

The bastinado, I may as well here explain, is administered as follows: the feet of the victim are bared, and his ankles are strapped to a pole. The pole is now raised by two men to the height of their shoulders. A third man takes a thick stick about the diameter of a man's wrist, and strikes him on the soles of the feet. Between twenty and a hundred strokes are administered, while the victim writhes until he faints. No undue exertion is necessary on the part of the executioner, for even after a gentle bastinado a man is not expected to be able to walk for several days.

The wall-eyed interpreter was brought limping to our cell about three days after his punishment. He was brought by Turkish officers, who wished to hear from our own lips a denial of his story that we had been plotting an escape.

It was a dramatic, and for me rather dreadful, moment. Indignantly and vehemently we denied ever having asked his help. Only myself and another, besides the interpreter, knew the truth. To the other officers at Mosul (there were nine of us then, sharing two little cells) this black business is only now for the first time made known. Their indignation, therefore, was by no means counterfeit.

"The man must be mad. No one ever dreamed of escaping," I stated, looking fixedly into the interpreter's one eye, which, while it implored me to tell the truth, seemed to hold a certain awe for a liar greater than himself.

"But——" he stammered, cowed by the circumstance that for once in his life he was telling the truth.

"But what?" we demanded angrily. "Let the villain speak out. His story is monstrous."

"Besides, we are so comfortable here," I added parenthetically.

Eventually the wretched man was led gibbering to an underground dungeon. What happened to him afterwards I do not know. I publish this story after careful thought, because, if he was "playing the game" by us, why did he talk to the Turks about escape? If, on the other hand, he was a prison spy, then his punishment is not my affair.

The treachery of the interpreter was an ill wind for everyone, for our guards were sent away to the front (which is tantamount to a sentence of death) and the vigilance of our new guards was greater than that of the old. Intrigue was dead and our isolation complete.

In these circumstances it may be imagined with what excitement I received the news that the German Consul wanted to see me in the commandant's office. It was the first time for a fortnight that I had left my cell.

I entered slowly, and after saluting the company present, first generally, and then individually, I took a dignified seat after the manner of the country. Ranged round the room were various notables of Mosul—doctors, apothecaries, priests, and lawyers. On a dais slightly above us sat the Consul and the commandant. For some time we kept silence, as if to mark the importance of the occasion. Then a cigarette was offered me by the commandant. I refused this offering, rising in my chair and saluting him again.

At last the German Consul spoke.

He had been instructed by telegraph, he told me, to pay me the sum of five hundred marks in gold. The money came from a friend of my father's. I begged him to thank the generous donor, and a whole vista of possibilities immediately rose to my mind.

The money would be given me next day, the Consul continued, and a kavass of the Imperial Government would go with me into the bazaar to make any purchases I required.

This conversation took place in French, a language of which the commandant was quite ignorant, and I saw that here was an ideal opportunity for bringing the plight of our prisoners to light. But the Consul, I gathered, wanted to keep on friendly terms with the Turks. Some of the things I told him, however, made him open his eyes, and may have made his kultured flesh creep.

"I will come again to-morrow," he said hurriedly—"you can tell me more then."

After this he spoke in Turkish at some length to the commandant, while the latter interjected that wonderful word yok at intervals.

Yok, I must explain, signifies "No" in its every variation, and is probably the most popular word in Turkish. It is crystallised inhibition, the negation of all energy and enthusiasm, the motto of the Ottoman Dilly and Dallys. Its only rival in the vocabulary is yarin, which means "to-morrow."

"Yok, yok, yok," said the commandant, and I gathered that he was displeased.

That night I made my plans, and when summoned to the office next day I was armed with three documents. The first was a private letter of thanks to Baron Mumm for his generous and kindly loan. The second was a suggestion that the International Red Cross should immediately send out a commission to look after our prisoners at Mosul. And the third was a detailed list of articles required by our men, with appropriate comments. Items such as this figured on the list:

Soap, for two hundred men, as they had been unable to wash for months.

Kerosene tins, to hold drinking-water, which was denied to our prisoners.

Blankets, as over 50 per cent. had no covering at all.

These screeds startled the company greatly. The Consul stared and the commandant glared, for the one hated fuss and the other hated me. I was delightfully unpopular, but when an Ambassador telegraphs in Turkey, the provinces lend a respectful ear. My voice, crying in the wilderness, must needs be heard.

Summoning an interpreter, the commandant demanded whether I had any cause for complaint; whereupon the following curious three-cornered conversation took place—so far as I could understand the Turkish part:

"The men must be moved to better quarters," said I. "Until this is arranged nothing can be done."

"He says nothing can be done," echoed the interpreter.

"Then of what does he complain?" asked the commandant.

"The very beasts in my country are better cared for," I said. "Our men are dying of hunger and cold."

"He says the men are dying of cold," said the interpreter, shivering at his temerity in mentioning the matter.

"The weather is not my fault," grumbled the commandant, "perhaps it will be better to-morrow. Yes, yarin."

And so on. Talk was hopeless, but before leaving I gave the German Consul to understand that he now shared with Abdul Ghani Bey the responsibility for our treatment. To his credit, be it said, the commandant was removed shortly after our departure.

Two days after this interview we were moved from Mosul, where our presence was becoming irksome no doubt. Before leaving I left all my fortunate money, except five pounds, with the Consul, asking him to form a fund (which I hoped would be supplemented later by the Red Cross) for sick prisoners. Twelve months later this money was returned to me in full, but I fancy that it had done its work in the meanwhile.

On the day before our journey I went shopping with the Imperial kavass aforesaid, and it was a most pompous and pleasant excursion. Although I wore sandshoes and tattered garments, what with my eyeglass, and the gorgeous German individual, dressed like a Bond Street commissionaire, who carried my parcels and did my bargaining, I think we made a great impression upon the good burgesses of Mosul.

We threaded our way among Kurds with seven pistols at their belts, and Arabs hung with bandoliers, and astonishing Circassians with whiskers and swords. Almost every male swaggered about heavily armed, but a blow on their bristling midriff would have staggered any one of them. Their bark, I should think, is worse than their bite.

After a Turkish bath, where I graciously entertained the company with coffee, we strolled round the transport square, where we chaffered hotly for carriages to take us to Aleppo.

The material results of the morning were:

Some food and tobacco for the men staying behind.

Rations for ourselves, consisting of an amorphous mass of dates, cigarettes, conical loaves of sugar, candles, and a heap of unleavened bread.

Carriages for our conveyance to Aleppo.

But the moral effect of our excursion was greater far. I sowed broadcast the seeds of disaffection to Abdul Ghani Bey. To the tobacconist I said that the English, Germans, Turks, and all the nations of the earth, while differing in other matters, had agreed he was a worm to be crushed under the heel of civilisation. To the grocer I repeated the story. To the fruiterer I said his doom was nigh, and to the baker and candlestick maker that his hour had come.

Everyone agreed. Conspuez le commandant was the general opinion.

"In good old Abdul Hamid's days," they said, "such devil's spawn would not have been allowed to live."

It was a matter of minutes before rumours of his downfall were rife throughout the city.

Next day he came to see us off, bow-legs, whip, and scowl and all. He stood stockily, watching us drive away, and then turned and spat. But the taste of us was not to be thus easily dispelled. He will remember us, I hope, to his dying day. May that day be soon!

CHAPTER IV

"OUT OF GREAT TRIBULATION. . . ."

We had left a sad party of prisoners behind us, alas! but we had done what little we could for them. Confined as we had been, their sufferings had only added to our own. The best hope for them lay in the German Consul. He could do more, if he wished, than we could have achieved for all our wishes. Nothing could have been more hopeless than our position at Mosul. But now at least there was the open road before us, and hope, and health.

The desert air is magnificent. The untamed winds seemed to blow through every fibre of one's being, and clear away the cobwebs of captivity. The swinging sun, the great spaces of sand, the continuous exercise, and the lean diet of dates and bread, produce a feeling of perfect health. Indeed, after a day or two I began to feel much too well to be a prisoner. Under the desert stars one thought of the lights of London. Perversely, instead of being grateful for the unfettered grandeur of one's surroundings, one thought regretfully of the crowded hours one spends among civilised peoples. And, oh, how tired I was of seeing nothing but men! One of the worst features of captivity is that it is generally a story without a heroine.

After the second day of travel I was really seriously in need of a heroine, for my friend had developed high fever. If only there had been a ministering angel among our party! I did my best, but am not a nurse by nature. My friend grew so weak that he could not stand; and I began to doubt whether he would get to our journey's end.

But although no heroine came to our help, a hero did. As he happens to be a Turk, I will describe him shortly. Let us call him the Boy Scout, for he did (not one, but many) good actions every day. Out of his valise he produced a phial of brandy, tea, sugar, raisins, and some invaluable medicines. All these he pressed us to accept. He even tried to make me believe that he could spare a box of Bir-inji (first-class) cigarettes, until I discovered he had no more for himself. At every halting place he went to search for milk for my friend. Until we had been provided for, he never attended to his own comforts. After eighty miles of travelling everyone is tired, but although the Boy Scout must have been as tired as any of us, for he rode instead of driving, and although he had no official position with regard to us, no brother officer could have been more helpful or more truly kind. From the moment of our meeting we had been attracted by each other. At times, a look or an inflection of voice will proclaim a kindred spirit in a perfect stranger. Something happens above our consciousness; soul speaks to soul perhaps. So it was with the Boy Scout. He was unknown to me when I first saw him, dark-eyed and graceful, riding a white horse like a prince in a fairy book, and we spoke no common language, but somehow we understood each other.

He was a high official, I afterwards heard, travelling incognito, and had been engaged on Intelligence work for his country in Afghanistan. But, although an enemy in theory, he was a friend in fact. The war was far. Here in the desert we met as brothers. A finer figure of a man I have rarely seen, nor a truer gentleman. He was an ardent Young Turk, and if other Young Turks were cast in such a mould, there would be a place in the world for the race of Othman. But I have never seen another like him.

His manners were perfect, and although we discussed every subject under the sun in snatches of French and broken bits of Persian, we always managed to avoid awkward topics such as atrocities, reprisals, and the like. He guessed, I think, that I often thought of escape, and said one day:

"I shall fully understand if you try to get away, but you will forgive me, won't you, if I use my revolver?"

I assured him I would.

"Good!" he laughed, "because I am a dead shot!"

One day we must meet again, and pick up the threads of talk.

At Ress-el-Ain we separated for a time, and my friend was carried into the train, where he lay down and took no further interest in the proceedings. I also lay down, exhausted by anxiety. I was glad to be quit of the desert. Under other conditions it might have been charming, but its glamour is invisible to a captive's eyes.

The train journey was not very interesting, except for the fact that our guard commander (excited perhaps by the approach to civilisation, or else because he was free from the restraining influence of our teetotal Boy Scout) purchased a bottle of 'araq and imbibed it steadily on the journey between Ress-el-Ain and Djerablisse.

'Araq, the reader must know, is otherwise known as mastic or douzico, and is a colourless alcohol distilled from raisins and flavoured with aniseed, which clouds on admixture with water, and tastes like cough-mixture. It is an intoxicant without the saving grace of more generous vintages. It inebriates but does not cheer.

At Djerablisse, on the Euphrates, our guard commander supplemented the fiery 'araq with some equally potent German ration rum. By the time we got to Aleppo next day, he was reeking of this blend of alcohols. Not all the perfumes of Arabia could have stifled its fumes, nor all the waters of Damascus have quenched his thirst. He was besotted.

Escape would have been possible then. We had become separated from the rest of our party and were in charge of one old, sleepy, and rather friendly soldier. There seemed to be some doubt in his mind as to where we should pass the night, but we eventually arrived at a small and clean Turkish hotel, where we were told, rather mysteriously, that we should be among friends.

I looked for friends, but as everyone was asleep, it being then two o'clock in the morning, I decided to have a good night's rest before making any plans. Our dainty bedroom was too tempting to be ignored. The curtains were of Aleppo-work, in broad stripes of black and gold. The rafters were striped in black and white. The walls were dead white, the furniture dead black. Three pillows adorned our beds, of black, and of crimson, and of brilliant blue, each with a white slip covering half their length. The bed-covers were black, worked with gold dragons. It was like a room one imagines in dreams, or sees at the Russian Ballet.

After a blissful night, between sheets, and on a spring mattress, tea was brought to us in bed, and immediately afterwards, as no guards seemed to be about, I rose, greatly refreshed, and dressed in haste. My idea was to order a carriage to drive us to the sea-coast at Mersina, from which place I felt sure it would be possible to charter a boat to Cyprus.

But these hasty plans were dispelled by finding the Boy Scout waiting for me in the passage.

"Your guard commander was ill," he explained, "so I arranged that you should be brought to this hotel, where you are my guests. And I want you to lunch with me at one o'clock."

My face fell, but of course there was no help for it. And the Boy Scout's hospitality was princely indeed.

After delicious hors-d'oeuvres (the mézé—as it is called in Turkey—is a national dish) and soup, and savoury meats, we refreshed our palates with bowls of curds and rice. Then we attacked the sweets, which were melting morsels of honey and the lightest pastry. After drinking the health of the invalid (who could not join us of course) in Cyprian wine, we adjourned to the Boy Scout's room for coffee and cigarettes. Here I found all his belongings spread out, including several tins of English bully-beef and slabs of chocolate, which he said was his share of the loot taken after our retirement at the Dardanelles. He begged us to help ourselves to everything we wanted in the way of food or clothing; and he was ready, literally, to give us his last shirt. After having fitted us out, he telephoned to the hospital about the patient, and made arrangements that he should be received that afternoon.

Some hours later, accordingly, I drove to the hospital with my friend, accompanied by two policemen who had arrived from district headquarters, no doubt at the Boy Scout's request.

We were met at the entrance of the hospital by two odd little doctors.

"What is the matter with him?" squeaked Humpty in French.

"Fever," said I.

"Fever, indeed!" answered Dumpty, "let's look at his chest."

"And at his back," added Humpty suspiciously.

My friend disrobed, shivering in the sharp air, and these two strange physicians glared at him, standing two yards away, while the Turkish soldier and I supported the patient.

"He hasn't got it," they said suddenly in chorus.

"Hasn't what?"

"Typhus, of course. Carry him in. He will be well in a week."

I doubted it, but the situation did not admit of argument. We carried him in, through a crowd of miserable men in every stage of disease, all clamouring for admittance. No one, I gathered, was allowed into that hospital merely for the dull business of dying. They could do that as well outside. Thankful for small mercies, therefore, I left my friend in the clutches of Humpty and Dumpty, and even as they had predicted, he was well within a week.

There is something rather marvellous about a Turkish doctor's diagnosis. Such trifles as the state of your temperature or tongue are not considered. They trust in the Lord and give you an emetic. Although unpleasant, their methods are often efficacious.

It was now my turn to fall ill, and I did it with startling suddenness and completeness. I was sitting at the window of the house in which we were confined in Aleppo, feeling perfectly well, when I began to shiver violently. In half an hour I was in a high fever. That night I was taken to Humpty and Dumpty. Next morning I was unconscious.

I will draw a veil over the next month of my life. Only two little incidents are worth recording.

The first occurred about a week after my admittance to hospital, when my disease, whatever it was, had reached its crisis. A diet of emetics is tedious, so also is the companionship of people suffering from delirium tremens when one wants to be quiet. An end, I felt, must be made of the present situation. Creeping painfully out of my bed, I went down the passage, holding against the wall for support. It was a dark, uneven passage, with two patches of moonlight from two windows at the far end. Near one of these pools of light I caught my foot in a stone, and slipped and fell. I was too weak to get up again. I cooled my head on the stones and wondered what would happen next. Then I began to think of seas and rivers. All the delightful things I had ever done in water kept flitting through my mind. I remembered crouching in the bow of my father's cat-boat as we beat up a reach to Salem (Massachusetts) with the spray in our faces. And I thought of the sparkling sapphire of the Mediterranean and the cool translucencies of Cuckoo-weir. . . . No one came to disturb my meditations. The moonlight shifted right across my body, and slowly, slowly, I felt the wells of consciousness were filling up again. I was, quite definitely, coming back to life. It was as if I had really been once more in America and Italy and by the Thames, living again in all memories connected with open waters, and as if their solace had somehow touched me. Their coolness had cured me, and I was now flying back through imperceptible ether to Aleppo. I was coming back to that passage in a Turkish hospital. . . .

Did I draw, I wonder, upon some banked reserve of vitality, or were my impressions a common phase of illness? Anyway, when I came to, I was a different man. The waters of the world had cured me.

Later, during the journey to Afion-kara-hissar, I had a relapse. This second incident of my illness was a spiritual experience. Having been carried by my friend to the railway station, I collapsed on the platform, while he was momentarily called away. So dazed and helpless was I that I lay inconspicuously on some sacks, a bundle of skin and bone that might not have been human at all. Some porters threw more sacks on the pile and I was soon almost covered. But I lay quite still: I was too tired to move or to cry out. As bodily weakness increased, so there came to me a sense of mental power, over and beyond my own poor endowments. I thrilled to this strange strength, which seemed to mount to the very throne of Time, where past and future are one. Call it a whimsy of delirium if you will, nevertheless, one of the scenes I saw in the cinema of clairvoyance was a scene that actually happened some three months later, at that same station where I lay. . . . I saw some hundred men, prisoners from Kut and mostly Indians, gathered on the platform. One of these men was sitting on this very heap of sacks; he was sitting there rocking himself to and fro in great agony, for one of the guards had struck him with a thick stick and broken his arm. But not only was his arm broken, the spirit within him (which I also saw) was shattered beyond repair. No hope in life remained: he had done that which is most terrible to a Hindu, for he had eaten the flesh of cows and broken the ordinances of caste. His companions had died in the desert without the lustral sacrifice of water or of fire, and he would soon die also, a body defiled, to be cast into outer darkness. For a time the terror and the tragedy of that alien brain was mine; I shared its doom and lived its death. Later I learnt that a party of men, coming out of the great tribulation of the desert, had halted at this station, and a Hindu soldier with a broken arm had died on those sacks. I record the incident for what it is worth.

Without my friend I should never have achieved this journey. My gratitude is a private matter, though I state it here, with some mention of my own dull illness, in order to picture in a small way the sufferings of our men from Kut. When some were sick and others hale, the death-rate was not so high, but with many parties, such as those whose ghosts I believe I saw, there was no possibility of helping each other. So starved and so utterly weary were they, that they had no energy beyond their own existence. Many men must have died with no faith left in man or God.

On arrival at Afion-kara-hissar, we were shown into a bare house. For a day I rested blissfully on the floor, asking for nothing better than to be allowed to lie still for ever and ever. But this was not to be. On the second day of our stay we noticed signs of great excitement among our guards. They nailed barbed wire round our windows, and they watched us anxiously through skylights, and counted us continually, as if uncertain whether two and two made four.

Presently the meaning of their precautions was divulged. Some English prisoners had escaped, and our captors were engaged in locking the stable door after the steeds had gone. All the prisoners in Afion-kara-hissar were marshalled in the street, and marched off to the Armenian church, situated at the base of the big rock that dominates the town. Hither we also marched, with our new companions, singing the prisoners' anthem:

"We won't be bothered about Wherever we go, we always shout We won't be bothered about. . . . We're bothered if we'll be bothered about!"

greatly to the astonishment of the townsfolk, who connected the Armenian church with massacres rather than melody. The leader of our band was a wounded officer, in pyjamas and a bowler hat (this being the sum of his possessions) who waved his crutch as a conductor's baton. (Alas! his cheery voice is stilled, for he died in hospital a year later. R.I.P.) I can still see him hobbling along—a tall figure in pink pyjamas, with one leg swinging (bandaged to the size of a bolster) and his hat askew, and his long chin stuck out defiantly—hymn-writer and hero manqué—fit leader of lost causes and of our fantastic pageant to that church.

It was a gay and motley crew of prisoners of all nationalities and conditions of life who entered its solemn and rather stuffy precincts. We were all delighted to be "strāfed" in a worthy cause. Three good men had escaped, and more might follow later.

To anyone in decent health the month we spent in the Armenian church must have been an interesting experience. Even to me, it was not without amusement. Imagine a plain, rather gloomy, church, built of oak and sandstone, with a marble chancel in the east. Two rooms opened out on either side of the altar, and there was a high gallery in the west. In the body of the building the English camped. One of the small rooms was taken by the French, the other we reserved for a chapel. The Russians chiefly inhabited the space between the chancel and the altar, but the overflow of nationalities mingled. Our soldier servants were put in the gallery. When everyone was fitted in, there was no space to move, except in the centre aisle. There was no place for exercise nor any arrangements for washing or cooking. During our stay in the church two men died of typhus, and it is extraordinary that the infection did not spread, considering the lack of sanitation. During the first night of the strafe, the Russians, accustomed to pogroms in their own country, thought there was a likelihood of being massacred, and kept watch through the small hours of the morning by clumping up and down the aisle in their heavy boots. All night long—for I was sleepless too—I watched these grave, bearded pessimists waiting for a death which did not come, while the French and English slept the sleep of optimists. At last dawn arrived, and lit the windows over the altar, and a few moments later the sunlight crept into the northern transept. Then the Russians gave up their vigil, dropped in their tracks, and at once began snoring in the aisle, like great watch-dogs.

The noise the two hundred of us made in sleeping was remarkable. Probably our nerves were rather queer. The church was never silent through the night. Some cried out continually in their slumbers, others went through a pantomime of eating. Some moaned, others chuckled. One sleeper gave a hideous laugh at intervals. One could hear it deep down in his throat, and mark it gradually bubbling to his lips until he grew vocal like some horrible hyena. But it is small wonder that the prisoners in the church were restless. The marvel is that they slept at all. Nearly all of us had lived through trying moments, and had felt the hand of Providence, whose power makes one tremble. We knew the shivers of retrospection. One officer, for instance, wounded in an attack on Gallipoli, had been dragged as a supposed corpse to the Turkish trenches and there built into the parapet. But he was none the worse now for his amazing experiences, except that he suffered slightly from deafness, as his neck had formed the base of a loophole. Then there was a man, left as dead after an attack, who recovered consciousness but not the use of his limbs, and lay helpless in the path of the Turkish retreat. For an hour the passers-by prodded him with bayonets, so that he now has twenty-seven wounds and a large gap in his body where there should be solid flesh. From the very brink of the valley of the shadow this boy of nineteen had returned to life. Again, there was a young Frenchman, who lay four days and nights between the lines, dying of the twin tortures of thirst and a stomach wound; but by a miracle he survived, and now at night, sometimes, when will lost its grip on consciousness, he would live those ninety-six hours again. Then there were the submarine crews, out of the jaws of the worst death conceivable. One crew had lived for a whole day struggling in a net at the bottom of the Dardanelles while the air became foul and hope waned, and the submarine "sweated," and depth charges exploded so close to them that on one occasion the shock knocked a teapot off a table! Hemmed in and helpless, the clammy agony of that suspense might well haunt their sleeping hours.

But on the whole our psychology was normal. Only, at nights, if one lay awake, did one realise the stress and stark horror through which the sleepers had lived. Out of four hundred officers "missing" at the Dardanelles, only some forty were surviving at Afion-kara-hissar. This fact speaks for itself.

By day we wandered about, so far as the congestion permitted, making friends and exchanging experiences. To us, lately from Mesopotamia, the then unknown story of Gallipoli stirred our blood as it will stir the blood of later men.

I ate and drank the anecdotes of Gallipoli as they were told me. I loved the hearing of them, in the various dialects of the protagonists, from a lordly lisp to a backwood burr. The brogue, the northern drawl, the London twang, the elided g's or the uncertain h's, had each their several and distinct fascination. There is joy in hearing one's own tongue again after a time of strange speech and foreign faces.

"Beyond our reason's sway, Clay of the pit whence we were wrought Yearns to its fellow-clay."

The many voices of the many British were better than sweet music.

But we had plenty of sweet music as well. The sailors amongst us were the cheeriest crew imaginable.

A résumé of our life at that time would be that we sang often about nothing in particular, swore continually at life in general, smoked heavily, gambled mildly, and drank 'araq when we could get it, and tea when we couldn't. Not everyone, I hasten to add, did all these things. As in everyday life, there were some who said that the constant cigarette was evil, and that cards were a curse, and drink the devil. But, again, as in everyday life, their example had no effect on cheerful sinners.

"Here's to the bold and gallant three Who broke their bonds and sought the sea"

sang one of the poets of our captivity, and all of us French, Russians, and English, took up the chorus with a roar. The Turkish sentries protested vainly, and some, ostentatiously loading their rifles, went up to the Western gallery which overlooked the body of the church. As we were being treated like Armenians, they could not understand why we did not behave like Armenians and herd silently together, as sheep before a storm. Instead, two hundred lusty voices proclaimed to anyone who cared to listen that we were not downhearted.

See us then at midnight, seated at a table under the high altar. About fifty of us are celebrating somebody's birthday, and a demi-john of 'araq graces the festive board. We have sung every song we know, and many we don't.

"Jolly good song and jolly well sung, Jolly good fellows every one. . . . Wow! Wow!"

The chorus dies down, and the Master of the Ceremonies, still in pyjamas and bowler hat, rises on his sound leg and standing (swaying slightly) at the head of the table, raps on it with his crutch for silence.

One officer wears a soup-bowl for a Hun helmet. Others are dressed as parodies of Turks, and have been acting in a farce entitled "The Escape." Two Irish friends of mine are singing "The Wearing of the Green," while others are patriotically drowning their voices. A submarine skipper, with a mane of yellow hair over his face, like a lion in a picture-book, watches a diplomat dancing a horn-pipe. A little bald flying man of gigantic strength and brain, is wrestling with a bearded Hercules. Some sailors are singing an old sea-chanty.

The rough deal table, littered with pipes and glasses, the tallow-dips lighting the vaulted gloom, the bearded roysterers singing songs older than Elizabeth's time, the simple fare of bread and meat, the simpler jokes and horseplay, took one back through centuries to other men who made the best of war. In Falstaff's time such scenes as these must have passed in the taverns of Merrie England. Only here, there were no wenches to serve us with sack. We had to mix our own 'araq.

"Silence, if you please," says he of the long jowl, using his crutch as a chairman's hammer. "Silence for the prisoners' band."

The band begins. It consists of penny whistles, banjos, castanets, soup-bowls, knives and forks, and anything else within reach. The motif of the piece is our release. Andante con coraggio we pass the weary months ahead. Then the dawn of our liberation breaks. We smash everything we possess, while the train to take us away steams into the station.

Sh! Shh! Shhh! Chk! Chk! Chk! Bang! Swish!! We take our seats amid a perfect pandemonium. Then the train whistles—louder and louder—and we move off—faster and faster and faster and faster, until no one can make any more noise, and the dust of our stamping has risen like incense to the roof, in a grand finale of freedom.

Strange doings in a church, you say? But what would you? We had nowhere else to go. There is a time for everything after all, and it is a poor heart that never rejoices. I feel sure Solomon himself would have sung with us, and proved most excellent company.

On Sunday mornings Divine Service was always well attended. Perhaps by contrast with my usual methods of passing the time, those Sabbath hours are set as so many jewels in the tarnished shield of idleness. The fadeless beauty of our Common Prayer brought hope and consolation to all of us who were gathered together. We repeated the grand old words; we sang "Fight the Good Fight" and "Onward, Christian Soldiers." We shared then, however humbly, in the tears and triumph of our cause. We were not of that white company that was to die for England, but we could share the sorrow of the women who mourned, and of the old who stood so sadly outside the fray.

And as through a magic door, I passed from that barren room to a country church where the litany for all prisoners and captives went up to Heaven, mingled with the fragrance of English roses.