EASTERN NIGHTS—AND FLIGHTS (continued 2)

We noticed, however, that three boats were out at sea, presumably fishing for the tables of officers and officials.

"If we could get back here some night," whispered C. as we dressed, "we might collar one of those three boats, tow it out to sea by swimming, and sail to Jaffa." This revived my hopes of escape for the first time since the fiasco at Tul-Keran.

"Thank you a thousand times," I said when Von Heimburg and Santel left us at Nazareth. "It has been a most enjoyable day."

They agreed, without showing enthusiasm.

"But not a very successful one for you, I'm afraid," I added.

They were quiet for a minute, and then both laughed.

"So! You were prepared," said Santel. "Well, I shan't try again."

Neither Santel nor anybody else tried again to interrogate us at Nazareth; and two days later we were told to prepare for a journey to Damascus.

C. had been discussing the chances of escaping by boat; and when Jean Willi paid me a farewell visit I asked him if a journey from Damascus to the coast would be difficult.

"Very difficult indeed under the conditions of which you are thinking." Then, after a pause, "But I will tell you something interesting, since you will probably be kept in Damascus for about a fortnight. The Armenians run secret caravans from Damascus to Akaba."

"Thank you. That's very interesting, indeed." And it was; for Akaba, at the northeastern extremity of the Red Sea, was the base of the Arab army cooperating with the British.

Jean Willi would not listen to thanks, when he said good-bye. I gave him my London address, in the sincere hope of being able to pay back in part the good deeds I owed him.

I left Nazareth under much better conditions than I entered it. Accompanied by an Arab pseudo-spy, I had arrived half crazed by weakness, pain, and disaster, with a damaged leg and a swollen face, and possessing neither hope nor a hat. I was leaving it in the company of fellow-officers, with my mind and leg and face normal again, and having not only a German hat but renewed hopes of escape, summed up in Jean Willi's hint:

"The Armenians run secret caravans from Damascus to Akaba."

CHAPTER IV

DAMASCUS—AND THE SECOND FAILURE

Nazareth and Damascus are wonderful names; and apart from historical values each, with the country around it, stands for exceptional beauty. A journey from Nazareth to Damascus, therefore, "gives of the most finest pleasure"; as the Greek guard of a Turkish train assured us in his "most finest" English. But if you wish to see Syria at its best, travel otherwise than as a prisoner, sitting in a dirty cattle-truck and surrounded by Turkish guards, whose natural odour gives by no means of the most finest pleasure.

Such were the conditions under which we—four Australian officers and myself—came to Damascus. All the way from Nazareth we were guarded closely as a secret meeting of the Peace Conference. Only three weeks earlier Major Evans had escaped from Afuleh and walked forty miles before he was recaptured; so that in our case more than ordinary precautions were taken.

We drove down the steep hill from Nazareth in three rickety carts. Each of the first two contained a pair of prisoners and a pair of guards, with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets; but H., whose giant height and strength the Turks respected, had a cart and two guards all to himself. At Afuleh we sat until nightfall in a mud hut, with the local population gazing and chattering through the open door, as if we had been strange animals.

We welcomed the change to a covered cattle-truck on the railway, away from prying Turks and Arabs. In this truck, with coats serving as pillows, we lay on the filthy floor throughout the night, while the train jolted eastward over the badly kept track. Whenever I looked at the half-open shutter I met the alert eyes of a guard, whose business it was to prevent us from jumping into the darkness.

The next day we passed in playing poker, in looking at the wild hills of Samaria, and, by juggling with the few French words he could understand, in trying to tell the Arab officer in charge of us how contented were the Arab population in those parts of Palestine, Arabia, and Mesopotamia occupied by the British.

This man, like most of the Syrian Arabs, showed himself well-disposed to prisoners. He presented us with bread and hard-boiled eggs, bought with his own money, and refused to take payment. As always, no food had been provided by the military authorities.

So we jogged on, with many a halt, across the Jordan and round and up the winding tracks in the hill country beyond it. We stopped for an hour at Deraa, where a Turkish doctor with pleasant manners and a dirty hypodermic needle visited the truck. Having assured us that cholera was very prevalent in the British army, he proceeded to inoculate us, so that we might have no chance of taking the disease to Damascus. As a matter of fact, the British army in Palestine was entirely free from cholera, while Damascus, as we afterward learned, was full of it. Fortunately, nothing worse than sore chests resulted from the use of his rusty, unsterilized needle.

Then, just before sunset, we rounded a bend at the bottom of a hill and came upon Damascus; and forgetful of captivity and cattle-trucks and guards and their attendant smells, I held my breath for the beauty of it. Away to the north stretched a belt of grainland vivid in browns and greens. Beyond was a wooded area reaching to the lower slopes of the mountain range that extends from Lebanon to Damascus. Down the lower slopes of one of the most easterly mountains flow the sources of Pharpar and Abana, the twin rivers. The streams twist downward until they lose themselves in a detached part of the old town, perched several hundred feet above the rest of the city.

Farther below is Damascus itself—a maze of flat buildings, squat mosques, and minaret spires, all in gray-white, as if sprinkled with the powder of time, and now smudged with faint rose by the sinking sunlight. Eastward and southeastward stretches the great desert that leads to the sites of Babylon and Nineveh, to Bagdad, to Persia, to the beginnings of human history.

In Damascus, as I knew from intelligence officers of the Palestine army, were many friends of the British. Nearly all the population, in fact, were secretly anti-Turk and anti-German. Could we make use of these sentiments in planning an escape? What experiences and adventures awaited us in this oldest standing city of the world, that was famous in the days of Abraham, very famous in the days of Haroun-al-Raschid, and still famous in the days of Woodrow Wilson?

The first few of these experiences were by no means pleasant. Surrounded by the gleaming bayonets and eyes of the guards, who were clearly anxious lest we should disappear in the fading light, we were hustled from the railway to the police station, and locked in a tiny room for four hours.

Finally, just before midnight, the police led us to Baranki Barracks, a large building used as a prison for military criminals. Tired, hungry, and disconsolate, we fell asleep on the bare bedsteads of the room assigned to us.

But not for long. It must have been about two hours later when I awoke, tingling all over and vaguely uncomfortable. To my surprise I saw that C. was standing by his bed, and, by the light of my candle, was stabbing at it. M. sat up suddenly, scratched himself, and swore softly in a series of magnificent Australian oaths. R., who had not undressed, still slumbered.

Ouch! More sharp stingings came from my legs and arms. Bugs, and swarms of them!

In the prison at Nazareth I had lived with scores of the little red brutes so common in the Near East; but here there were hundreds. They were crawling down the wall, falling on the floor, and biting every bit of flesh left exposed. I lit a candle and found dozens on my bed.

Lying on the floor having proved to be as impossible as lying on the bed, I went to the window and looked into the night, thinking of the one matter that interested me in those days—escape. Across the road was a large camp bordered on the left by a meadow and on the right by one of the seven streams of Damascus. Straight ahead, weirdly colossal in the moonlight, were two great mountains. Beyond them, I knew, the great desert stretched through hundreds of miles to Mesopotamia. I was aware just how far the British Mesopotamian army had arrived on the way from Bagdad to Mosul; but even if we were lucky enough to find a guide who could smuggle us into an eastward-moving caravan it would be almost impossible to make a détour around the Turkish army; and in any case we should be dependent on the help of Kurds or Mesopotamian Arabs, who are much less estimable than the Arabs of Syria and Arabia. No, that plan was not feasible.

I considered the suggestion of C.—that we should make our way to the coast, hiding in the daytime and walking only at nights, and then, arrived at Acre or Tyre, or some such seaport, commandeer a sailing-boat and make for Cyprus or Jaffa. For this plan, also, the difficulties would be many and serious. Such few boats as were still serviceable would be well guarded. Even if we managed to steal one of them, it would have to be towed into deep water by swimmers, which was scarcely practicable in the darkness. In any case, a walk to the coast from Damascus must cover many nights. A guide would be essential, as otherwise we could buy no bread on the journey, since none of us spoke Arabic. And a guide would cost a deal of money, of which we had little.

My scheme of getting into touch with the secret caravans, by means of which Arabs and Armenians were slipping southward from Damascus to Akaba, still seemed the best. But here, again, money would be needed, besides a reliable intermediary. Money we might obtain by smuggling a letter to the Spanish consul, who had taken charge of British interests in Damascus. As for an intermediary, we should have to trust the gods to give us one from among the guards.

Whatever we did would have to be done quickly, for we should not be long in Damascus. By the time I had reached this conclusion I was tired enough to fall asleep despite the bugs.

The morning toilet included a ceremony that every prisoner in Turkey found it necessary to perform after travelling on the railway—a careful hunt for lice in our clothes. The search was productive, and led to talk of the plague of typhus which was being spread all over Turkey by these vermin.

For the rest of the morning nothing happened, except a short visit from the commandant. By now, having eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, we were irritable with hunger. I made known this fact to the commandant, who promised that we should feed at midday.

With him came a little interpreter, with bent shoulders, a greasy face, and an absurdly long nose. Here, I thought, is a possible intermediary; and I asked him to return later. During the afternoon he entered softly and announced:

"I am George, interpreter of English. I am friend of English, honest to God."

George was a native of Beyrout, part Syrian, part Greek, part Jew, and wholly scoundrel. Were I writing fiction I should call him a Syro-Phœnician, which is an impressive term but means nothing; but as George really happened, I can only describe him as a Levantine mongrel.

Some time or other in his chequered life he spent three months in America, where he learned to say "Honest to God" quite well, and to speak a queer jargon of Anglo-American quite badly. By reason of this accomplishment he became interpreter of English at Baranki Barracks.

However, since he spoke French much better than he tried to speak English, conversation with him was possible. He had the Levantine habit of using "mon cher" in every alternate sentence when speaking French; and this he applied to his English by saying "my dear" on the least provocation.

M., who could not speak French, asked him to smuggle a letter to the Spanish consul.

"My dear," he replied, "I take it with lots of happiness. My officer shall not know the letter, I guess."

The Spanish consul replied by return, and next day we were each presented with twenty Turkish pounds—about sixty dollars at the then rate of exchange. This rather annoyed the Turkish commandant, who had himself given us seven Turkish pounds each, being our first month's pay as captive officers.

With four hundred dollars between us we were now in a much better position to prepare a scheme of escape. I decided to plumb the depths of George's "I am a friend of English, honest to God." We should have to take him with us, if possible, for if we left him behind he would be suspected and the Turks might frighten him into betraying us.

An opportunity came that same evening. George had been telling of the starvation in Damascus, of the deaths from destitution all over Syria, of the hangings without trial, of the general discontent, of the terrible conditions of his own imprisonment for sixty days, because he had been suspected of spying for the King of the Hedjaz.

"Wouldn't you like," said M., "to be away from this nightmare of a life and in a peaceful country like Egypt?"

"I guess yes, my dear," said George. "But I desire to quit the East and live among English."

"Well," said C., "I could find you a comfortable job in Australia."

"Very obliged. I take your address and write when war shall finish."

"That's no good. None of us may be alive when the war is over. How would you like to take the job now?"

"What can you desire to say, my dear?"

There was an awkward pause. We were shy of carrying the matter further; for chance-met Levantines, like politicians, do not as a rule inspire confidence.

Yet it had to be done. I continued the conversation in French, George's weird English not being a good medium for the discussion of secrets.

"If," I promised, "you help us to escape and come with us, we will give you not only money, but a job for life in Australia."

George's face whitened suddenly, and for the rest of that evening his hands shook with excitement.

"There is nothing I wish so much, mon cher" he said, "as to escape to the British. But it is very difficult and would need much money. Also I have so little courage."

George went into the corridor to see if the guard showed suspicions. But the sentry—a black Sudanese—was sitting on the floor, gazing at and thinking of nothing, after his usual stupid fashion.

George returned, and for half an hour we discussed and rediscussed possibilities. He pronounced the scheme of walking to the coast in a series of night marches, and then stealing a boat, to be impossible. The idea of joining a caravan to Akaba he judged more hopeful, but that would mean hiding in Damascus until the next party was ready to start. Hiding in Damascus would be not only highly dangerous but highly expensive. Anyhow, the Armenians who organized the secret caravans must be shy of adding immensely to their risks by taking British officers, and if they did take such risks they would expect to receive more ready money than we possessed.

George was silent for several moments, and then announced that he would try to find an Arab, from among his acquaintances, who would lead us to Deraa, and thence through the mountains to the Dead Sea regions. For this also, he pointed out, money would be necessary—and gold, not paper. We could change our paper notes only at the rate of four and a half paper pounds for one in gold; and the sum obtained by this means would be too little.

"But," I pointed out, "if we go below the Dead Sea to the country occupied by the Hedjaz army, we can get gold enough. Haven't you heard of the gold at 'X', of a certain Arab emir and of certain British officers?"

"Mon cher, I have heard a lot of this gold, and so have many of the Bedouins around here. But perhaps I shall not be able to convince my friend that you could obtain money from it."

I gave George arguments enough to convince his friend, and made him swear by his professed Christianity that he would keep secret our conversation. Soon afterward he left us, still trembling with excitement.

Full of renewed hope, I looked out of the window into the Eastern evening, and speculated on what the god of chance might do for us. To be effective he would have to do a lot. There was, for example, the Austrian sentry whom I could see below, leaning against a motor lorry. If he were about, on whatever night we fixed for our escape, how could we climb down to the ground unobserved? The window itself offered no difficulties, for it was above the street and on the first floor, so that a few bedclothes tied together would suffice to lower a man out of the barracks.

Then, while I was still watching the sentry, a different god intervened. A hooded girl sidled up to him, and after looking around to see that nobody was watching, he crossed the road, and disappeared with her into the meadow to the left of the camp. An omen, I thought. If, on escape-night, chance spirited away obstacles as easily as that, all would be well.

Meanwhile the flat, gray houses whitened in the light of the young moon, and the river Abana radiated soft shimmerings. In this respect, also, chance should favour us. About a week later, when we hoped to leave, the moon would not rise until after midnight; so that darkness would help us to slip from the barracks, and moonlight would help us as we moved across open country. Just then my meditations were chased away by a fantastic, far-away sound. Somewhere in the maze of streets a wheezy barrel organ was playing—playing Funiculì, Funiculà! How a barrel organ found itself in Damascus, and in war-time Damascus, I did not try to guess. All I knew, or wanted to know, was that across the warm, sensitive night air there floated the lively old tune: and if you are away from Europe take it from me that nothing will bring you to the back streets of London, of Paris, of Naples as quickly as a barrel organ playing Funiculì, Funiculà. For long after the barrel organ had become silent, and only the moonlight and the stillness remained, I was back in England.

Late next morning George burst into the room, with a beaming face and a palpable desire for news telling.

"Mon cher," he said to me, "I have found a Druse who will guide you. He knows about the gold, and although not quite sure, he thinks he can trust you, as British officers, to see that he gets paid. He demands two hundred pounds in gold when you reach 'X', and fifty pounds in paper now, for the hire of horses."

I was overjoyed at this new prospect of a road to liberty; but when I had translated George's French for the benefit of the Australians, M. counselled caution.

"I don't like the sound of that fifty pounds down," he said. "Tell him we won't pay anything until we're outside Damascus and have the horses."

We decided that unless we conformed to the custom of always beating down a bargain-adversary, the Druse would think we could be blackmailed for any amount of money. He might even regard too ready an acceptance of his terms as evidence that we did not mean to pay on arrival at "X."

Finally, we told George to place the following terms before the Druse—one hundred pounds in gold on arrival, and fifty pounds paper when we were on horse-back and away from Damascus. For the present, nothing. As for George himself, he should receive fifty English pounds when we reached safety and his job in Australia.

Next day George returned from the bazaar with the reply that the Druse would be satisfied with one hundred and twenty-five pounds in gold at "X," and agreed to leave the question of ready money for the horses until we were out of Damascus. He demanded another twenty pounds, paper, however, for the man who was to bring back the horses after we had ridden to the mountains at Deraa. To these terms we agreed, as the withdrawal of the demand for money in advance evidenced the genuine intentions of the Druse.

"The Druse desires to spot you," said George, breaking into English. "To-morrow an officer will lead you to public baths. When I say to make attention, observe a man who carry yellow burnous and robe."

And so it happened. We had our bath, and, escorted by a Greek doctor in the Turkish army, with several guards and George the inevitable, we walked through the hot streets toward the bazaar.

"Honest to God!" said George suddenly—for it had been agreed that this phrase should signal the presence of the Druse.

I searched the crowd of Arabs gathered in the road at the corner of a narrow turning, and had no difficulty in picking out, right in the foreground, a tall, fierce-moustached man, with yellow robe and yellow head-dress. One hand rested on the bone butt of a long pistol stuck through his sash, and with the other he fingered the two rings round his burnous. He looked at us long and intently, especially at H., with his six feet four inches of magnificent physique; then backed into the growing crowd and disappeared.

"Don't look to behind you, my dear," said George, whose inability to control himself had again blanched his face, "or my officer observe."

That walk to and from the big hammam in the centre of Damascus is perhaps the most vivid of my memories of the city. Wherever we passed, a mass of Arabs and nondescripts surged around us, until the road was blocked and our guards had to clear the way forcibly. Bargaining at the stalls was suspended as we moved through the long, covered-in bazaar, with its carpets and prayer rugs, its blood-sausages, its necklaces in amber, turquoise, and jade, its beautiful silks and tawdry cottons, its copper work, its old swords and pistols, its dirty, second-hand clothes—all laid out haphazard for inspection. Once, when we entered a shop, the crowd that collected before it was so large that the guards took us outside by a back door.

Yet one sensed that this interest was for the most part friendly. The Arabs expected the British army sooner or later, and wanted the British army. Meanwhile, they were anxious to see what manner of men were the British officers. We were not a very impressive group, with our dirty, much-creased uniforms. What saved us, from the point of view of display, was the tall, upright figure and striking features of H., at whom everyone gazed in admiration.

As we passed through the gardens on the way home an imam, from the ground before a mosque, was chanting something to a small gathering. On investigation we found a large map of Gallipoli and the Dardanelles marked out in the soil, with hills and trenches and guns and battleships shown on it. The imam was telling the Faithful just how the unbelievers had been driven off the peninsula by the invincible Turkish army. This he did each afternoon, we were assured.

Everywhere was evidence of destitution, starvation, and squalor. The streets were utterly filthy, as if they had not been cleaned for months or years—which was probably the case. The disused tram-lines reared up two or three feet above the worn road, so that camels, donkeys, and pedestrians constantly tripped over them. Along the principal streets one had to turn aside, every dozen yards or so, to avoid enormous holes. Half-crumbled walls, huts, and houses were everywhere apparent. The magnificent old mosque which is one of the beauties of Damascus was decaying into decrepitude, without any attempt at support or restoration.

As for the population, most were in rags, very few had boots, about one half wore sandals, and the remainder went about barefooted. Yet even the destitute Arabs were more attractive than the well-to-do Levantines with their frock coats and brown boots and straw hats.

All the poorer Arabs and Syrians looked half starved, and we must have passed hundreds of gaunt beggars—men, women, and children. Worst of all were the little babies, huddled against the walls and doorways. Ribs and bones showed through their wasted bodies, which were indescribably thin except where the stomach, swollen out by the moistened grain which had been their only sustenance, seemed abnormally fat by contrast. So weak were they that they could scarcely cry their hunger or hold out a hand in supplication. Arab mothers, themselves on the verge of starvation, had left them, in the vain hope that Allah would provide. And neither Allah nor anybody else took the least notice, until they were dead. The police then removed their small bodies for burial; and more starving mothers left more starving babies by the roadside. The Greek doctor told me that forty such babies died in Damascus each day.

The next few days were buoyant with expectancy. We collected raisins and other foodstuffs, while George went backward and forward into the city to communicate with the Druse. We now hoped to leave the barracks without especial difficulty. The Austrian sentry below, we discovered, remained inside the doorway after midnight, so that it would be possible to slip down from the window without being seen or heard by him. One night we half-hitched our blankets together as a test, and found that they would be fully strong enough to bear even the weight of H., if tied to an iron bedpost.

A more difficult problem was that of the guard outside our room. There were three blacks who performed this sentry duty in turn, two Sudanese and one Senegalese—Sambo, Jumbo, and Hobo, as we called them. Jumbo and Hobo were intensely stupid and lazy. They spent their night watches in dozing on the floor of the corridor. Our door being closed each night, conditions would be ideal if either of them were there on escape-evening.

Sambo was more alert. He had been a postal messenger at Khartoum, and as such spoke a certain amount of English. When Turkey entered the war, he told us, he had been travelling to Mecca on a pilgrimage, and the Turks conscripted him. Twice he had been in prison, once because he attempted to desert, and once because an Arab prisoner whom he was guarding, escaped. Apparently he had learned a lesson from this latter misfortune, for he never slept when on sentry duty. Obviously, if he were outside our door on the evening, we should have to find some means of dealing with him. We sent George to buy chloroform, but he returned with the news that none could be found in Damascus. Thereupon we made a gag with a piece of pants and a chunk of rubber, to be used on Sambo if necessary.

Then, with these preliminary arrangements settled, they tumbled down like a house of cards. We were moved to a room on the north side of the building, so that a number of arrested Turkish officers might be put into our larger apartment. Our first thought, on entering the new quarters, was for the window. Ten thousand curses! It looked on to an open courtyard. Two sentries promenaded the yard, which was surrounded by a brick wall.

"My dear," said George when he next visited us, "the business is lost. It is by all means impossible to quit window without observation from Turks."

For hours the Australians and I sought a way out of the new difficulty, and sought vainly, for it was George whose cunning rescued our plan from the blind alley into which it had been driven. He would leave his rifle at the top of the back stairway, he said, then come to our room and usher us along the corridor, after telling the black guard that he was taking us to an officer's room (as often happened in the evening). Next he would recover his rifle, slip down the stairway to the Austrian section of the barracks and, with bayonet fixed, lead us out of the side door guarded by an Austrian sentry. The advantage of the Austrian door was that the sentry, seeing a Turkish soldier walking out with prisoners, would think he was taking them to the railway station, or not think about the matter at all; whereas the Turkish guard at the main door would have recognized George and known that something was wrong.

George could not take more than three of us, as a larger number with only one guard would make even the Austrian suspicious. He refused point-blank to return to the barracks and repeat the performance, so that four of us might go. C. could not come, for personal reasons that would not allow him to let his fate remain unknown for several months. The party, however, was still one too many. With a pack of cards we settled the delicate problem of who was to stay behind. M. cut lowest, to his bitter disappointment and my regret, for he was very plucky and resourceful.

Once more with a definite plan in view—and apparently a better one than the last—H., R., and I fixed a date for the escape. Having calculated the times of the rising and setting of the moon, and communicated with the Druse, we chose the third evening from the day of our removal to the new room.

Meanwhile, we had been treated by no means badly. A few nights of irritation accustomed us to the plague of bugs, and constant searching and washing kept our clothes fairly free from more repulsive vermin. For the rest, we passed the days with poker, bridge, and perfecting our plans. We could not grumble at the food, for we messed with the Turkish officers, who, while not feeding as well as German privates, never actually went hungry.

Indeed, we met with much kindness and consideration at Damascus. In every prison camp of Turkey the officers and guards took their cue from the commandant. If, as at Afion-kara-Hissar during the reign of one Muslum Bey, the commandant was a murderer, a thief, and a degenerate, unspeakable outrages were committed. If, as at Baranki Barracks, Damascus, under Mahmoud Ali Bey, the commandant was good-natured, conditions were passable.

Some of the Turks, in fact, wanted to be too friendly. The deputy-commandant invited us into his room one evening, and, with his friends sitting around and George acting as interpreter, asked for an exposition of England's reasons for taking part in the war. For two hours I delivered myself of anti-German propaganda, though I could not tell what force remained in my arguments after they had passed through the filter of George's curious translation. Meanwhile, the deputy-commandant looked at his finger-nails and occasionally smiled. He was non-committal in expressing his own views; but afterward, when coffee was handed round, he declared that the talk had been of the greatest interest.

This same officer drove us one afternoon to the beautiful spot, on a high slope outside the city, where the sources of the Seven Rivers are gathered within a space of fifty yards. In the scorching heat we undressed and bathed in the River Pharpar.

We had ample evidence of the widespread hatred of the Germans throughout Syria, both among civilians and soldiers. Turkish soldiers expressed the greatest dislike and envy of the Germans, and German soldiers expressed the greatest contempt for the Turks. As for the Arab officers, they were whole-heartedly pro-British. Nahed Effendi Malek, the young Arab adjutant, and his friend the Arab quartermaster often visited us when no Turkish officers were near. The pair talked the most violent sedition. The quartermaster wanted to be with his brother, a prisoner at Alexandria. The Turks knew this, and once, when in prison for several weeks as a political suspect, he had been freed only by a liberal distribution of baksheesh among the military authorities. Both he and Nahed were kept separate from their families while the Turks levied blackmail by telling them that the lives of relatives or friends would pay forfeit for any breach of loyalty. Like other officers of their race, they were now kept expressly from the fighting front, because so many Arabs had deserted to the British.

This very barracks, declared Nahed, was full of imprisoned officers whose loyalty the Turks suspected. Unless they could bribe their way to a release they might be shut up in one small room for months, unpaid, forgotten, and living on such food as their friends provided. Then, if their prayers and petitions for a trial brought about a courtmartial, they might be acquitted and graciously released; but neither reparation for the months of captivity nor military pay for the period of it would be given.

Our own room had lately been occupied by a Turkish colonel, who shot dead a fellow officer. Assassination being a less serious crime than dislike of oppression, and the colonel having been an expert juggler with military supplies and funds (like so many Turkish colonels who bought command of their units as an investment in a colossal corporation of Military Graft, Incorporated), he delivered sealed envelopes to various high officers and officials, and within a week was free.

Nahed and his friend talked savagely of the hunger and misery that ravaged Syria, of the killing and imprisonment of Arab sheikhs, of their hopes of an independent Arab kingdom, of their galling helplessness against the Turks and Germans until the British arrived.

"But once let the British reach Deraa," said Nahed Effendi, "and you will hear of such an uprising as Syria and Arabia have never known,"—a prediction that was to be fulfilled in the following autumn, during General Allenby's whirlwind advance.

Sometimes, instead of confiding their wrongs and hatreds, Nahed and his friend would chant Arabian songs of love and war, or order George to translate the stories and epigrams of Haroun-al-Raschid and other Arabian notabilities. Once George substituted a sentence of his own for the tale he should have retailed for our benefit:

"My dear, I must go to see my friend. Soon it is too late, and my officer say no. Please think of some request I perform for you."

M. laughed, as if in enjoyment at a translated story, and H., turning to Nahed, said "kweis kateer" ("very good")—two of the dozen Arabic words that he knew. A little later I asked for and received permission to send George to buy wine for us in the bazaar; and the mongrel interpreter with a "Mille fois merci, mon cher" shambled off to see the Druse.

We realized that it would be very unfortunate for little Nahed if we escaped, and we should be sorry indeed to think of him in prison on our account. But it was obvious that even if he would, he could not come with us, and we certainly dared not confide in him.

As I lay half awake, early on the morning of May 15th, I was conscious that an exceptional day had dawned. But my drowsy faculties could not produce, from the dark room of memory, a negative of what was imminent. Then the door opened, and with a clatter of mugs and a cry of the German word "Milch" there entered an Arab milkman, with his tin bowl slung over his shoulder.

I was alert in an instant. Why, of course, we had reached escape day, and we must buy a stock of biscuits for a journey from this dairyman, whose privilege it was to sell us goat's milk, at five piastres a glass, for our breakfast.

But that morning he had brought no biscuits—and this was the first of a heart-breaking sequence of obstacles.

Throughout the day I remained in a state of high tension. Yet my principal concern was for the lack of self-control shown by George, who walked about with shaking knees and unsteady hands and anxious face.

"For God's sake don't show yourself like that to the Turkish officer," said H.

"My dear, I am not brave, and fortune never visits me." His fear was pitiful.

"Pray for fortune then."

And George prayed, melodramatically and in all solemnity: "God what is in heaven, take us quickly to the Arab with horses."

The thermometer of hope quicksilvered up and down every few minutes, throughout the pregnant hours of afternoon. For the ninety-ninth time I examined the packets of raisins, the bread, and the water bottles. For the hundredth time I reviewed the details of our plan.

Between ten P.M. and midnight the Druse was to wait by the station, with long headdresses which should be disguise enough for the moment, because in the darkness a passerby could only see us as silhouetted outlines. Soon after ten George was to take H., R., and me through the side door, as already described, and lead us to the Druse. Then we would slip out of Damascus to the spot where an Arab was waiting with the horses. We must ride over the plain all night, and hide the next day in a certain Druse village, where a hut had been prepared for us. We could buy arms in the village. We would travel without rest throughout the following night and just before dawn reach the mountains outside Deraa, when the second Arab was to take back the horses.

Once in the mountains and among the Druse tribesmen an army could scarcely retrieve us. We should run more than a little danger from the nomads, but these might be friendly, and in any case the guide would be our protector and mouthpiece among his fellows.

For weeks we should be trekking over the mountains and desert east of the Turkish lines in the Jordan valley and the hardships would be very great. Eventually we should arrive among our allies of the Hedjaz.

Having reached "X" and paid off the Druse, we could be taken on board one of the British war ships in the Red Sea. We might well meet a raiding party of the Emir Feisul's Bedouins near Amman, in which case safety would come much sooner, and we might travel by aeroplane to the British army in Palestine.

After dinner the Turkish signal officer invited us to his room for coffee. Having no legitimate excuse for declining, we chafed under his small talk until nine o'clock. Then Nahed Effendi and the quartermaster visited us, and again we were forced to sit still and deliver, from time to time, in response to the translations of George, a fretful "Yes" or "No" or "Good" or "Thank You."

Ten o'clock came and went, and two suggestions that we should retire to bed were brushed aside by our visitors. By now the Druse would be waiting for us outside the railway station.

Eleven o'clock arrived, and still Nahed continued to draw from his endless store of tales and similes.

"My officer say," translated George, "that Arabian poet compare the breasts of a fellow's beloved to—please, my dear, say you must sleep. I shake and feel I must chuck sponge. Soon it is too late, honest to God."

Ourselves almost desperate with annoyance, we performed a series of lifelike yawns, and declared ourselves to be very tired. Thereupon, to my great relief, the Arab officers withdrew, with George in attendance.

I followed to the doorway, and spoke to George when the officers had entered their own room.

"In three minutes you must come back."

"I will try. But I have so little courage."

"Think of the job in Australia, and of the money."

"Mon cher, I have thought of them all day long, but my heart is saying, boum, boum! and a voice tells to me 'Quittez ça!' But I will come back."

He did not come back. Before George had left me, evil chance sent the Turkish deputy-commandant along the passage for one of his rare visits of inspection. He looked hard at us; whereupon George's overwrought nerves snapped, and he broke down utterly.

"Aa-ee!" he called.

Next he grasped instinctively at my arm. Trembling visibly, he lowered his head and waited. I backed into the doorway, while the deputy-commandant took George to Nahed's room.

What followed we could deduce from the noises that swept the corridor. George was bullied into a complete betrayal. We heard furious talk, shouted orders, and the unmistakable sound of blows with the bare hand. Nahed ran to our room, and counted us feverishly. Then came the corporal of the guard, puzzled and scowling. Finally, six Turkish soldiers replaced Jumbo outside the door, which Nahed locked.

Disgusted with George, disgusted with ourselves, and above all disgusted with fate, H. and I paced up and down or lay sleepless on the bedstead through hours of utter despair. R., the only one of us to make a show of indifference, took a pack of cards, played patience, and said not a word.

The door remained locked until the following mid-day, when the commandant arrived with Nahed and George, both of whom showed reluctance to enter.

"My officer knew," declared George, with eyes averted. "You are to collect the clothes and go to railway. They send you to Aleppo I guess." I noticed that one of his eyes was discoloured and swollen.

The commandant searched our kits very carefully, but confiscated nothing, not even the store of food. Then he demanded why we had wanted to escape, and who had been helping us.

"Tell him we refuse to say anything," H. answered. And with that he had to be content.

Surrounded by no fewer than twelve guards, we carried our few belongings to the railway station and entrucked for Aleppo. The interpreter stayed with the Turkish lieutenant in charge of us until the train left.

We took care not to look at George, but I could sense his misery and shamefaced discomfort. At length, for the first time since the betrayal, he showed sincerity with an agonized sentence in French, spoken from the steps of the truck:

"I am mad with sorrow. I ask pardon."

Obviously he expected and hoped for an answer, but nobody took the least notice. It was as if we had not heard.

"My officer has beaten me, and he will beat me again. My face is big with hurts—see."

Still no reply. Then, faintly, as the Turkish officer called him down from the steps: "I have so little courage. I ask pardon."

The appeal went home, and I half turned my head. But the bitterness of betrayal was too great, and thinking that a few beatings were not punishment enough, I could offer no comfort, and continued to ignore him.

As the train chugged across Syria toward Aleppo, we wondered often what our own punishment would be. But still more often I called to mind a futile little figure with bent shoulders, a greasy face, an absurdly long nose, and an eye that was discoloured and swollen, saying, with despair in his voice: "I have so little courage. I ask pardon." And I regretted not having turned my head to look George in the face and answer him.

CHAPTER V

THE BERLIN-BAGDAD RAILWAY—AND THE AEROPLANES THAT NEVER FLEW

A soldier out of the combat is not necessarily a soldier hors de combat.

Ambition often translates a great dream into great achievement. Misapplied ambition often loses the benefits of such achievement.

Four thousand miles of dislike, distrust, and disorganization separate Berlin from Bagdad. Four thousand miles of friendship, and (except for one short distance) continuous railway communication join London to Bagdad.

All of which diverse and disconnected statements shall be linked together in the tale of the Tunnel, the Tommies, and the Aeroplanes that Never Flew.

Before the train left Damascus two more prisoners joined the party—W., who had been in hospital at Nazareth for five months, and P., recently captured in the Jordan valley.

Made desperate by our failure to escape, we were ready to try without forethought any impossible plan that was suggested between halts, as we journeyed toward Aleppo. H. and I decided, if the train slowed down, to jump from it and make for the mountains. Then, at evening, we would find the German aerodrome and try to steal a machine, chancing such possible odds as alert sentries, well-guarded hangars, and empty petrol-tanks. Once aboard the aeroplane we could fly southeastward to the Palestine front. But the train continued at a speed which made any leap from it impossible, so that we abandoned the scheme.

Two rather better opportunities were provided by the officer in charge of our guards, a young Turk who was fanatical and unbelievably stupid. The party occupied two compartments, one containing three prisoners, the officer, and a Turkish soldier, and the other the remaining four prisoners, a corporal, and a third guard. The officer paid us not the least attention, whether to guard against a possible escape, to provide us with food, or even to count his prisoners from time to time. At sunset he turned eastward and murmured his prayers, and at odd moments throughout the day, with head on breast, he muttered what I supposed to be passages from the Koran. Nobody but Allah, Mohammed, and his fanatical little self seemed to interest him.

The fanatic had a basket of bread and dried meat for his own needs—but for his own needs only. After ten hours of foodlessness we stopped awhile at Homs, and in broken Arabic we demanded food. He pointed to a man on the platform who was selling bread and hard-boiled eggs, and resumed his meditation. We left the train without hindrance, and mingled with the people who surrounded the hawker. Two of us, at least, could have slipped away, with the crowd as screen. But the nearest point on the coast was far distant, and, with neither compass nor a supply of food, to make the attempt in our uniforms would have been madness.

On this station I got into conversation with a Maronite woman, who talked of the dreadful conditions in her native province of Lebanon. The crops had been commandeered, the cedars and the fruit trees cut down by the Turks for fuel, the people systematically starved. Already thirty per cent. of Lebanon's pre-war population had died of destitution, she declared, including her father and her two children.

"The people of Lebanon perish, and neither God nor anybody else helps us." This in a tone of dull hopelessness, as if she were beyond even despair. And even as she said it, many a consignment of Syrian and Anatolian grain was en route for Germany.

The second chance came at Hamah, where we halted at dusk for half an hour. A little restaurant faced our compartment, and, still being hungry, we made for it. The Turkish officer ordered us to stop, while a guard, running from the train, clutched at H.'s arm. H. shook him off, like a horse shaking off a fly, said "mungaree" (his version of the Arabic for food) and proceeded toward the restaurant. The young officer continued to protest, but, when we took not the slightest notice, he joined us at the buffet, where, for the price of three dollars, one could buy a plate of goat's meat and beans, with bread and coffee. Afterward, while the Turk went outside with four of our number, H., M., and I stayed behind to buy bread.

When we returned to the platform not a guard was in sight. Moreover, our train had shunted backward. To reach it we should have to walk fifty yards. Ahead of us we could see the little fanatic, stupidly unconscious as ever of our location, walking between the rails with the remainder of the party.

"You're the linguist," said H. to me. "Hop back quickly and buy all the grub you can find. Get enough to last us to the coast."

"Twelve loaves of bread, some hard-boiled eggs, and some raisins," I demanded of the waiter in the buffet.

He disappeared into the back room. I waited, uncomfortable under the curious glances at my faded uniform.

"A German aviator," I heard one man tell his woman companion; at which I was much relieved, although scarcely pleased.

The waiter could supply only three small loaves and a dozen eggs; and with these tied in a bundle I returned to H. and M.

The military guard of the station was at the farther end of the platform. To avoid him we had to walk along the line, in the direction of our own train. We intended to dodge behind some waiting trucks about twenty yards ahead, slip over the siding in which they stood, and so to open country.

Then, as we were moving up the line, the adventure was made impossible. Two of the guards came running toward us. We continued calmly in their direction, so that they showed no suspicions, and evidently thought we were alone as a result of misunderstanding.

"Saa-seda," said H., blandly, as he offered them cigarettes; and this greeting disposed of whatever doubts they may have had. Yet the state of fright into which our absence plunged the Turkish officer had the effect of a shower-bath upon him. He roused himself from the torpor of unintelligent disregard; and for the rest of the journey we were never allowed outside the carriage.

Thus, once again, a mad plan fell through at the outset; for with no guide, no compass, no water, and the necessity of buying more food, the odds would have been a hundred to one against our reaching the coast. And even if we had reached the coast it was improbable that we should have found a sailing-boat waiting to be stolen.

At Aleppo we came upon some Indian prisoners. We were trudging along the hot, uneven road from the railway station when three white-turbaned figures in khaki saluted, from the balcony of a hospital. One of them placed a crutch under his left armpit as he stood to attention. This simple salute warmed the heart, with its reminder that we were not altogether outcasts. We returned it with gusto; as did a passing German officer, who thought it was meant for him.

We were taken to an hotel where transient Turkish officers halted on their way to Palestine and Mesopotamia. Fresh from the failure to escape from Damascus, we were not surprised at never being allowed to leave the building. Indeed, I was astonished at not being sent to some prison, and presumed—rightly, as it turned out—that punishment must be waiting for us farther down the line. For the rest, we spent several by no means uncomfortable days at Aleppo, helped thereto by sight-seeing from the balcony.

The market-place fronting the street corner below was used as a food bazaar. Each evening Arab and Syrian hucksters arrived with flat barrows, or erected rickety stalls. Then, from baskets and panniers, they produced their wares, which they laid out for inspection—loaves of bread, bowls of soured milk, basins of stew, cooked potatoes, roasted meats, vegetables, cakes, nuts, or lengths of flexible candy. Some of them roasted meat or vegetables over metal bars placed across a charcoal fire.

As the crowd began to gather the policemen circulated among the vendors, looking for such as had not paid police baksheesh for their pitch. Having found a victim the gendarme would lead him around the corner to settle accounts. Afterward the stall-keeper was at liberty to trade for the rest of the evening. Any who could not or would not pay were hustled from the market-place.

Then, until about midnight, was acted a succession of minor comedies, amusing or pathetic. Trial by taste was evidently the custom; and since Allah had provided hands and mouths, why use forks and spoons? Intending buyers dug their fingers into the steaming dishes, pulled out a chunk of meat or a potato, and chewed reflectively. Then they either purchased or passed on to the next stall, while somebody else stuffed a hand into the dish. I traced a few men and women who, by tasting meat at one stall, potato at another, and bread at a third, must have eaten quite a meal for nothing. This was rare, however, for the hucksters had an instinct for bona fide buyers, and kicks for such as were not.

Over there is a seller of vegetables who has dodged his police dues, apparently because his ready cash is insufficient. A gendarme approaches, whereupon he picks up his basket, with the wooden box on which it rests, and fades into the crowd. When the policeman has gone he reappears and resumes business. Twice more must he shut up shop, for a quarter of an hour at a time. Finally his takings allow him to pay the bribe. His wife guards the stall while he confers with the policeman round the corner. He reappears, and, no longer obliged to shun overmuch attention cries his wares loudly and does a roaring trade.

The candy-barrows are mostly kept by small boys comically dignified in apron and fez. Useless to think that their youth makes them easy game, for they are sharp as pawnbrokers, and can tell in the fraction of a second a bad note or coin. Most of them seem to have a working arrangement with some gendarme whereby if an adult tries to swindle they shriek invectives. The gendarme then strolls toward the stall, and the would-be cheat wishes he hadn't.

One or two seedy ruffians hang around the rim of the crowd, awaiting the chance of some petty villainy. Presently, out of the crush comes a little Syrian girl, carrying a bowl of milk. A much-moustached, dirty-robed Arab follows her into the entrance of a narrow street where he suddenly grabs the milk, drinks it, pushes the bowl back into her hands, and strides away. The little girl attracts a certain amount of attention by shrilling her protests; but the wolfish milk-drinker has vanished. A gendarme spectator makes no pretence at interference, not having been bribed to protect stray children.

Soon afterward a similar outrage is perpetrated by a similar ruffian, who snatches a chunk of meat from an old woman's basin of stew. In this case retribution comes swiftly and suitably. The Man who Grabs Meat has failed to notice that the weak old woman is attended by a strong young man, who has lagged behind to talk to a friend. The strong young man leaps at the thief, kicks him in the stomach—hard, knocks him down when he doubles up helplessly, and proceeds to beat him. The old woman shrieks her venom. The gendarme is much amused.

Through the changing crowd pass the drink-sellers, clanging a brass cup against a brass can, but neither washing nor rinsing the cup after somebody has drunk from it. From time to time a stall-keeper slips away for a glass of árak in the near-by café, while a wife or a friend guards his barrow.

Between eleven o'clock and midnight most of the traders run out of stock. They pack up their kit, and before leaving bargain with each other for an exchange of surplus foodstuffs for personal use—two loaves for a dish of vegetables, a can of milk for three slices of meat. The streets empty, the cries cease, the gendarmes disappear with their baksheesh; and we retire to join the little things that hop and crawl in our bed.

Always there was something to distract us. A Mohammedan official of the Indian Postal Service, for example, provided much interest. With only a fez differentiating his uniform from that of most native officers of the Indian Army, we accepted him at first as a fellow-prisoner. But when, at table, he asked leading questions about the Palestine operations, H. winked at me and fingered his lips as a signal. We took the hint, and answered vaguely.

"Don't like the look of the little blighter," said H., after dinner; "let's watch him."

He was worth watching. Every day, we found, he walked about the streets of Aleppo without a guard. Moreover, he was living by himself in a comfortable room. While this exceptional treatment of a prisoner did not prove treachery, the circumstantial evidence was fairly damning. We became as unopened clams when he talked to us.

This was the right attitude, for later, when at a concentration camp, we heard of an Indian official who was an out-and-out traitor. Sometimes he was at full liberty in Constantinople, sometimes he talked in railway trains to newly captured prisoners, sometimes he talked with them in hospitals. Once, at a hospital at Mosul, he was placed next to a wounded officer taken in a recent battle. His assumed complaint was influenza. Yet he was given full diet, and his temperature remained normal, while he lay in bed and asked questions about the Mesopotamian campaign.

A prisoner of war in the Orient, far more than the traveller, senses the spirit of his surroundings. Temporarily he is of the Orient. Of necessity his captors regard him as somebody more intimate than the transient Westerner who, while moving freely among them, lives according to Western custom and tradition; and of necessity the man who is in the power of Easterns, and forced to live according to Eastern customs, is more likely to realize the mental attitude whereby the crooked road is chosen in preference to the straight, to-morrow never comes, anything unexpected may happen at any time, and—to repeat an illustration of my friend Jean Willi the dragoman—a man may get married in the morning, and be a solitary fugitive for his life in the evening.

So it was with us. The continuity of impressions and experiences reacted on me till I forgot to remember that I was an ordinary Englishman, and became as fatalistic and unsurprised as the Turks and Arabs themselves. Somewhere or other, I knew, we should be punished for having wanted to escape. Of what the punishment might consist we guessed nothing, except that it would probably find us quite unprepared. Meanwhile, it was of absorbing interest to sit on the balcony at Aleppo, and watch the crowd in the bazaar.

On leaving Aleppo we knew neither the next stage of the journey nor our ultimate destination; and we were content that it should be so, for a future that is certain to be unpleasant is better indefinite than definite.

This time our escort consisted of two gendarmes and two soldiers. First we were herded into a third-class compartment, windowless and filthy. Already, before we arrived, unwashed and unkempt peasants had crowded into it; so that our party of eleven was able to occupy seven seats only. One of the gendarmes, who could murder French, advised us never to place our few belongings out of reach.

"Or," said he, "we meet darkness and—pouf!—everything vanish."

We liked the looks of neither the carriage nor the fellow-passengers, and thought how much more pleasant a goods truck would be. R. and I persuaded a gendarme to take us to the office of the station commandant in the hope of being allotted different quarters. The commandant was polite, but pretended that he could offer nothing better.

Then, as we passed along the platform, I saw a clean, covered-in truck, with a few German soldiers inside it. One man leaned idly against the entrance, and him I asked politely if, since there was so much room to spare, they could lend us a corner.

"Ausgeschlossen!" he growled. "Wir wollen keine Englander."

We were about to move on, when—"Was gibt's?" called a Feldwebel as he stepped from the truck.

I explained that seven British officers, two of them wounded, longed for floor-space, so that they would not be herded with odorous Turks.

"Perhaps we can manage it," said the Feldwebel.

"What's Paris like now?" he asked suddenly, and went on to explain that before the war he was a bank clerk there. With one eye on the space in the truck, I admitted to having lived for a time on the rive gauche, discussed peace-time and war-time Paris, and even—for one will put up with a lot to avoid travelling in a Turkish third-class carriage—listened patiently to the German's reminiscences of a love affair with a French singer.

This patience was rewarded. He took a referendum of his five companions; and all, except the surly brute to whom I had first spoken, agreed to cede half the truck. The Feldwebel asked permission of a German major to ask us inside, and the major agreed.

"But only because you happen to be fellow-Europeans," he explained, "while the Turks are not."

A small bribe to the gendarme, and we moved thankfully from the Turkish compartment. There was room enough for all, prisoners and guards, to lie on the floor of the truck, so that by comparison we travelled de luxe. The Germans were friendly; and the Feldwebel, after I had pretended to be interested in more tales of his affaires de cœur, offered us a supply of tea, with the loan of a spirit-stove for boiling it.

So, with poker and talk, we travelled across Asia Minor. On three of the next four evenings a certain amount of excitement was produced by Turkish soldiers' attempts to desert when the train halted. They ran toward the hills, sometimes fired upon and sometimes chased. Several were captured, several got away and went to swell the huge total of brigands.

In that part of 1918 the number of brigands all over Turkey was enormous. Hundreds of thousands deserted from the army, and of these scores of thousands took to the mountains and wild places, there to become robbers. Travelling on foot, on horseback, or on donkey-back across Anatolia was unsafe in the highest degree. In every fastness one would be certain to meet a band of armed ruffians, destitute and utterly merciless, who would cheerfully kill for the sake of a pair of boots or a shirt. More than a few German soldiers who had walked a mile or two from the beaten track were killed by brigands. Many of the gendarmes sent to deal with the robber band were found dead, with their heads battered in. Many others were hand-and-glove with them and gave information of possible plunder. Sometimes a gang would descend on a village, kill a few inhabitants as a warning to the others, and proceed to steal everything worth the stealing before they retired.

We detrained on the eastern side of the Taurus Mountains and were transferred to the narrow-gauge line that traversed the Taurus tunnel before the broad-gauge railway was completed. For eight hours, on a swaying little train with miniature engine, we moved through the tunnel's half-light, with an occasional interval of sunlight at gaps between the mountains.

The great Taurus tunnel was the solution of the worst obstacle to the Berlin-Bagdad Railway. With Serbia overrun and Bulgaria and Turkey as Germany's puppets, the line from Berlin to Constantinople was straightforward. Already in 1915 the Anatolian Railway linked Constantinople to Konia. At the eastern end of the Berlin-Bagdad chain the line from Bagdad—once Turkey should have regained it—could be extended across the desert to Mosul; and the stretch of country from Mosul to Aleppo would offer no difficulties. Between Konia and the line from Aleppo, however, was the natural barrier of the Taurus Mountains.

The rock stratum in the Taurus is among the hardest in the world. For many months it resisted all ordinary drills. The German engineers caused various special drills to be made; and then, after infinite labour and experiment, began boring slowly through the rock. The natural difficulties—precipices, steep slopes, chasms, and gorges—were tremendous. Nobody who has passed through the hollowed rock can deny that the tunnel is a magnificent piece of engineering, especially the suspension bridge across a giant gorge on the western slope.

Trains began running through the Taurus, along the broad-gauge line, just before the Armistice; and the Berlin-Bagdad Railway, including this wonderful tunnel, then became the London-Bagdad Railway. Already the rails stretch eastward to Mosul, while the westward rails from Bagdad are fast moving from Samarra to Mosul. These, when completed, will be the last links in a railway chain from Boulogne to Bagdad. When—and if—a Channel tunnel is constructed the chain will reach, without a break, from London to Bagdad.

Throughout the war this work on the Anatolian Railway was largely done by British and Indian soldiers, mostly from among the survivors of the captured garrison of Kut-el-Amara. With them were a few German technicians, some Turkish guards, and many Turkish labourers. As workmen the Turks were hopeless, except when set to tasks that required no intelligence; and even then they shirked. The Tommies, who were better paid and fed by the Germans than were the prisoners working for the Turks, established a curious ascendancy. When it suited them they did four times the work of the Turks. They had initiative, they could be trusted. It was not long before some of them were in charge of Turkish gangs. Several filled positions of importance, with good salaries and plenty of freedom.

Having left the tunnel and halted for a few hours at Belamedik, we were met by groups of these prisoner-officials eager for news of the war. They wore civilian clothes, furnished by the Dutch Legation at Constantinople. Such as had clean collars and hats were greeted respectfully with the title of effendi by the Turkish labourers. One Tommy—a Glasgow warehouseman—had charge of all the office staff, with Greek clerks under him. Another—an Australian—was actually paymaster of this section of the construction department. Thousands of dollars passed through his hands each week, and the German officials trusted him implicitly. It was an extraordinary position—British prisoners of war, in the wildest part of Anatolia, as valued officials on the Berlin-Bagdad Railway.

From Belamedik we proceeded to Bosanti, where, in those days, the broad-gauge line ended and the narrow-gauge line began. There we stayed for a night and a morning. At Bosanti, also, there was a band of British prisoners, some of whom took us to their hut and demanded the latest war news. At that time we had little that was good to tell. The German drive toward Amiens and Paris was in full swing, the Italians had been badly beaten on the Piave, the tonnage sunk by submarines was enormous. Our one bright item of news was that thousands of Americans were pouring into France daily. This greatly surprised the isolated prisoners, who, from what they had been told by the Germans or had read in the Turkish papers, thought that no American troops could have arrived on the Western front.

Having distracted the guards' attention by giving them cocoa in a far corner of the hut, the Tommies revealed a plan of escape. A party of five—two Australians, two Englishmen, and a French petty officer from a captured submarine—had built a collapsible boat. In three weeks' time they would apply for twenty-four hours' rest from work, a privilege allowed by the German supervisors every three months. Carrying the boat in sections, and enough food for a fortnight, they would then slip away and begin tramping toward the coast, near Mersina. They expected to be walking for about ten days. Afterward they would assemble the boat at night and put to sea, in the hope of either being picked up by an Allied vessel or rowing to Cyprus. Five months had passed in building the boat, the work being done inside the hut at odd moments, sometimes by day and sometimes by night, but always with a man on the look-out for intruders. Tools, strips of metal, and a huge sheet of canvas had been smuggled out of the German workshops.

After making sure that the guards were unsuspicious, an Australian lifted the tip of a plank beneath his bed, and extracted one of the steel ribs. It was beautifully made, with folding joint in the centre and clasp and socket at either extremity. He also produced a compass and a revolver bought from a friendly Austrian. Both these articles would be necessary, the compass because without it they would be unable to follow the road, and the revolver because they would be certain to meet brigands.

One can imagine the determination and perseverance that made possible these long hours of secret work on the collapsible boat, during months of designing, of filching the required materials, of odd-moment construction under great difficulty, always with the fear of discovery.

I wish it were possible to tell of their success. About a month after we left Bosanti they slipped away, according to plan. Carrying the boat in sections, besides food and the oars, they walked in night marches across the mountains and down the wild slopes fronting the coast. Three times they met brigands, but the revolver enabled them to bluff their way through.

And then, when already within sight of the sea, a gendarme found them. Four of the plucky five were captured, while the fifth managed to hide in a cleft between two rocks with the complete framework of the boat. That night he dragged it down to the deserted part of the beach. On the following night he pieced it together. He put to sea, and for eight hours made a desperate effort to leave the coast. But the shoreward currents were too strong for him, and the weak little craft drifted back. He was recaptured, and sent to join the other adventurers in prison.

In the morning, while waiting for our train, we watched the Tommies at work. Six aeroplanes were on their way to Palestine, and the prisoners were told to transfer them to the small-gauge railway. The men seemed listless and unhasteful as they carried the machines to a secluded siding for the reloading, but I was puzzled to find that when they began packing the aeroplane sections on the small trucks they showed keenness and even enthusiasm. In the distance we could see them grouped around each truck in turn, as they worked steadily throughout the morning.

"You always as keen in handling Hun war material?" asked H. of a burly Londoner of the old Regulars, who strolled toward us from the siding.

"Sometimes we are, sir; sometimes we ain't."

"You couldn't have done a better morning's work in a munitions factory at home."

"That's right. We done a good mornin's work."

"But these are Hun aeroplanes, man. What the——"

"As yew remark, sir, they're 'Un airerplanes. But I doubt if they'll ever fly."

Then we guessed. He amplified the guesses with details.

"Yus; we does er bit er wreckin'—sabbertage, as yer might say. We carry things across to that 'ere sidin', and nobody can say as we don't bee-ave beeyewtiful till we gets there. Then we open er box er two, see what's inside, and proceed according to reggerlations. Crimernul, I calls it….

"That 'ere sidin's useful place. Aht er the way, yer know. The Boches don't go there. 'Course, if any Boches er near, we resoom ligitimite operations till they've 'opped it. Turks? We don't let 'em see neither if we can 'elp it. Wuncertwice Turkish askas 've seen us at play, but they only larf. They 'ate the 'Uns a blurry sight more'n we do. Why, I remember when a coupler Turks 'elped in the good work one mornin'.

"Guns and airerplanes is 'andiest," he continued. "Yer see, when we 'ave the breech-block uv a gun it don't need long to take aht some gadget or other, accordin' as the gunners with us sez. Airerplanes we attack mostly on the longeerongs—those ribs o' wood that runs dahn the length uv the body, ain't they? English pilot 'oo passed dahn the line some months ergo giv' us the tip. 'Course, we give the other parts a bit uv attention—wires and sechlike….

"No, it don't seem likely as those things over there'll fly fer a long time."

It certainly didn't seem likely. Besides ripping open the fuselage fabric and cutting some of the longerons, the Tommies had hacked at the struts and clipped some bracing wires. They had prised open the wooden cases, and, before replacing the covers, had snapped spars, bent elevators and rudders, and been generally unpleasant to the planes. Similar wrecking was being done, in greater or lesser degree, at Belamedik and other points on the railway where prisoners were forced to work.

The ill-treatment of those six aeroplanes at Bosanti had a peculiar sequel. When the British entered Nazareth (the Turco-German headquarters in Palestine) during General Allenby's final advance, they captured most of the staff documents. Among the aviation papers was a letter from the O.C. German Flying Corps on that front to Air Headquarters in Germany, complaining bitterly about the bad packing and the bad handling in transit of aeroplanes sent to Palestine. As an instance it mentioned these very machines (my comparison of dates and details established that point)—single-seater scouts of the Fals type—and declared that not one of them was fit to be assembled for flying. Enclosed was a photograph of some queer-looking débris that had once been a wing. The protest ended with a request that the men who packed the six craft should be punished.

Boches are Boches, but Justice is Justice; and with memories of what I saw at Bosanti, I hope that the packers were not punished.

Having waved good-bye to these men who, though prisoners, were helping the British armies so effectively, we passed on toward Konia. And even as we moved westward from Bosanti the Aeroplanes That Never Would Fly moved eastward, through the Taurus tunnel that never would be a link in a great chain of railways from Berlin to Bagdad.

CHAPTER VI

CUTHBERT, ALFONSO, AND A MUD VILLAGE

If, at midnight, you were comfortably asleep in a railway carriage, and some Turkish guards dragged you out of it and led you along a puddled track to a mud village in the most god-forsaken part of Anatolia, while the skies rained their damnedest on you and your one spare shirt, you might be annoyed. Possibly you would cry: "To hell with the Turks!"

Such, at any rate, was H.'s comment, shouted at intervals every few seconds, while we watched the train move Constantinople-ward, leaving us at a small village called Alukeeshla.

Cuthbert and Alfonso (as we named the two soldiers who brought us from Bosanti) had told us we were going to Afion-kara-Hissar. So we went to Alukeeshla. Being unable to read or write, they failed to notice that the composite ticket given them for seven prisoners and two guards was valid only as far as this village. Their surprise was therefore as great as ours when the conductor turned the whole party out of the train. Certainly, said he, while reading a paper produced by Cuthbert, we were bound for Afion-kara-Hissar; but, according to these written instructions, there was to be an indefinite halt at Alukeeshla. It was typical of Turkish official methods—guards not knowing what must be done with the prisoners under their charge.

Cuthbert woke the sleepers, and began throwing luggage on to the platform. In his flurry he dropped a kit-bag on W.'s badly wounded arm. The sight of W. in pain, following upon our many discomforts and annoyances, sent H. berserk. "To hell with the Turks!" he yelled, then stepped one pace backward, swung a long leg, and shot his size eleven foot at Cuthbert. The kick lifted the greasy little guard from the floor, and sent him hurtling through the door of the compartment, outside of which he fell on all fours.

Far from showing resentment he was obviously cowed. Having picked himself up he asked us, humbly enough, to leave the train. Not wishing to make a bad situation worse by inviting violence, we complied, while trying to soothe H., who continued to consign all Turks to flaming perdition. Evidently Cuthbert and Alfonso thought they had to deal with a madman, and kept out of his way.

Nobody in Alukeeshla had heard of our existence; and no quarters, of course, had been allotted. The wretchedness of our midnight search in a mud village for somewhere to rest was so complete as to be humorous; and as we trudged through the rain and the darkness, and fell into the deep puddles that filled every hole in the narrow, badly kept street, we laughed from sheer misery, so that the guards must have thought we were now all mad.

We disturbed the inmates of four hovels before finding the two-roomed building that served as gendarmerie headquarters. Clearly, the policeman whom Cuthbert then roused from his sleep on the floor of the front room disliked us, and above all disliked going out into the night. After grumbling and protesting for five minutes he lit a lantern, scowled his ugliest, and led the party through more puddles to a barn. With many a creak the door of it was unlocked by means of a rusty key.

Three sorry scarecrows rose up and blinked at the lantern, then sank down again resignedly. The atmosphere was indescribably musty and dusty. Revolting garbage of every species covered the earthen floor. The wooden walls were clotted with dirt: something with wings could be heard flitting about near the high roof. The three prostrate scarecrows were disgusting, not because of their rags and their filth, but because of their general suggestion of bestiality.

"The prison," explained the gendarme grandiloquently, as he waved his hand and moved toward the door.

Now Cuthbert and Alfonso shared our indignation at the dumping of British officers into such a place, for it would be their duty to stay with the said officers. They protested volubly, but the gendarme shrugged his shoulders, and said not a word as he half opened the door. Thereupon H., still far from calm, grabbed his shoulder, spun him backward, and began explaining the situation in lurid Australian.

An inspiration was given me by the sight of W.'s bald head. W., although a second lieutenant, was a very old man—in the neighbourhood of forty, I believe. He looked venerable enough to be a temperance lecturer, although as a matter of fact he was a first-rate fellow. Knowing the Turkish reverence for the higher military ranks, I pointed to the bald patch on his head and said, "kaimakam!" (colonel), then indicated the unpleasant surroundings as if in protest against the indignity of putting a colonel in such a place.

The policeman, already in fear of H.'s violence, was obviously of opinion that a kaimakam, even an English one, should have better quarters. With a "haidee-git!" to the guards he led us back into the rain, and so to the gendarmerie. There he woke the police officer and explained our presence. Fortunately the officer was too drowsy to read our papers for proof of the presence of a kaimakam. Finally, at his orders, the gendarme took us to a room on the first floor of a two-story mud building. It was dirty and utterly bare; but there, at any rate, we had privacy. We laid out claims to floor-space and fell asleep, while Alfonso remained on guard by the door.

That little room in a mud hut was the home for ten days of seven British officers and two Turkish guards. Side by side, and with bodies touching each other, there was just space enough for eight people to lie on the floor. Already, when we arrived, one could sense the presence of Cuthbert and Alfonso without seeing or hearing them; and with each washless day their natural odour became more and more intensive.

We had nothing to read, and—worst misfortune of all—somebody had left our pack of playing-cards in the train. We wandered round the walls like beasts in a cage.

Nobody in the village knew or cared why we were there, or what was to happen to us. We could only surmise that this was the punishment for the plot to escape from Damascus.

Cuthbert took our papers into the village on the morning after arrival, but returned at midday with no information and many shoulder shrugs. Although none of us knew Turkish we understood enough to realize that if the matter of obtaining instructions were left to this stupid illiterate we might stay in the village for ever.

A council of war decided that I, as being the linguist, and W., as being the most imposing of us, with his bald head, his bushy moustache, and his South African ribbons, should drag Cuthbert into the presence of whatever officials we could find, and make ourselves a pluperfect nuisance until we were sent away.

"Commandant!" I said, going toward the door, this word being common to most languages.

"Yassak!" (forbidden) said Cuthbert, barring the way.

"Commandant! Come!" I insisted, brushing him aside.

He was ready to yell for help when Alfonso came forward as an unexpected ally, and persuaded Cuthbert that it would be better to let us try to clear up the situation. He led us to the station, where, with a French-speaking Armenian in tow as interpreter, we forced our way into the military commandant's office.

The commandant—a slight, dapper bimbashi—claimed to be desolated at our unfortunate position. But what could he do? he inquired. Only yesterday he had not heard of our existence, and then—clack!—we arrived without warning in this Anatolian village. Doubtless, if we waited a week or so, the authorities would send orders for a transfer to some prison camp. Meanwhile, he would gladly help us in any way possible, except give us food or allow us to take walks or move us into a better house or, in fact, do anything that I suggested. Twenty minutes of argument and bluster was necessary before W. and I could even induce the soft-spoken hypocrite to telegraph to Bosanti for instructions about our disposal.

Next day, when I took Cuthbert to the station for news, no reply had come. Nor was there any message on the third morning. Ten o'clock of the morning became known as "commandant time," so that on the fourth day the guards took the visit as a matter of course, Cuthbert showing his watch by way of reminder. The bimbashi, worried by our importunities, took to dodging from his office when he saw us coming; but always we waited until he returned, and talked insistently until he promised to send yet another telegram. He showed surface politeness, and never uttered threats; which in any case would have been more or less futile, for the fighting force of the village comprised but one police lieutenant and four gendarmes.

We had arrived hungry, and we continued hungry. The law of supply and demand, as applied to eggs, together with the local brand of profiteer, was the cause. On the first morning a bearded peasant visited the hut with a basket of hard-boiled eggs, which he sold at the current rate of two and a half piastres each. Next day, when it became known in the village that the prisoners were buying eggs, the rate was four piastres each. Afterward it leaped to five, and next to seven and a half piastres. Finally, the supply of eggs all but gave out. It was then possible to buy only one apiece every morning, whereat we became more hungry than ever, for eggs were our mainstay.

The commandant had given reluctant permission for each prisoner to buy one small loaf of bread a day at the military rate of two and a half piastres a loaf. For the rest, we managed to supplement the bread and eggs with an occasional supply of figs or raisins bought in the village bazaar as I returned from my importuning of the military commandant.

These fruits were shown in open baskets on crazy little stalls, side by side with stale bread, bad sausages and meat, nuts, cotton materials, primitive haberdashery, rock-salt, rank butter, dusty milk, and the thousand and one other articles that jostle each other in the village bazaars of Anatolia. It being summer, myriads of flies buzzed around and settled on the dried fruits. The figs and raisins, therefore, could not be eaten unless washed carefully or boiled. Fortunately we possessed a cooking pot, given by the Tommies at Bosanti; and a ruffian who lived below us sold charcoal at the rate of ten piastres for a quantity just sufficient to burn for half an hour.

At its best, the crowded room was so stuffy as to be oppressive. When charcoal fumes were added to the summer closeness the atmosphere became unbearable. Another drawback that prevented much cooking was the scarcity of water. We were given just enough to drink; but any surplus, for washing or boiling purposes, had to be bought. Usually one bottle of water sufficed for the morning toilet of two of us. Cuthbert and Alfonso remained unworried by the shortage. They never washed.

Nerve-edging irritation will ever link itself to an enforced companionship from which there is no escape, however temporary; and when repulsive surroundings are the milieu for such propinquity the irritation is akin to madness. The reek, the vermin, the heat, the hunger, the confined space, the dirt, and the depression combined to stab our sensibilities, so that by the third day we almost hated each other, individually and collectively.

We could obtain no brush, no soap, no broom. The little den grew dirtier and dirtier, the floor became more and more littered, the guards were smellier and smellier. Cramped and intensely ennuied, we paced in criss-cross fashion around the twelve square yards of floor-space, getting in each other's way and brooding bitterly. Of outdoor exercise there was only the daily visit to the commandant; and but one other man was allowed to walk to the station with me each morning.

A word, a suggestion, or a nudge was enough to provoke loud disputes. Every now and then heated words only stopped short of blows because all realized that the anger had been sired, not by bad feeling, but by disgusting circumstances, and that a fight would be utterly futile. Worst of all, as most prisoners in Turkey must have realized, was the galling subjection to men such as Cuthbert and Alfonso—semi-civilized, altogether unintelligent, and regulating their actions by the crudest of instincts and axioms.

Only one of us, old W., remained reasonable; and he had the greatest cause for irritation. His wounded arm, which had not received proper treatment in the Turkish hospital at Nazareth, became badly inflamed as a result of the terrible conditions. Yet he never once complained, nor did he take part in the constant quarrels. Looking back, I can realize that his fine example was the sole redeeming feature of those miserable days in the mud village.

On one point only did we all agree. "Wish some of the pretty boys who sport their staff tabs in Cairo could be here," said H., and there followed a chorus of hearty assent.

"How about 'X'.?" he continued, mentioning the name of one of the rudest staff officers who ever sat in a swivel chair. The five aviators among us grinned at the thought of having him to ourselves in the tiny room, far away from the list of postings and from Regulations Governing the Promotion of Officers. This happy thought almost reconciled us to the discomfort.

Always it rained. How it rained! The yard below our window was oozy with mud, and the veiled women who were our neighbours lifted their robes high as they buried their thick ankles into the slush. Three of them, with an old man, a boy, and three infants, lived in a two-roomed hovel that faced our building. Other dwellers in their hut were a donkey, a dog, and several hens. Two of the women took ostentatious care to draw their yashmaks closer whenever a prisoner showed himself at the window; but the third, rather less unprepossessing than the others, was less careful to protect her face from the gaze of the infidels. Beyond the yard was a stretch of flat mud dotted with squat, ugly buildings.

It was an Australian—I forget which one—who discovered by accident an antidote for the state of unutterable boredom and depression which was overwhelming us. He had lived in the district which for a time was the hunting ground of the Kelly gang, and he retold the vivid melodrama, as told to him by older people who had been spectators, of the bushranger brothers who wore armour and robbed so successfully, daringly, and incredibly. By the time we had listened, thrilled by wonder, to the tale of the Kellys' last great stand against a large force of police, with a burning house as background, what would have been another miserable evening had passed in tense interest.

Afterward we made full use of this means to forgetfulness. Each afternoon and evening somebody delivered himself of choses vues or choses entendues. H. told of his wanderings in Fiji; R. of sheep-farming in Queensland, I was able to relate some early-war observations on the Swiss-German frontier, in connection with German espionage. Old W. possessed both the Queen's and King's South African decorations, and for many years after the war in which he gained them had served in the Cape Mounted Rifles. His yarns of diamond-field days before Kimberley was made respectable by the De Beers monopoly, of Mafeking and the Vaal, of the Boer tribal treks, and of early Rhodesia filled many an empty hour in the hut at Alukeeshla.

When pre-1914 reminiscences ran dry, most phases of the war were described from personal experience. M. and H. had fought on Gallipoli as troopers; R. had flown in the Sinai Desert campaign; W. had been at Ypres and Neuve Chapelle in 1915; I had flown over the Somme battles in the days before the Royal Flying Corps had been provided with machines designed for warfare, instead of for inherent stability coupled with inherent unsuitability for fighting Fokkers, Halberstadts, and Rolands on equal terms.

Even Alfonso contributed to the time-killing narratives. We were discussing the war's origin, and somebody mentioned Sarajevo. "Ya Sarajevo!" he said, pointing to his chest, then plunged into a whirlpool of unintelligible talk. He knew a few German words, but mostly he spoke in Turkish or in what was either Serbian or some Bosnian dialect. I failed to gather whether he said he was a native of Bosnia or had merely lived there. It was clear, however, that he had been at Sarajevo when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was murdered, and had seen the deed. Alfonso's excited description, containing here and there a word I could understand, reminded me, incongruously enough, of Marinetti's Futurist "verse," which I had heard recited by the poet himself at a London night club in 1913. Said Alfonso:—

Lifting his arm as if aiming with a revolver.

We passed a vote of thanks to Alfonso, together with a cigarette and a fig.

The departure from the mud village was as absurd as the rest of our experiences in it. On my ninth visit to him the commandant announced with pride that he had arranged for us to leave by the evening train, and that the station-master at Bosanti would leave an empty truck for us.

Twenty minutes before the train arrived we trudged through the rain to the station, carrying our parcels of disreputable kit. All three gates leading to the platform were guarded by sentries, who offered to bayonet any one who tried to pass without papers stamped by the local gendarmerie. To each sentry in turn Cuthbert explained frantically who we were and what the commandant had said, only to be met with an invariable "Yassak!" and a fingering of the rifle.

The bimbashi himself was absent, and so was the Armenian interpreter—the only other person, apparently, who knew our orders. Alfonso, despatched to the commandant's house, returned with the news that he could not be found. We stood in the rain puffing at damp cigarettes and cursing. H. returned to his old refrain, "To hell with the Turks!", to the great wonder of the tatterdemalion men and boys gathered round us.

When the train steamed away from Alukeeshla, taking, no doubt, the empty truck reserved for us, we startled the guards and sentries with yells of uncontrollable laughter.

M. and I opened next morning's visit to the bimbashi with bitter protests, but had to end it in helpless acquiescence before his suave lies. He had given strict orders that the sentries were to let us pass, he pretended, and they would be punished severely for their failure to do so. Meanwhile, he was charmed that we were to accept the hospitality of the village for one day longer. He himself would be present to see us off by the next train that same evening.

For once the commandant kept his promise. He led us to the station himself. But this time no accommodation had been provided for us on the train. The trucks were full of Germans, the first- and second-class carriages of Turkish officers, the third-class carriages of Turkish soldiers. As it would be difficult to crowd the Turkish officers and impossible to dislodge any Germans, the only alternative was to clear out some of the Turkish privates.

The bimbashi selected a carriage, entered it, and ordered its occupants to descend to the platform. There were only nine of us, with the guards, while the soldiers numbered more than forty. Yet the bimbashi turned them all out. He hurled their packs through the open windows, and by candlelight drove them before him to the doorway. Some, who were reluctant to leave, he struck. It was astonishing to see the little man smacking and kicking burly brutes twice his size; though he knew well that they would never dare to hit back.

When the carriage was quite empty he took us inside and placed us in a corner. The Turkish rabble, swearing and grumbling, returned with their packs and their rifles, and scowled at us as they packed themselves into the remaining seats. The whole matter could have been arranged, with a twentieth of the fuss, by merely moving nine Turks from one end of the carriage to the other.

"Good?" asked the commandant, proudly, after we were seated.

"Magnificent!" I replied, while we tried hard not to let our self-control be blown over by gusts of laughter.

"Then, au revoir, my friend."