The one bulwark against morbidity was hope of an escape. Only by getting away, or at any rate making an attempt, could I justify my continued existence, when so many good men were dying in the world outside—and at our own doors.
Now certain spies, as I have told, were constantly on the look-out for officers likely to give trouble to our custodians. The Commandant, I knew, suspected me of wanting to escape, owing to my general eagerness for exercise. I thought, therefore, that if I could induce him to believe that I was ready to dream away my days at Afion-kara-hissar, I should have established that confidence in my character which is the basis of all success. I consequently purchased some two pounds of a certain dark and viscous drug, wrapped in a cabbage leaf. With a sort of theatrical secrecy (for even in Turkey Mrs. Grundy has her say), I proceeded to prepare the stuff by boiling it for two hours in a copper saucepan. I did this on a day when one of the Turkish staff came to the house to distribute letters. Naturally the smell attracted notice. I made flimsy excuses to account for it.
After distilling the decoction, filtering, and then boiling it down to the consistency of treacle, the firstphase of my little plan was ended. One of the Turkish staff, a certain Cypriote youth, had become thoroughly interested in my proceedings.
I showed him, under vows of secrecy which I knew he would not keep, the stage property I had bought, consisting of two bamboo pipes, a lamp, a terra-cotta bowl, some darning needles, and the "treacle" in a jampot. Fortunately the most of these implements I had obtained second-hand from a real opium-smoker, so that they did not look too new. Also I had read de Quincey and Claude Farrère. After discussing the subject at length, the Cypriote suggested that we might smoke together one evening. I agreed with alacrity.
One night after lock-up, therefore, I slipped out of my house, with my paraphernalia hidden under my overcoat. A specially bribed Turkish sentry brought me to a silent, shuttered house in a side street. Here the door was opened by an evil-looking harridan, who showed me upstairs to a thickly carpeted room, strewn with cushions, on which my host was lying. The blinds were drawn and only the glimmer of a little green lamp lit the wreaths of whitish smoke which curled down from the low ceiling. The fumes stang my palate and thrilled me with expectancy. I could taste, rather than smell, that strange savour of opium which fascinates its devotees.
I lay down, in the semi-darkness, on a sofa beside my host. After some general conversation, I showed him my pipes and needles, but he said that for thatevening I should only smoke the opium of his brewing.
"It is a joy to have found a fellow-spirit," I sighed. "When one has opium one wants nothing more."
"How many pipes do you smoke a day?" he asked.
"Fifty," I said boldly, adding, "when I am in practice."
"That is nothing," said the Cypriote. "I smoke a hundred. Come, let us begin. Time is empty, except for opium."
"But who will prepare our pipes?" I asked.
"We will do that ourselves," he answered.
"I can't," I had to admit. "I—I am used to an attendant, who hands me my pipes already cooked."
"There is no one here," he said, "except an ugly old woman. But I will show you myself. Half the pleasure is lost if another hand prepares the precious fluid. See, you take a drop of opium—so—on the point of the needle, and holding it over the flame of the lamp, you turn and turn it gently until it swells and expands and glows with its hidden life. From a black drop it changes to a glowing bubble of crimson. Then you cool it again, moulding and pressing it back to a little pellet upon the glass of the lampshade. Then again you cook it, and again you cool it. Only experience can tell when it is ready to smoke. It is an art, like other arts. I would rather cook opium than write a poem. It is even better than money. Now you take your pipe and, heating the little hole through which the opium is smoked, so that it will stick, youthrust your needle—so—into the hole, and then withdraw it again, leaving the pellet of perfect peace behind. And now, lying on your left side, with your head well back amongst the cushions, you hold your pipe over the flame and draw in a long and grateful breath. In and in you breathe. . . ."
I watched him take a deep draught of the drug, and then lie back among the cushions with heavy-lidded eyes. For a full half-minute he remained silent and dreaming, then expelled the thick white smoke with a sigh of bliss.
It was my turn now, and not without some dismay (although curiosity was probably a stronger emotion) I accepted a pipe of his preparing. I inhaled in and in—I choked a little—and then lay back with a dreaminess that was not simulated, for it had made me feel giddy.
"You prepare a most perfect pipe," I coughed through the acrid fumes.
But I had realised immediately that I had not an opium temperament. In all I smoked ten small pipes that first evening, without feeling any ill effects beyond a heavy lassitude, which lasted all through the following day. I was disappointed and disgusted by the experience. The beautiful dreams are a myth. So also is the deadly fascination of the drug. I loathed it more each time I tasted it.
Yet those nights I lay on a sofa,couché à gaucheas opium-smokers say, weaving a tissue of deceit into the grey-white clouds encircling us, will alwaysremain one of the most curious memories of my life. The couches, the needles and the pipes, the pin-point pupils and wicked profile of my host, as he leaned over the green glimmer of the lamp which burnt to the god to whom his heart was given, and the growth of that god in him, as pipe followed pipe to stir his consciousness, and the beatitude that lit his features, as he looked up from amidst the cushions to that dream-world of subtle smoke, to be seen only with narrowed eyes, where princes of the poppies reign: this had a glamour against the drab setting of captivity which I will neither deny nor excuse. I was doing something practical once more. Instead of reading philosophy or playing chess, I was engaged in a human game, whose stake was freedom.
A measure of success attended my efforts, for I learnt from the Cypriote, in the course of subsequent visits to his house, that if I wished for a holiday to Constantinople it would not be difficult to arrange.
I think we were both playing a double game.
We both tried to make the other talk, he with the idea of getting information about the camp and I in the hope of picking up some hint as to where to hide in Constantinople. But card-sharpers might as well have tried to fleece each other by the three card trick. His knowledge of Constantinople seemed to benil, while the information he got out of me would not have filled his opium pipe. After these excursions I used sometimes to wonder whether I was not wasting my time and health. But time is cheap in captivity, andas to health, I used to counteract the opium by counter-orgies of exercises. In the early mornings I skipped and bathed in secret, but in the daytime I tottered wanly about the streets, and whenever I saw the Cypriote I told him that I craved forconfiture: this being our name for opium.
In my condition it was an easy matter to be sent to the doctor. I told him various astonishing stories about my health, chiefly culled from a French medical work which I found in the waiting-room of his house. Within a month I was transferred to Haidar Pasha Hospital, near Constantinople. Had I been in brutal health, the operation to my nose which was the ostensible reason of my departure would not have been considered necessary. But I had been removed from the category of suspects, and was now considered an amiable invalid.
The guard on my northward journey was more like a sick attendant than a sentry. I showed him some opium pills, which I declared were delicious to take. He evinced the greatest interest, and I was able to prevail on him to swallow two or three as an experiment. Unfortunately, after he had taken them, I discovered they contained nothing more exciting than cascara. They did not send him to sleep at all.
We arrived at Haidar Pasha without incident. Before being admitted, my effects were searched, and stored away, but being by that time accustomed to searches, I was able to hide, upon my person, a varietyof things that would be useful in an escape, notably a compass, and a complete set of maps of Constantinople and its surroundings.
Captain Sir Robert Paul, with whom I had discussed plans at Afion-kara-hissar, was already installed in hospital, where he was being treated for an aural complaint. His friendship was an inestimable stand-by through the months that followed. Through scenes of farce and tragedy he was always the same feckless and fearless spirit. In success, as in adversity, he kept an equal mien. Without him, the most amusing chapters in my life would not have happened, and if I write "I" in the pages which follow, it is only because Robin, as I shall hereafter call him, has not been consulted about this record of our days together. Owing to circumstances beyond our control, the full responsibility for this story must be mine. The seas divide us. I cannot ask his help, or solicit his approval.
The hospital at Haidar Pasha was the most delightfully casual place imaginable. One wandered into one's ward in a Turkish nightshirt, and wandered out again at will, the only limits to peregrination being the boundaries of the hospital and one's own rather fantastic dress. Unless one asked loudly and insistently for medicines or attendance, no one dreamed of doing anything at all in the way of treatment. The only attention the patients received was to be turned out of the hospital when they were either dead or restored to health. Under the latter category acrowd of invalids came every day, who were generally ejected just before noon, clamouring loudly for their mid-day meal, and the unexpended portion of their day's ration. Of deaths in hospital I witnessed only one, although scores occurred during my stay. One evening an Armenian officer was brought into my ward with severe wounds in the head, due to a prematurely exploded bomb. He was laid flat on a bed, and instantly proceeded to choke. No one came near him. It seemed obvious to me that if he was propped up by pillows he would be able to breathe. But no one propped him up. I suggested to the hospital orderly that this should be done, and he said, "Yarin." And "yarin" the poor officer died of lack of breath. How sick men survived is a mystery to me, because they were never attended to, unless strong enough to scream. Screaming, however, is a habit to which the Turkish patient is not averse. He does not believe in the stoical repression of feeling. Strong and brave men will bellow like bulls while their wounds are being dressed. Unless, indeed, one makes a fuss, no one will believe one is being hurt. I have seen mutton-fisted dressers tearing off bandages by main force, while some unfortunate patient with a stoical tradition sweats with agony and bites his lips in silence.
But although the Turk cries out, he is by no means a coward under the knife. His stern and simple faith seems to help him here. There is something very fine about a good Moslem's readiness for death. No manwho knows the religion, or has lived intimately among its adherents, can fail to give it reverence. Before God all men are equal, and when one walks about in a nightshirt, one begins to realise this fundamental truth. There was a great friendliness in that hospital, and a cordiality that coloured the otherwise sordid surroundings. Poor jettison of the war, broken with fighting, or rotten with disease, or shamming sick, we forgathered in the corridors, or in the garden, with no thought for the external advantages of rank and fortune.
Matches at that time had practically disappeared from Turkey, and whenever one issued from the ward with a cigarette between one's lips, one was beset by invalids in search of a light. Who lit the original vestal fire I do not know, but I am sure it was never extinguished in that hospital. Patients smoked and talked all night.
We took our part with pleasure in this picnic life. Robin, with remarkable skill, had contrived to smuggle in various forbidden bottles, which contributed greatly to our popularity. One drink especially, from its innocuous appearance and stimulating properties, found great favour amongst the patients. It was known as "Iran," and consisted of equal parts of sour milk and brandy. A teetotaller might safely be seen with a long glass of creamy-looking fluid, yet Omar Khayyám himself would not have despised a jug of it. Imbibing this, we used to hold polyglotpow-wows with the patients, in French, German, Arabic, Italian, and Turkish. Sugar and tea from our parcels also did much to promote cordiality.
The recent explosion in Haidar Pasha station, which blew out all the windows of our (adjacent) hospital, and the first British air raid of 1918 were frequent topics of discussion. With regard to these events we invented a beautiful lie, namely, that the station explosions were the result of bombardment by a new type of submarine we possessed, but that,per contra, the first air raid, which did no damage, was not carried out by British aircraft at all. We proved by assorted arguments in various languages that the bombs on Constantinople had come from German aeroplanes, the raid being a display of Hun frightfulness, to show what would happen if Turkish allegiance wavered over the thorny question of the disposal of the Black Sea fleet. Nothing was too improbable to be true in Constantinople, and nothing indeed was too absurd to be possible. Enver Pasha had made a monopoly in milk, and a corner in velvet. The new Sultan was intriguing for the downfall of the Young Turks. The funds of the Committee of Union and Progress had been sent to Switzerland, where a Turkish pound purchased thirteen francs of Swiss security, or half its face value. Fortunes were won and lost on the meteoric fluctuations of paper money. A lunatic inmate of the hospital (formerly a Smyrniote financier, driven to despair by the press gang) told me thathe could make a million on the bourse if they only set him free for a few hours, and I daresay he was right. Anything might have happened during those summer days. Secret presses were engaged in printing broadsheets of revolution. The nearer the Germans got to Paris, the more persistent were the stories of their defeat. The air was electric with rumours. The story about German aeroplanes bombing Constantinople, which we had started in jest, was retailed to us later, in all earnestness, and with every detail to give it probability. Anything to the discredit of their ally found currency in the Turkish capital.
An Ottoman cadet in my ward, for instance, used to impersonate a German officer ordering his dinner in a Turkish restaurant. He managed somehow to convey the swagger, and the stays, and the stiff neck. Clattering his sword behind him, he used to seat himself stiffly at a table and call haughtily for a waiter. Then, after glaring at the menu, he used to order—a dish of haricot beans. "Des haricots," he used to snap, with hand on sword-hilt in the exact and invariable Prussian manner.
But to the last, the Germans were all-unconscious of what went on behind their corseted backs. Only at the time of the armistice, when they were pelted with rotten vegetables, did they realise that something was amiss.
To return to our hospital. Our day began with rice and broth at six in the morning. At nine the visitingdoctor made his rounds and the patients who needed medicines clamoured for them. Unless one made a fuss, however, one was left in perfect peace. At midday there was more rice and broth, with occasional lumps of meat. The afternoon was devoted to sleep, and the evenings to exercise in the garden, or intrigue. Rice and broth concluded the day. This sounds dull, but after two years of prison life, the hours seemed as crowded as a London season's. To begin with, we did not attempt to subsist on hospital fare, but commissioned various orderlies and friends to buy us food outside. Then there was the never-failing interest of making plans. A certain person raised our hopes to the zenith by telling us of the possibility of a boat calling for us at night, at a landing place just below the British cemetery. The idea was to embark in this boat, row across to a steamer, and there enter large sealed boxes in which we would pass the Customs up the Bosphorus, and then make Odessa. The plan was almost complete. The shipping people had been "squared." It only remained for us to select the spot from which to embark. With this object in view, we reconnoitred the British cemetery which abutted on the hospital grounds. It was then being used as an anti-aircraft station, and when, a few days later, the first air raid came, we saw the exact positions of the Turkish machine guns, spitting lead at our aircraft from among the Crimean graves. This air raid, and the atmosphere of "frightfulness" caused thereby,rather interfered with our escape plans. First of all we were forbidden to go near the British cemetery, and later other small privileges were curtailed which greatly "cramped our style." For some time we could not get in touch with the person already alluded to.
Meanwhile the arrival of our aeroplanes was a very stimulating sight. Everyone in hospital turned out to see the show.
Crump! crump! Woof!—said the bombs.
Woo-woo-woom!—answered the Archies.
Kk-kk-kk-kk! chattered the machine guns.
"God is great," muttered the hospital staff.
"Give me a gun!" cried one of the two British officers posing as lunatics (I have already related how they had pretended to hang themselves). "Give me a gun," he reiterated loudly—"this is all a plot to kill me, and I must defend myself!"
Calmly and confidently our machines sailed through the barrage, dropped their bombs, turned to have a look at Constantinople, and then sailed away.
The British lunatic shook his fist at them, as he was led back gibbering to his ward. The head doctor was much concerned as to his condition.
"Every day," he told me—"some new madness takes that poor deluded creature. Eighteen pounds were paid to him recently and he promptly tore the notes in half and scattered them about the room. When he was asked if he wanted anything from the Embassy he wrote for a ton of carbolic soap, and halfa ton of chocolate. On another occasion he jumped into the hospital pond with his pipe in his mouth, declaring he was on fire. I dare not send him to England without an escort, for he would do himself some injury. As to the other British lunatic, he has not spoken for five weeks. I do not know what is to be done."
Neither did I, for I was not then aware of the patient's true condition, and had no desire to "butt in." They had lived for several months among the other madmen in hospital, and I thought it probable that they had really lost their reason.
The lunatics' ward was a terrifying place. My experience of it, although limited to a few hours, was enough to last a lifetime. In order to secure drugs for "doping" sentries I complained of severe insomnia one day, and was sent to the mental specialist. While waiting for him, I noticed that one of the British lunatics was regarding me with unblinking furious eyes, while the other was praying—apparently for the souls of the damned. The Greek financier was singing softly to himself, and applauding himself. There is something very alarming about madness. One feels suddenly and closely what a narrow margin divides us from a world of terror. Their souls stand forlornly by their bodies, knocking at the door of intelligence.
When the mental specialist arrived, I was seized by grave alarm. What if he should find me insane? . . .
He held up a finger, tracing patterns in the air, andtold me to watch it closely. While I watched him, he watched me.
"The moving finger writes," I thought, "and having writ . . ."
"I can see your finger perfectly," I protested nervously.
"Far from it," said the enthusiastic specialist. "You are not following it with your eyes."
"I am—indeed I am," said I, squinting at his fat forefinger.
"I am told you cannot sleep," continued my interlocutor. "You seem to me to be suffering from nervous exhaustion."
"A little sleeping draught . . ." I suggested.
"I ought to observe you for a few days," he answered.
"Not here?" I quavered.
"Yes, here."
"But I do not like the—other lunatics," said I, in a small voice.
Eventually, to my great delight, I was allowed to remain where I was, and was given (as reward for the danger I had endured) several cachets of bromide and a few tablets of trional.
I returned in triumph to my ward, and Robin and I laid our heads together. With the drugs we now possessed it would be possible to send our sentries to sleep when we were moved from hospital, if the person who was making plans for us to be taken onboard a Black Sea steamer failed to communicate in time. But the question now arose as to how much of these drugs was suitable for the Turkish constitution. The object was to administer a sleeping draught, not a fatal dose. If we were transferred from Haidar Pasha we knew we should be sent for a time to the garrison camp of Psamattia (a suburb of Constantinople on the European side) and our intention was to inveigle our attendants into having lunch during our journey there, and ply them with Pilsener beer, suitably prepared, until they were somnolent and unsuspicious enough to make it feasible to bolt.
Neither the bromide nor the trional could be tasted in cocoa or coffee, we discovered, so one evening, I regret to say, I carried out an experiment on a wounded patient, who was otherwise quite fit, although rather sleepless, by giving him a cachet of bromide and a tablet of trional in a cup of cocoa. In about half an hour his eyelids began to flicker, and he was soon sleeping like a lamb. Next morning he complained of a slight headache. Should he chance to read these lines I hope he will accept my apologies.À la guerre comme à la guerre.
So now we had the beginning of a second plan, in case the box businessviathe Black Sea failed. But, in the event of escaping during our journey to Psamattia, we had no very clear idea of where to hide. That there were Greek and Jewish quarters in Galata and in Pera we knew, and also in the northern partof Stamboul, but the chances of detection in any of these localities were great, especially as we had no disguises at the time. There remained a possibility of hiding in the ruins of recent fires, but it was difficult to see how we were to live there. On the whole the Black Sea trip seemed to offer the most favourable opportunities of success. But to carry it out, we had to wait, and wait, and still to wait, until we heard from our agent again. And eventually the time came when we could wait no longer. . . .
A week or two is nothing in Turkey, but unfortunately we had attracted a certain amount of undesirable attention in hospital by our popular supper-parties and reputed wealth. There was also a Bulgarian nurse who had an uncanny intuition about our intentions. She told the visiting doctor that two other nurses were in the habit of bringing us brandy. She also said we were both quite well and had never in fact been ill at all. The latter statement was true, but the former I can only attribute to pique, the brandy having come from other sources. However, this did not affect the fact that we were politely but firmly told that we had greatly benefited by our stay in hospital. This was equivalent to a notice of dismissal. We would have to go. Thereupon we both instantly pulled very long faces, and went to see the ear and nose specialist. He was our one hope of being allowed to stay on.
While waiting for an interview, I had an opportunity of seeing an eminent army surgeon at work on theTurkish soldiers. Let me preface this description by emphasising the fact that hewaseminent. He was no rough bungler, but a clever practitioner, well known for his professional and human sympathy. This is the scene I saw.
The doctor sat on a high stool, by the window, with a round reflector over his right eye. A glass table beside him was strewn with instruments. A lower stool seated his victims. In his hand he held a thing like a small glove-stretcher. Behind him two young assistants stood, looking like choir boys who had been fighting, in their robes of blood-stained white. The room was full of miserable shivering soldiers.
A deaf old man takes the vacant seat in front of the doctor. The glove-stretcher darts into his ear. A question is asked. The old man gibbers in reply. Glove-stretcher darts into the other ear. Another question. More gibbering. Both his ears are soundly boxed, and he is sent away. The next is a goitre case, too unpleasant for description. Suddenly the attendants come forward, and pull off all his clothes. The doctor removes the reflector from his right eye, and stares for a moment at the ghastly skinny shape with a sack hanging from its throat. Then he dictates a prescription to one of the attendants, and seizes the next soldier. Prescription and clothes are thrown at the naked man, who walks out shivering, holding his apparel in his arms. Meanwhile another victim is already trembling on the stool. This man trembles soviolently that he falls down in a faint. The attendants cuff him back to consciousness. Painfully he gets up and tries to face the instrument again. But as the glove-stretcher is being inserted into his nostril, he turns the colour of weak tea and again silently collapses. The doctor does not give him a second look. One of the attendants drags his limp body to a corner, while another patient takes the seat in front of the doctor. After a few more cases have been examined, the two attendants return to the unconscious man in the corner, drag him back to the doctor and hold his lolling head to the light, while the glove-stretcher does its work. Then he is pulled away, like a dummy from an arena, to the door of the consulting room, where (and here I confess I expected a scene) a woman awaited him. But she seemed to consider it all in the day's work. Perhaps poor Willie was subject to fainting fits. . . .
I knew I would not faint, but I cannot say I took my turn on that seat with a light heart. The surgeon was alarmingly sudden, and already the room looked like a shambles.
To my relief, he used a new glove-stretcher.
"Slightly deflected septum," he pronounced, and his diagnosis was later confirmed in London.
"I hurt my nose boxing," I explained conversationally, "and cannot now breathe through it. I would like to stay——"
"Can't stay here." he said instantly and incisively; "no time to deal with your case."
"But I can't breathe through my nose."
"Breathe through your mouth," he suggested kindly, but a little coldly.
Now, it is impossible to "wangle" a man who sits over you with a reflecting mirror screwed into his right eye. I vanished with suitable thanks.
Robin had better luck with his ear. He could have stayed on in hospital and would very likely have been invalided back to England eventually. But he absolutely refused to exchange the comfortable security of a bodily affliction for the vivider joys of escape. In spite of my advice to stay in hospital, he decided, to my great delight, that we would try our luck together.
All hope of remaining in hospital was now at an end.
That evening at sunset we were in the garden, looking across the blue waters of the Marmora to the mosques and minarets of old Stamboul, flushed with the loveliest tints of pink.
It was the last evening but one of Ramazan. To-morrow the crescent of the new moon would appear over the dome of San Sofia, as a sign to all that the fast had ended, and the time of rejoicing come. Between that moon and the next moon an unknown future lay before us. And whatever our fate, it was sure to be something exciting.
Our crossing from Haidar Pasha to the garrison camp at Psamattia was a tame affair. Early in the day we had made up our minds that it would be unwise to escape, as well as unkind to our indulgent sentries: unwise, because we realised that if we bolted blindly from a restaurant, we would probably be caught at the first lodging-house at which we tried to gain admission; and unkind because, in common chivalry, we decided that our sentries were too trustful to be drugged.
Our day, therefore, was spent in seeing the sights of Pera, gossiping over a cocktail bar, purchasing some illicit maps under cover of a large quantity of German publications, and generally learning the lie of the land. But it might be indiscreet even at this distance of time to describe in too great detail the sources from which we obtained our information. One name, however—like King Charles' head with Mr. Dick—will keep coming into this book. I cannot keep it out, because it is impossible to think of my escape and escapades without thinking of the gallant lady who made them possible.
Miss Whitaker, as she then was (she is now LadyPaul), knew something about all the escapes which took place in Turkey, and a great deal about a great many of them. Against every kind of difficulty from foes, and constant discouragement from friends[6]she boldly championed the cause of our prisoners through the dark days of 1916 and 1917. She visited the sick in hospital, she carried plum puddings to our men working at San Stefano, she was a never-failing source of sympathy and encouragement. She sent messages for us, and wrote letters, and lent us money and clothes. She was the good angel of the English at Constantinople, a second—and more fortunate—Miss Cavell.
And she was theDeus ex machinaof my escapes. Having said this, I will say one thing more. I cannot here put down one-tenth of the daring work that Lady Paul did for me and others. The reason may be obvious to the reader; at any rate it is binding on me to say far less than I would wish.
On reaching the prisoners' camp at Psamattia, our first object was to get in touch with her whom we hadalready heard of as the guardian spirit of prisoners. With this object in view, we asked to be allowed to attend Sunday service at the English church. Religious worship, we pointed out, should not be interfered with, further than the necessities of war demanded. After some demur the Commandant agreed, and accordingly we went to church. Here it was[7]that we met our guardian angel for the first time. She trembled visibly when we mentioned our plans for escape, and I thought (little knowing her) that we had been rash to speak so frankly.
"I strongly advise delay," she whispered—"but I will meet you again at the gardens in Stamboul in two days' time—four o'clock. I'll be reading a——"
"Haidé, effendim, haidé, haidé," said our sentry, and her last words were lost.
Further conversation was impossible, but the forty-eight hours which followed were vivid with anticipation.
How were we to manage to get to the gardens of the Seraglio? Would we meet her? Could we talk to her? Would she have a plan? . . .
On the day appointed, Robin and I complained oftoothache, and asked to be allowed to go into the city to see the dentist. We were at once granted permission.
From the dentist's to the Seraglio garden was only a step, but we were four hours too early as yet to keep the rendezvous. However, a large lunch, in which our sentries shared, smoothed the way for a little shopping excursion into Pera. Here, amongst other things, we bought some black hair dye, which completed our arrangements for escape. Other paraphernalia, such as jack-knives, twenty fathoms of rope, maps, compasses, sand-shoes, chocolate and "dope," we had already acquired. Nothing now remained but to find a hiding place, when once we had escaped.
At about three o'clock we were sitting in a café, eating ices, with our complacent sentries, who had every reason to be complacent for they had been sumptuously fed, as well as liberally tipped. They were quite willing to do anything in reason, and nothing could have been more natural than a stroll in the Seraglio gardens.
But just then Robin began to get "Spanish 'flu," which was raging in the city. The symptoms were as sudden as they were unmistakable. Violent shivering, giddiness, weakness—all the ills that flesh is heir to, waylaid him at this vital juncture. He was completely incapable of action.
There was no help for it. I left him shaking and shivering in the café, in charge of one of our two sentries,and, after a little persuasion and some palaver (during the course of which another bank-note changed hands) I induced the other sentry to accompany me for a stroll. Unless we walked in the gardens, I assured him, we should both fall ill with the deadly contagion of my friend. Nothing but fresh air and iced beer could avert that fever. On the way, therefore, we stopped for a glass and I managed to drop a small dose of potassium bromide into the sentry's mug before it was given to him.
A little before four the sentry and I were smoking cigarettes on a seat in the Seraglio gardens quite close to the Stamboul entrance gate.
It was a hot day, with thunder-clouds hanging low. Toilers of the city passed us fanning themselves. Turkish officers had pushed back their heavy fur fezzes, and civilians wore handkerchiefs behind theirs. German ladies panted loudly, and even thehanoumsappeared to be a little jaded: their small feet and great eyes, that so often twinkle in the streets, had grown dull with the oppression of the day. Small wonder my sentry nodded.
Presently, with a walk that no one could mistake, a tall and slim figure entered, dressed in white serge coat and skirt. I watched her, on the opposite footpath, strolling down the shady avenue with an insouciant grace. She held a novel and a little tasselled bag in her right hand. She sat down some two hundred yards away, and began reading calmly andcoolly, apparently quite unconscious of the feverish world about her.
With a hasty glance at my sentry, I rose and walked very slowly away. He woke at once, and followed. I stopped to look at some flowers, yawned, lit another cigarette and said to the sentry that it was too hot to walk. I intended to sit for a little in the shade on the opposite side of the road, and then we would go back to join our friend at the café.
We meandered across the road, and I sank into a seat beside the guardian angel. There was no room for the sentry, so he obligingly retired into the shrubbery behind.
Without taking her eyes from her novel, she began by saying I was not to look at her, and that I was to speak very low, looking in the opposite direction.
She then asked where my companion was, and on hearing he had the 'flu, she told me that she also had been attacked by it at the very moment that we had spoken to her at church, and that it was only with difficulty she had been able to keep the rendezvous to-day. I tried to thank her for coming, but she kept strictly to business, and concentrated our conversation to bare facts. Her news ranged from the world at war, to plans for Robin and me, in vivid glimpses of possibility. She covered continents in a phrase, and dealt with the plans of two captives in terse but sympathetic comment. When she had told me what she wanted to say, she opened her small bagand took out a piece of paper, rolled up tight, which she flicked across to me without a moment's hesitation.
"You had better go now," she said.
But my heart was brimming over with things unsaid.
"I simply cannot thank——" I began to stammer.
"Don't!" said she, to the novel on her knees.
And so, with no salute to mark the great occasion, I left her. Neither of us had seen the other's face.
Here I must apologise for purposely clouding the narrative. The plans I made are only public so far as they concern myself.
On rejoining Robin, I found him palpitant and perturbed. The fever was at its height and he ought to have been in bed. Yet it was urgently necessary that evening, before returning, to make certain investigations in the native quarter of the city. How to do this without attracting the notice of the two sentries, perspiring but still perceptive, was a matter of great concern to me. I thought of saying that I was going to buy medicine for Robin, but in that case one of the sentries (probably Robin's, for my own had grown very somnolent with beer and bromide) would certainly accompany me. Then I bethought me of going to wash my hands in a place behind the café and slipping out of a back door. But there was no back door, and Robin's sentry had followed me to the wash-place, and stood stolidly by the door until I came out.
I sat down again, thinking and perspiring furiously,[8]and ordered more beer. But this time I failed to manipulate the bromide. Robin's sentry saw me with the packet in my hand and asked me what it was.
"It is a medicine for reducing fat," said I, and of course after this I had to keep the drugged beer for myself. But the sedative did no harm. After sipping for some minutes I had a happy thought.
There was a particular brand of cigarettes which were only obtainable at a few shops in Constantinople. I asked the waiter if he had them. He had not.
"I must have a packet," I said, standing up—"there is a shop just down the street where I can get them."
And without taking my hat or stick (as a proof of the innocence of my intentions) I strolled out of the café.
The sentries did not follow. It was too hot.
I rushed down the crowded thoroughfare as if all the hounds of heaven were on my trail. I fled past policemen, dodged a tram, bolted up a side-street, and arrived gasping at the doorway I sought. After a hasty survey of the locality, so as to identify it again at need, I rushed back to the restaurant, buying a box of Bafra-Madène cigarettes on the way. Robin was still shivering; the sentries were mopping their large faces. All was well. Our work was done.
Trying not to look triumphant, I got Robin into a cab, and we drove back to Psamattia camp.
During the next few days I thoroughly enjoyedmyself. Not so Robin, who was grappling with his fever. Later, however, when he was convalescent, we used to go down to the seashore together to bathe. In the evening, we used to sup off lobsters at a restaurant on the beach. In the water one felt almost free once more, and in the restaurant, when one was not gambling "double or quits" with the lobster-merchant as to whether we should pay him two pounds for his lobster or nothing at all, we were talking politics with other diners. Those days of Robin's convalescence were delightful. The moon was near its full, which is the season when lobsters ought to be eaten, and the climate was perfect, and our hopes were high.
Psamattia is one of the most westerly suburbs of Stamboul. From it, a maze of tortuous streets lead to the railway terminus of Sirkedji, and the Galata bridge over the Golden Horn. On the eastern side of the Golden Horn lie the European quarters of Galata and Pera. From our camp at Psamattia to the house where we intended to hide was a distance of five miles, and there were at least two police posts on the way. But with our hair dyed black (we had already effected this transformation, and it is astonishing how it changes one's appearance) and fezzes on our heads, we trusted to pass unnoticed as Greeks.
Our plan had a definite and limited objective. We wanted to escape by night from Psamattia and hidein Constantinople. Once in hiding, we trusted to going by boat to Russia, or else going with brigands to the Mediterranean coast, where our patrols might pick us up. But the first object was to get away from the camp. Until this was achieved it was almost impossible to make definite arrangements. At first we had thought that it would be an easy matter to give our sentries the slip when we were out shopping. But when it came to the point, we felt scruples about bolting from men we had bribed and wheedled so often. All's fair in love and war, but yet if it could be avoided we did not want to abuse their trust in us.
There remained the alternative of escaping by night from the house where we were interned. But when Robin had become fit enough to try (and of course he was all agog to be off at the first possible moment) we found the guards were more alert than we thought.
Our situation was roughly this: We were housed in the Armenian Patriarchate, next to the Psamattia Fire Brigade, and there were sentries in every street to which access was possible, by craft or by climbing. The window of our room, which was directly over the doorway where the main guard lived, looked out on to a narrow street, across which there was another house, inhabitated by Russian prisoners of war. At first we thought it might be possible to pretend to go to the Russian house, and, while casually crossing the street, to mingle with the passers-by, and melt away unnoticed in the crowd. We tried this plan, but it wasno good. The guards on our doorway were alert, and followed our every movement. . . . To slip out with the Armenian funerals which used to go through our gateway was another project doomed to failure. . . . To get into the Armenian church, on the night before a burial, remove the occupant of a coffin and so pass out next morning in the centre of the funeral procession, was an idea which excited us for a time. But the melodrama we had planned could not be executed, because the church was locked and guarded at night. . . . To climb out of the back window of the Russian house also proved impossible, because a sentry stood outside it always. . . . Every point was watched. Two sentries armed with old Martini rifles (of archaic pattern but unpleasantly big bore) were posted directly below our window. Two more similarly equipped were opposite, at the door of the Russian house. One man with a new rifle was behind the Russian house. Two more were behind ours, and one was in a side street. There were also men on duty at the entrance to the Fire Brigade.
After considering all sorts of methods we decided on a plan whose chief merit was its seeming impossibility. No one would have expected us to try it.
Our idea was to climb out of our window at night, and by crossing some ten foot of wall-face, to gain the shelter of the roof of the next door house. This roof was railed by a parapet, behind which we could crouch. Along it we would creep, until we reached a cross-roaddown the street. Here we would slip down a rope to the pavement, and although we would be visible to at least five sentries during our descent, it seemed probable that no particular sentry would consider himself responsible for the cross-roads, which was beyond their beat.
To climb out of a window set in a blank wall, about thirty feet above a busy street where four sentries stood, did not seem a reasonable thing to do. But the wall was not as impassable as it seemed. Two little ledges of moulding ran along it, under our window-sill, so that we had a narrow yet sufficient foothold and handhold until we reached the roof of the adjoining house. And although we would be visible during our precarious transit of the wall-face, we knew that people rarely look up above their own height, and rarely look for things they don't expect.
It was the night of the twenty-seventh of July, when a bright full moon rode over the sea behind our house, that we decided to make the attempt.
The first point was to get out of the window without being seen. . . . A Colonel of the Russian Guards, a little man with a great heart, volunteered to help us. Directly we extinguished the lights in our room, he was to engage the sentries at the door of the opposite house, where he lived, in an animated conversation, keeping them interested, even by desperate measures if need be, until our first ten yards of climbing was successfully accomplished.
After a cordial good-bye, he left us. We took off our boots and slung them round our necks, drank a stirrup cup to our success, roped ourselves together, coiled the remainder of the rope round our waists, stuffed our pockets and knapsacks with our escaping gear, and then blew out our lamp, as if we were going to bed. Crouched under the window-sill we waited. . . . The sentries below us were sitting on stools in the street. The two men opposite were lolling against the doorpost, and the moon, rising behind our house, while still leaving the street in shadow, had just caught their faces, so that their every eyelash was visible. To them came the little Colonel, and only the top of his cap reached the moonlight. We heard his cheery voice. We saw both sentries looking down, presumably helping themselves to his cigarettes.
That waiting moment was very tense. An initial failure would have been deplorable, yet many things made failure likely. At such times as these, the confidence of one's companion counts for much, and I shall never forget Robin's bearing. Anyone who has been in similar circumstances will know what I mean. He went first out of the window. I followed an instant later. . . . And once the first step was taken, once my feet were on that two-inch ledge and my hands clung to the upper strip, the complexion of things altered completely. Anxiety vanished, leaving nothing but a thrill of pleasure. One was master of one's fate.
At one moment we were in view of four sentries (two at our door and two opposite), a Turkish officer who had come to take the air at our doorway, and several passers-by in the street. But no one looked up. No one saw the two men, only five yards away, who clambered slowly along the string-course, like flies on a wall.
After gaining the roof of the next house, we lay flat and breathless behind the parapet, and thanked God we had succeeded in—not making fools of ourselves, anyway.
The parapet was lower than we thought, and in order to get the advantage of its cover it was necessary to remain absolutely prone in the gutter of the roof. In this position, from ten o'clock till half past eleven, we wriggled and wriggled along the house-tops, past a dead cat and other offensive objects, until at last we had covered the distance. Once, during this stalk, my rope got hitched up on a nail, and I had to wriggle back to free it. And once, having raised myself to take a look round, one of the sentries on the Russian house ran out into the street and started making a tremendous noise. I don't know what it was about, but it alarmed me very much, and condemned us to marble immobility for a time.
At last, however, we reached the end of our wriggle. But here a new difficulty confronted us. Directly overlooking the part of the roof from which we contemplated our descent, and less than ten yards away,an officer of the Psamattia Fire Brigade sat at an open window, looking anxiously up and down the street, as if expecting someone to keep an appointment. His window was on a level with us. So intently did he stare that I thought he had seen us. But we lay dead-still behind the parapet, and it became apparent, as time passed and he still stood disconsolate by the window, that we were not the objects of his languishing regard. . . . And meanwhile the moon—the kindly old moon that sees so much—was creeping up the sky. Soon she would flood us with her radiance. Even a love-sick officer of the Fire Brigade could not fail to notice us across the narrow street, lit by the limelight of all the universe. For an hour this annoying Romeo kept watch, while we discussed the situation in tiny whispers, and cursed feminine unpunctuality. But at last, just as we had determined to "let go the painter" and take our chance, he began to yawn and stretch and look towards his bed, which we could see at the further end of his room. "You are tired of waiting: she isn't worth it!" I sent in thought-wave across the street. He seemed to hesitate, then he yawned again, and just as our protecting belt of shadow had narrowed to a yard, he gave up his hopes of Juliet, and retired.
That was our moment.