Captain T. W. White
Captain T. W. White, Australian Flying Corps, who accompanied Captain Alan Bott in the 1,000 mile Odyssey to Freedom, starting from Constantinople. The clothes are the disguise worn by Captain White in Constantinople.
"English officers," said the orderly, "come from Haidar Pasha Hospital. Both mad."
"I am not English," protested in Turkish the strange befezzed head as it shot from under the bedclothes. "I am a good Turk. The English are my enemies. I wrote to His Excellency Enver Pasha, telling him I wished to become a Turkish officer."
"Mulazim Heel," continued the Turk, pointing toward the scarecrow. Then, as he swung his hand in the direction of the man who had written to Enver Pasha, "Mulazim Jaw-nès."
"My name is not Jones," the Fantastic shouted, still speaking in Turkish, "I am Ahmed Hamdi Effendi."
Yet he was indeed Jones, just as much as the scarecrow opposite him was Hill. We had heard stories of their extravagant doings, but this was our first sight of the famous lunatics whose reputation had spread through every prison-camp in Turkey. The Turks believed them to be mad, and although there were sceptics, so did many of the British prisoners. When, after watching the pair for several hours, we went into the garden that evening and discussed them, we agreed that they were either real lunatics or brilliant actors.
It had all begun months earlier at Yózgad. To pass the weary time Jones and Hill dabbled in and experimented with hypnotism and telepathy. By making ingenuity and the conjuror's artifice (at which Hill was an expert) adjuncts of their seances, they nonplussed fellow-prisoners and Turks alike; for it was impossible to tell whether trickery or something inexplicable was the basis of their astonishing demonstrations. By means of the Spirit of Music (a hidden lamp with the wick turned too high), the Buried Treasure Guarded by Arms (some coins and an old pistol that were first placed in position and then "revealed" by digging), the Miraculous Photographs (taken with a secret camera designed and constructed by themselves), and other devices, they reduced the camp commandant and his staff to a state of bewildered fear. When they had hoodwinked the commandant into the belief that they could exchange mind-messages with local civilians, he confined them in a small room, and allowed no communication with other prisoners.
From this time onward, moreover, Jones and Hill showed apparent dread of their fellow-prisoners. The British officers at Yózgad wanted to destroy them, they informed the Turkish commandant, adding a plea for protection. Meanwhile, their hair and beards grew longer and more untrimmed, their general appearance stranger and wilder. Perhaps their most impressive exploit at Yózgad was when a guard found them hanging side by side on ropes that were suspended from a beam, the chairs that supported their weight having been kicked away just before he entered the room. He cut down the dangling bodies, and his tale confirmed the commandant in the belief that the spiritualistic prisoners were altogether insane. A few days later they went under escort to Constantinople, and were admitted to Haidar Pasha Hospital.
From this hospital their reputation spread all over Constantinople. Long before they were transferred to Gumuch Souyou I had heard how Hill read the Bible all day, and uttered never a word except when he prayed aloud; and how Jones, having in two months learned to talk Turkish perfectly, proclaimed himself a Turk, and would speak no other language. His name, he insisted time and again, was Ahmed Hamdi Effendi. He disregarded all Britishers in Haidar Pasha Hospital unless it were to tell the Turkish doctor that Jones was mad, and therefore, as the afflicted of Allah, not to be blamed.
Once he threw himself into the pond in the garden. Once, having received the usual Red Cross monthly remittance from an official of the Dutch Legation, he tore the bank-notes in two, threw the scraps of paper across the room, and declared that he wanted no English money. During an air-raid over Constantinople he ran into the open and demanded a gun, so that he might shoot down the British aeroplanes.
At about sundown on his first evening with us Hill closed the Bible, stepped out of bed, and knelt down, facing the east. Then, without a pause, he recited prayers in a loud voice for twenty minutes. Several Turks came in to listen, while Jones, tapping his befezzed head, explained to them that the kneeling figure was mad.
Each morning and each evening Hill knelt on the floor and prayed aloud. Sometimes during the night he would walk to another bedside, wake up its occupant, and exhort him to prayer. For the rest he spoke never a word other than "Yes" or "No," or "I don't know," in answer to questions. All day he sat in bed, with eyes riveted on the Bible by unswerving concentration, or clasped his head and appeared lost in meditation. When the doctor examined him he paid not the slightest attention, but when an effort was made to take away the Bible, he clutched it desperately, and was evidently ready to use violence. His hair and beard grew longer and more tousled, until he was forcibly shaved; whereupon, with his hollowed cheeks and sunken, glowing eyes, he looked more of a scarecrow than ever.
Jones kept himself quite dapper in his own peculiar fashion. His curly golden beard and moustache seemed to be his especial pride. At first Ms. attempted conversations with him; but as he always turned away and showed fright, we left him alone. Yet twice he sought out the chief doctor, and complained that the British officers wanted to murder him. Being a Turk, he continued, why was he kept in a room with Englishmen, who were his enemies and wanted to hurt him?
Beyond laughing and remarking how sad it was that our comrade should be so mad, the chief doctor took no notice. Thereupon Ahmed Hamdi sat down and wrote a letter of furious complaint to His Excellency Enver Pasha, Minister of War in the Young Turk government, and incidentally the most ruthless desperado in that all-desperado body, the Committee of Union and Progress.
I still remember every detail and movement of an absurd scene. Ms. lay asleep one hot afternoon, with a bare foot protruding through the bars at the bottom of the bed. R. crawled across the floor, intending to crouch beneath Ms.'s bedstead and tickle the sole of his foot with a feather. Jones, whose bed was next to that of Ms., shrank back and made a tentative move toward the door as R. glided nearer. R. looked up casually from his all-fours position and found the lunatic's face glaring at him with wide-open, rolling eyes. The pair stared at each other surprisedly for a few seconds, then Ahmed Hamdi Jones yelled, leaped from his bed, and ran out of the room.
If that was acting, we agreed, it was very wonderful acting. We inclined to the theory that Hill and Jones had in the beginning merely shammed lunacy, as a passport for England, but that under the mental stress and nervous strain of living their abnormal rôles they had really become insane. Another suggestion was that they lost their reason already at Yózgad, as a result of dabbling overmuch in spiritualism.
It was White who solved the mystery, although at the time he revealed it only to me. With a badly marked ankle (the result of a too-hot poultice) well in evidence, he arrived one day from Afion-kara-Hissar, and suggested to the doctors that the said ankle was tubercular. He was placed in the bed next to the scarecrow's.
Hill had let it be known that he was undertaking a forty-days' penance, during which he would eat nothing but bread. All other food offered him by the Turks he ignored. After a few days of semi-starvation his cheek-bones were more prominent than ever, his cheeks more hollowed, and the colour of his face was an unhealthy faint yellow.
In the middle of the night, when everybody else was asleep, White woke him and passed over a note. In this, as a fellow-Australian, he offered any sort of assistance that might be acceptable. Then he handed Hill some chocolate and biscuits taken from a newly arrived parcel. These the scarecrow accepted, and, not daring to whisper in case somebody were listening, wrote a sanely worded message thanking White for the offer, which he accepted. It contained also a warning that, for safety's sake, the other Britishers must be led to believe that both he and Jones were mad.
Thereafter White fed him secretly each night. In the daytime he maintained his long fast, to the great astonishment of the Turks. White also helped by complaining that the madman woke him at night-time, and asked him to pray.
Later, having heard escape talk between White and me, Hill wrote down an address where we might hide in Constantinople, and let me into the secret that he was pretending lunacy, so as to be sent out of the country as a madman.
Now that I knew the scarecrow and Ahmed Hamdi Jones to be as sane as myself, I marvelled at their flawless presentation of different aspects of lunacy, and at the determination which allowed them to play their strange parts for months. Hill, in particular, had a difficult rôle, and I wondered that his mind never gave way under it. To sit up in bed for twelve hours a day, reading and rereading a Bible; to talk to nobody and look at nobody, and to show no sign of interest when vital subjects were being discussed by fellow-prisoners a few yards away; to pray aloud for nearly half an hour each morning and evening, in the presence of a dozen people; to maintain an expression of rigid melancholy, and not to let even the ghost of a smile touch one's features for many weeks—this must require almost inhuman concentration.
Jones had a far better time, for his specialty was not studied tragedy but spontaneous farce. He seemed to enjoy enormously the complete fooling of all around him, the planning of a new fantasy and the head-over-heels performance of it, without being restrained by convention or ridicule, or a sense of the normal.
Cheerful lunacy, in fact, is great fun. Even in my own minor assumptions of a state of unreason I had found it very stimulating and amusing. A mental holiday from logic, custom, the consideration of public opinion and other irksome boundaries of artificial stability is glorious. Itself untrammelled, the mind can watch from a spectator's point of view the patch-work restraints and littlenesses of civilization, and take delight in tilting at them.
Often I envied Jones, with his fez, his golden beard and his rôle of Ahmed Hamdi Effendi, as he talked to a group of Turkish officers. They would laugh at him openly; but secretly he would laugh much more heartily at them.
Few things in our roomful of nine British officers were not farcical. Only one of us—old W., with his wounded arm—had any real claim to be in hospital. R., with a healed wound scar dating back to the Gallipoli campaign; C., with sciatica and late middle-age; and Ms., with a weak knee dating back to before the war, were trying to build up a case for release as exchanged prisoners of war. Jones and Hill, by means of magnificent acting, had made everybody believe in their assumed madness, and were also hoping to be sent home in consequence. "Wormy"—formerly aide-de-camp to General Townsend—wanted to remain a hospital patient because he had friends and amusements in Constantinople, and achieved this wish by means of mythicalhemorrhages.
For my part, I still gave false evidence of nervous disorders, although such efforts were dwarfed by the exploits of Jones and Hill. In any case, it was to my interest to show only mild symptoms, such as fits of trembling during an air-raid, or whenever a gun was fired. Had I been more violent, I should not have been allowed into the city on Sundays, at a time when I had made useful acquaintances and was plotting an escape.
So the strange days passed. Hill and Jones, spurred by reports of a near-future exchange of prisoners, gave constant and enlivening performances. M. and R. cultivated effective limps. Wormy amused himself. White and I discussed our plans while strolling in the garden. Each morning the doctor walked once round the ward, said to each patient: "Bonjour, ça va bien?" signed the diet sheets, and left us. Of other medical attendance there was none, except when W's arm was operated on, or when Jones complained to the chief doctor about our desire to murder him.
How the madmen were included in the first batch of British prisoners to be exchanged from Turkey, how they were led on board the Red Cross ship that the Turks had allowed to the Gulf of Smyrna, how Ahmed Hamdi Jones protested against being handed over to his enemies the British, and how he and the Bible-reader miraculously recovered their sanity as soon as the British vessel had left Turkish waters, all that is a story in itself.
CHAPTER IX
INTRODUCING THEODORE THE GREEK, JOHN WILLIE THE BOSNIAN, AND DAVID LLOYD GEORGE'S SECOND COUSIN
The Maritza is a little restaurant near Stamboul station. Coming toward it from the bridge across the Golden Horn one passed along a side street so narrow that the bodies of passengers clinging to the rails of the swaying and much-loaded tram-cars often collided with pedestrians. With a guard at our heels, we would disappear through a doorway, and find ourselves in a low room that reeked of sausages and intrigue.
Whenever the captive officers at Psamatia came to Stamboul they lunched at the Maritza, where they could hear the latest rumours from the bazaars. On Sundays they were joined there by not-too-sick officers from our hospital and that of Haidar Pasha.
Theodore, the Greek waiter, looked exactly what he was—a born conspirator who had strayed from melodrama into real life. In the whole of Turkey there was no greater expert in the science of throwing dust into the eyes of soldiers and gendarmes. He not only lived by plotting, but, next to money, seemed to like it better than anything in the world.
He was also a first-rate gossip. Having seated the guards in a corner where they could see but not hear us, the little Greek, with his bent shoulders and blue-glassed spectacles, would sidle up to our table, and producing a menu-card, say:
"Bonjour!What would you like, gentlemen?" Then, running his finger down the list as if suggesting something to eat, he would continue: "I heard to-day that the Grand Vizier had quarrelled once more with the Sultan"; or, "Enver Pasha was shot at in Galata yesterday, and is wounded in the chest. It is said that he will not recover." He never failed to produce at least one such rumour as these. Most often he would announce that Bulgaria was about to make a separate peace, which possibility was reported in Constantinople at least a dozen times before it really happened.
I always found him trustworthy, for his hatred of the Turks was stronger even than his greed for money, and no sum could have tempted him to become a spy in the service of the Turkish police—a position once offered to him. In any case, he was always convinced that the British would win the war; and, therefore, knowing which side his bread was buttered, would never have dared to betray the Britishers who employed him.
As an intermediary for correspondence he was reliable but expensive, his charge being twenty piastres for each letter delivered.
"Theodore, my friend," one would say, "I want you to go to Pera for me."
"Good. If you have not written the letter I will engage the guards while you prepare it."
He would then stroll across to the guards' table with the news that the British officers would be pleased to buy them whatever they wanted to eat; and the prisoner scribbled his note, a slip of paper resting on his lap and the body of Theodore screening him from the guards in the far corner. Later the letter would be handed to Theodore, in the middle of the banknotes with which one paid the bill.
If a reply were brought, Theodore delivered it under cover of a menu-card, always with a whispered reminder, "Twenty piastres." During the last six months of the war the Greek waiter must have been the messenger for scores of secret communications.
It was early in July when we heard of the arrival in Haidar Pasha Hospital—across the Sea of Marmora—of Captain Yeats-Brown and Captain Sir Robert Paul. Yeats-Brown was demanding attention for his nose and Paul for his ear. With vivid memories of conversations in Afion, I had sympathy for neither the nose nor the ear, but a great deal for the schemes of escape which I knew them to be planning. I sent Yeats-Brown a note, through the agency of Theodore, suggesting an appointment for lunch on the following Sunday.
As a matter of fact, I met him before lunch-time. With the rest of the congregation we were leaving for the little English church off the Grande Rue de Péra, when the pair approached the vestry door with guards at their heels. Since I last saw them both had grown moustaches, and an appearance of dishevelled untidiness was given to Paul by a short, stubby tuft of beard. At the time I was talking to Miss Whittaker, and I took the opportunity of introducing the new arrivals. Paul drew Miss Whittaker aside, and began talking earnestly, while Yeats-Brown told me that the guards' orders were to take him direct to Haidar Pasha, and that we should have to wait a week longer before meeting at the Maritza.
Next Sunday afternoon, on entering the little restaurant, I heard Yeats-Brown asking Theodore to show him where a special brand of cigarettes might be bought. This he did in a loud voice, speaking Turkish, as if he wished the guards to overhear. The pair left the doorway, and disappeared into a tobacco shop. Both departed bare-headed, so that the guards remained in their seats and were unsuspicious. Paul was at a table near them, taking great care to appear unconcerned. His beard had grown longer during the past seven days, and he looked stranger and more dishevelled than ever.
Five minutes later he and I were joined by Yeats-Brown, who, as he returned with Theodore, took care to flaunt a newly bought box of cigarettes before the eyes of his guard. He had been to look at the outside of Theodore's own house, so that he might recognize it.
He and Paul were to be turned out of hospital in two days' time. They had had no time to arrange a definite scheme, but as they were to be sent to Asia Minor very shortly, it would be necessary for them to escape almost immediately. I did not seek to join them, for White and I were still safe in Gumuch Souyou and had hopes of stealing an aeroplane. I therefore wished Yeats-Brown the best of luck, and after returning to hospital, waited anxiously for news.
Our first intimation of what had happened came when the chief doctor announced that no Britishers were to be allowed into the city, because two prisoners had escaped. Soon afterward a Russian, who arrived from Psamatia with influenza, brought details. With their bank-notes (obtained from Mr. S., a British civilian living in Pera) sewn up in suspenders and braces, with faces and hands stained brown, and each wearing a fez, the pair had climbed out of their window at Psamatia in the middle of the night, crept along a ledge, tied a rope to the gutter of the roof, and let themselves down into a dark doorway. The rope was found in the morning, still dangling from the roof. Since then—three days ago—nothing had been heard of them.
Meanwhile the hopes of White and myself revolved round John Willie the Bosnian. This man, an Austrian aviator who was a lieutenant in the Turkish Flying Corps, had been shot down in Palestine, and in the ward next to ours was receiving treatment for minor injuries. He told Ms. that in a few weeks' time he would desert from Turkey by aeroplane, and said he wanted a letter of recommendation, to be presented to the British when he landed at Mudros. Ms. refused to write such a compromising letter, and, not trusting the Bosnian, disregarded a suggestion that he should be taken as passenger in the proposed flight to Mudros.
Next, Ms. having left the hospital, the Bosnian approached me. Finding that I was a fellow-aviator, his first overtures dealt, innocuously enough, with war-flying in general and his own experiences in particular.
Then, one evening, he announced, with the air of a conspirator, that he was about to tell me an important secret. I knew what was coming, but was careful to pretend ignorance. John Willie—the name by which he became known to us, for we dared not risk suspicion by mentioning his real name when we talked among ourselves in the presence of Turks—thereupon produced an English grammar, and said I must make pretence of teaching him English, so that we might meet each day. He would tell the Turkish doctors that I had become his schoolmaster.
His first suggestion, as we sat down on a shady bench, was that I should write him a letter to take to Mudros. Like Ms., I declined, not knowing what was at the back of his mind. A Turkish corporal passed the bench, whereupon John Willie began mispronouncing some English words, taken at random from the page of the grammar which lay open on his lap.
"If," I said, "you can get me an aeroplane to fly to Mudros myself I will. The book is on the table,das Buch liegt auf dem Tische." This last when the Turkish corporal turned back and glanced at us as he passed a second time.
"Ze book eez on tâbel," repeated John Willie. Then in German, "I was going to suggest the same thing myself."
John Willie proceeded to reveal the reasons why he was so anxious to desert. As a Bosnian, he said, he hated the Austrians, and it was because of this that he entered the Turkish and not the Austrian army. In any case, his mother was of American birth and was now in the United States, while his brother, so he learned, had enlisted in the American army.
His own sympathies were pro-British and pro-American, and it was his earnest desire to join his mother and become naturalized as an American citizen. If, however, he landed at Mudros in Turkish uniform, he would be made a prisoner of war; whereas if, as a guarantee of good faith, he took with him a British prisoner or a letter from a British prisoner, all would be well.
Next he proceeded to give details of his plan, while running his finger over the open page of the English grammar, as if reading from it. In about a fortnight's time he would be discharged from hospital, and through the influence of a friendly staff officer he would be posted to the aerodrome at San Stefano. This aerodrome, situated about twenty miles from Stamboul, was the headquarters of the German pilots who made a pretence of defending Constantinople from British air-raids.
Having got himself appointed orderly officer for the night, and being the only pilot in the neighbourhood of the hangars (for the officers' billets were in San Stefano itself, half a mile from the aerodrome), it would be easy for him to take a petrol-loaded machine into the air, head westward, fly over the Dardanelles to the open sea, and so to Mudros.
"If," continued John Willie, "you can make your way to San Stefano, it will be a simple matter to pick you up near the aerodrome, and to take you as passenger in the back seat."
"But," I objected, "there would be a friend with me. If I fly to Mudros, he also must come."
The Bosnian showed his eagerness by an evident determination to override all suggested difficulties. A two-seated Rumpler, he pointed out, could take, besides the pilot, two men in the observer's cockpit, as had been proven many times. The only drawback was that if three of us travelled in the same machine our combined weight would add at least three-quarters of an hour to the flight for freedom, and if we were chased and attacked an adequate defence would be made difficult. He proposed that I might pilot the two-seater while he followed and pretended to give chase in an Albatross scout. He was more than willing to escort two of us to Mudros if only we would sponsor him with the British authorities, and pay his passage to America.
Several times during the days that followed I plotted with the Bosnian in the garden, always with the English grammar as camouflage for earnest talks. Finally, after discussing every detail, we evolved a plan which seemed workable. When John Willie should have been posted to San Stefano, White and I were to claim that we were cured. We should then be transferred to Psamatia, which was already half-way between Stamboul and San Stefano. He refused to take the risk of helping us to escape from Psamatia, but he would meet us after we should have reached the neighbourhood of the aerodrome. He could arrange to be night orderly officer between two given dates, and during this period he would seek us at the place of rendezvous, at three o'clock each morning.
His plan, having found us, was to go to the hangars, and on the pretence of testing a Rumpler two-seater, take it into the air. He would land in a field near us, keeping his engine ticking over. White and I must run toward him and climb into the rear cockpit. He would leave the ground again immediately, and head for the Dardanelles.
Even taking into account the heavy load of three men, pursuit seemed unlikely, because all the other pilots would be asleep in their billets. In any case, it was improbable that the mechanics from the aerodrome would see us climbing into the Rumpler. We abandoned the suggestion that I should fly the two-seater while the Bosnian gave chase in an Albatross, as we failed to think of a plausible tale for John Willie to tell his mechanics, by way of explaining how the Rumpler could have been stolen from him by strangers.
The Bosnian drew detailed maps, giving the position of the aerodrome in relation to San Stefano station, with the hangars, the officers' mess, and other buildings marked on it. The place of rendezvous was to be the fringe of a small wood that bordered a field southwest of the aerodrome, on the left-hand side of the road to Bulgaria.
John Willie also procured for us a German staff-map, which included the countryside between Psamatia and San Stefano. White and I had decided, however, that our best plan would be to give the guards the slip during the daytime in one of the winding side streets of Stamboul, to buy tickets openly at the railway station, and to travel to San Stefano as ordinary passengers. Using John Willie's pencilled map, we could then find the place of rendezvous and lie low in the wood until the following morning.
Meanwhile, now that Sunday visits to the city were forbidden, I employed the Bosnian as messenger for letters to Theodore. We had in mind the alternative plan of a stowaway voyage from Constantinople across the Black Sea, and we intended to carry it out if John Willie failed us. We could not altogether trust him, for he continued to demand small loans for preliminary expenses. He showed himself, besides, to be both careless and heedless, so that he seemed a far from desirable companion for a desperate adventure. We found that in conversation with some English Tommies, who were patients in another ward, he had boasted of his plan to take White and myself to Mudros; and we feared that any day, with so many people discussing it, the story might be overheard by an English-speaking doctor.
Possibly that is what happened, for I noticed that each time the Bosnian and I met in the garden we were watched closely. One of the patients—a bearded, shifty-looking Turk with one arm in a sling—made it his business to sit on the same bench, and to listen while I pretended to give instruction in the proper pronunciation of English. Although I warned John Willie to be very careful, he failed to realize the danger, and continued to make us all the more conspicuous by talking in a low voice.
One afternoon he approached me with the English grammar open in his hand, and pointed to a folded note which lay on one of its pages. Two Turkish nurses were passing. Seeing that they looked at the book, I turned the page quickly to hide the note. But the nurses had apparently seen everything, for as they entered the door of the hospital they whispered and turned back. A few minutes later the doctor on duty joined us in the garden, and told John Willie that in future it would be forbidden to talk with British prisoners.
Yet we managed three further meetings, which took place at the wash-house in the evening. Then John Willie disappeared suddenly from the hospital, and we were left to our own resources.
We still had his maps of San Stefano; and when the period set for the escape arrived we should know by means of a pre-arranged signal if he was still prepared to take us to Mudros. This was that on the Sunday morning preceding the first date of rendezvous he was to fly over Psamatia in a Nieuport scout, and perform stunts.
Meanwhile, White and I now lacked a go-between. More than ever it was necessary that one or both of us should see Theodore, and try to get into touch with somebody on the Ukranian steamerBatoum, which I could see from our ward window, moored opposite the Sultan's Palace of Dolma Bagtché.
Every request that we might be permitted to visit the shops was refused, and when White asked to see a dentist in Constantinople he was referred to the military dentist in the hospital. We had almost decided to leave for Psamatia before our time, when chance provided a way out.
My fame as a teacher of English had spread through the hospital. Aziz Bey, a young Turkish doctor, arrived at my bedside one morning, with text-books and a request for lessons. I agreed willingly, and in a few days became quite friendly with him over conjugations, and references to the green socks worn by the son of the gardener.
At that time intelligent Turks, many of whom hated the Germans worse even than they hated the Armenians, were just beginning to realize that the Allies might well win the war. In a conversation Aziz Bey referred to this possibility, and expressed admiration for the British. In particular he praised a man named Meester Djavid Loijorge, who, it appeared, was the principal leader of the Allies. Djavid Loijorge, declared Aziz Bey, was a very great man indeed.
It was then that, without any forethought, an inspiration came to me. Remembering the fear inspired in all Turks by such despotic ministers as Talaat Pasha and Enver Pasha, and realizing the consideration that would be paid to any connection of the British Prime Minister, whom Aziz Bey would regard as a kind of western Talaat Pasha, I announced:
"Mr. David Lloyd George is a very great man indeed, and I am his second cousin."
"Really?" said Aziz after a taken-aback pause, with credulity and obvious respect. "I never expected to learn English from a relative of Meester Loijorge."
I hastened to explain that the matter was confidential, and must not be talked about, as I did not wish the Turkish Ministry of War to know it. I relied upon him, as a friend, to keep the relationship secret. He promised, and as far as I know only broke the promise to the extent of telling four or five or ten or twelve friends of his, all of whom treated me with the greatest consideration.
Now I am neither a second cousin of Mr. David Lloyd George nor anxious for such relationship. But in view of the curious circumstances, I was bold enough to believe that the statesman would not have objected to the claim. It needed little persuasion to induce Aziz Bey to take Mr. Lloyd George's second cousin into Constantinople whenever he had a free afternoon; and the chief doctor, who was let into the secret, gave the required permission readily enough.
Aziz and another doctor, whose name I forget, invited me to tea at the Tokatlian Hotel and the Petits Champs Gardens, took me for sails on the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmora, and introduced me, after preliminary whisperings, to several of their friends.
Fortunately for me the news from the Western front was then taking a turn for the better. Hindenburg's great drive was expended, the Germans had been thrown back across the Marne. With each day's telegrams Mr. Lloyd George's second cousin gained further respect; and finally he was given permission to visit the shops of Pera, escorted only by a guard.
I walked over the bridge across the Golden Horn to the Maritza restaurant, and there was fortunate enough to find Prince Constantine Avaloff. He was making inquiries, he said, among the officers of theBatoum, and he thought that, for a suitable bribe, they would be quite willing, when the ship left for Odessa, to take White and myself as stowaways. TheBatoumwas expected to leave in about three weeks' time.
From Avaloff, who was still in touch with Yeats-Brown and Paul, I heard of their adventures after escaping from Psamatia. Yeats-Brown was still at large in the city, dressed in girl's clothes lent him by Miss Whittaker. Paul, from whom Avaloff had just received a letter, was trekking toward the Gulf of Enos with a young Greek waiter from the Maritza as guide. They hoped to put to sea from near Enos, accompanied by a Greek boatman. Paul, who spoke Arabic fluently, was dressed as an Arab. I remembered the tuft of unkempt beard which he had been growing before his escape, and now saw the reason for it.
Meanwhile, a party that included Yeats-Brown and two Turkish officers was waiting in Constantinople on the result of Paul's attempt. If he succeeded, said Avaloff, they would follow in his tracks, and the Greek boatman would return to the Gulf of Enos for them.
White and I decided, out of consideration for Miss Whittaker, not to ask her for any help, as we heard that since the escape of Paul and Yeats-Brown she had been closely watched. The Turkish police suspected her connivance, especially when they learned that she had met them in the park at Stamboul on the day before they left Psamatia. On the following Sunday morning, when, for the first time in three weeks, we were allowed to attend service in the English Church at Pera, we took care never to look in her direction, not knowing whether one of Constantinople's myriad informers might be among the congregation.
For the moment our greatest problem was to obtain funds. We hoped to find a banker in Mr. S., the English merchant who, on his own responsibility and at great risk to himself, had several times cashed large cheques for officers who wanted to escape. We knew several Armenian and Greek merchants, but these we could not induce to supply us with money, as we had no orthodox cheque-books. Such cheques as we cashed on the Dutch Legation, or on Mr. S., were written on sheets of blank paper.
In those days British bombers from Mudros and Imbros were visiting Constantinople every fine moonlit night, and spreading great terror all over the city. Whenever an alarm, false or real, was given, we were wakened by the firing of scores of machine-guns planted on the near-by roofs. Turkish soldiers, who, next to food and wives, love fireworks better than anything on earth, would continue firing into the vacant air for hours, until all their ammunition was exhausted, merely for the pleasure of hearing the rap-rapping. Except on one occasion the bombs themselves did little damage; but many people were killed by the chance-falling bullets from the machine-guns.
Sometimes the aeroplanes came during the daytime; and then, anxious to see some of our own machines, we would race into the garden while the Turks were scurrying from it into the shelter of the hospital. Once a very fat Turkish pasha, with paunch and dignity well to the fore, paid Gumuch Souyou a visit of inspection and happened to be in the middle of the garden when the anti-aircraft firing began. He cast off the dignity, and would doubtless have liked to cast off the paunch, as he raced for the hospital door and inquired for the underground baths.
The Turkish love of fireworks was useful to me during the Mohammedan month of Ramazan. At each sunset guns were fired and puff-balls were exploded, at interval of a few seconds, all round Constantinople. Whenever I went into the city with Aziz Bey I arranged that we should be at sunset near Taxim Gardens, opposite which some puff-balls were exploded. On the first explosion I started violently and began to tremble, then continued to swerve and shiver at each subsequent noise. Having returned to Gumuch Souyou I would demand aspirin and bromide to calm my nerves, which—as Azid Bey could bear witness—must still be in bad condition. This I did because a few days earlier it had been suggested that I was now in a fit state to return to a prisoners' camp; whereas we were still a fortnight from the opening date of rendezvous with John Willie the Bosnian, and from the time when theBatoummight be expected to weigh anchor.
But ill-luck disbanded the queer company in the prisoners' ward of Gumuch Souyou Hospital early in the following week. On the Sunday afternoon, after our visit to the church, White, R., and I visited some of my newly made friends, in a street behind the Tokatlian. Our two guards, bribed for the purpose and placated with a promise that we would return to them in an hour's time, loafed outside the doorway. One of the city's innumerable police spies saw us handing over a fifty-piastre note, and having by inquiries discovered that we were British officers, reported the incident to the War Office. Next morning all but the two mad-men were ordered to Psamatia, at an hour's notice.
White and I were not disappointed at the change for it now wanted but a week to August the 7th, when at three o'clock in the morning we might expect to meet John Willie the Bosnian at the corner of a wood outside San Stefano aerodrome. Meanwhile, there remained the urgent necessity of cashing some cheques on Mr. S.; for only ready money could make possible our escape, whether we flew to Mudros or crossed the Black Sea as stowaways on theBatoum.
CHAPTER X
THE THIRD AND FOURTH FAILURES
"The clothes of the Capitaine Sir Paul," demanded with triumphant satisfaction Zikki Bey, the one-eyed Turkish officer at Psamatia prison. "The Capitaine Sir Paul needs the clothes he left here, because he finds that his Arab dress is unsuitable for the Ministry of War prison."
For the past two days we had heard rumours of Paul's recapture. Yet Zikki Bey's unwelcome confirmation, as he broke in upon a bridge party one evening, was a shock to us. The cards were abandoned as we prepared clothes and food to be sent to whatever cell of the infamous "Black Hole of Constantinople" Paul might have been taken, still dressed in the Arab disguise in which he tried to reach the Gulf of Enos.
The bad news was an especial blow to four of us—White, Fulton, Stone, and myself—for we ourselves were preparing to bolt within a few days. Others regarded it more philosophically. Among the party was a certain Colonel who deprecated attempts to escape, because they reacted on one's fellow-prisoners. He also contended that it was impossible for a Britisher to escape from Turkey.
"I knew it, I knew it," he now said; "they've nabbed Paul, and soon they'll nab Yeats-Brown."
A few days later, having heard that certain others were ready to flit, the Colonel delivered an ultimatum. Already the restrictions at Psamatia were severe, because of the disappearance of Paul and Yeats-Brown. If others went, he contended, life would not be worth living, especially for middle-aged colonels who had prepared medical histories of well-imagined ailments and were hoping to see their names on the list of prisoners to be exchanged as unfit.
"After the war I'll heng, draw, and quarter the next fellow who clears off from Psamatia while I'm here," he told Fulton, Stone, and myself, slapping a knee that rested on the garden wall. "A successful escape can't be done in Turkey, and it's futile to try."
Five days later four of us did clear off from Psamatia. The war is over long since; but for some reason or other we remain unhenged, undrawn, and unquartered. As for the pronouncement that to escape from Turkey was impossible, within six weeks no less than ten men proved the contrary.
White and I had been at Psamatia for ten days. Although expeditions to Stamboul were now forbidden, we managed to go there three times, on the pretence of seeing a dentist. We visited Theodore, and through him received from Mr. S. about three hundred Turkish pounds in return for foolscap-paper cheques.
After very careful consideration we had chosen the plan of crossing the Black Sea as stowaways, in preference to that of trusting John Willie the Bosnian aviator to fly us out of the country. Since his sudden disappearance from the hospital we had heard no definite word of him; unless, indeed, a rumour that a Bosnian officer was in the Ministry of War Prison as a political suspect applied to him.
Moreover, he either failed to give us the signal that he was ready, or gave it otherwise than according to plan. On the Sunday morning preceding the first date of the rendezvous outside San Stefano aerodrome he was to have flown over Psamatia on a Nieuport scout and performed stunts to attract our attention. An aeroplane did fly over Psamatia, and even looped the loop several times; but it was a big two-seater instead of a little Nieuport. Under the circumstances we decided not to risk losing the comparative certainty of a slow journey to freedom via Russia for the dubious uncertainty of a quick flight to Mudros.
Fulton and Stone were glad enough to inherit our arrangements with John Willie, and to take the chance of meeting him at San Stefano. Now that Paul was captured they were at a loose end, for if he had succeeded they would have followed in his footsteps by joining the second party that was to make for the Gulf of Enos. I gave them my map of the aerodrome, showing the place of rendezvous, and also a non-committal note, scribbled in German, which would explain their identity if they met the Bosnian.
For White and myself a passage on the tramp steamerBatoumwas definitely arranged. Prince Avaloff had shown himself to be a too-talkative intermediary; but White met a more useful man in one Lieutenant Vladimir Stepanovitch Wilkowsky, a Polish aviator whom he had known at Afion-kara-Hissar, and who was also planning an early escape. Unlike us, the Russians were still allowed into Stamboul with their guards. Having placated his own particular guard with a bribe, Wilkowsky often crossed the Golden Horn alone. Several times he met Titoff, theBatoum'schief engineer, in cafés at Galata; and finally, after much bargaining, completed arrangements whereby White and I were to travel as stowaways. He himself was also planning an escape to Odessa.
Zikki Bey warned us that everybody at Psamatia would be sent into Anatolia very shortly. White, Fulton, Stone, and I went into conference, and decided to forestall the removal by making our dash two days later, on August the twenty-first. This suited Fulton and Stone, for it would bring them to the period named by the Bosnian aviator. As for White and myself, a hiding-place in Pera, where we could remain until theBatoumsailed, had been arranged by Titoff. A Russian civilian was to conceal us; and, after giving our guards the slip, we were to meet him by appointment at a beerhouse in the Rue de Galata.
On the morning of July the twenty-first all four of us left Psamatia by the ten o'clock train on the little suburban railway that runs between Stamboul and San Stefano. It would be less difficult to dodge the guards if we were in two parties, so Fulton and Stone chose an optician as their excuse for a trip to Stamboul, while White and I were to visit our old friend the dentist. Our real destination was the beerhouse in the Rue de Galata, that of the other pair being the small wood outside San Stefano.
We split up into twos as the train steamed up, Fulton's farewell being "Good-bye, old man. See you in the Ministry of War to-morrow!" He and Stone went into a compartment near the engine, while White and I chose the rear end of the train. All of us hoped to lose our guards among the crowd at Stamboul station.
Ten minutes before we should have reached Stamboul station the god of coincidence sent an extraordinary opportunity. Just beyond Koum-kapou the train rounded a sharp corner, and ran into some empty trucks that were stationary on the line. There was a succession of clangs, a violent shock, and many a jolt and jar, mingled with screams, gasps, and frightened confusion.
One of the two guards with White and I fell on to an iron platform between two carriages. The other, unfortunately, kept both his balance and his head. I was standing a yard in front of him, behind White.
"Now's our chance. I'm off." said White as he pushed his way through the struggling passengers to the farther end of the compartment. I began to follow, but seeing that the guard was already suspicious of White's movements, I slowed down, and pretended to pacify a nervous woman, thus blocking the guard's advance and allowing White more room.
"He's after you," I called, as White turned his head.
In the confusion White misunderstood these words as "I'm with you." Thinking that I was ready to follow him, he edged his way to the steps at the far end of the compartment. The guard, meanwhile, shouted a warning to his companion, who had picked himself up and left the train. This second guard ran toward White along the railway embankment.
White was wearing a cap. In his inside pocket he had a felt hat, his idea being to change headgear in a crowd, so that the guards, looking for a man with a cap, would fail to notice him. I now saw him fling the cap under the carriage, jam the felt hat on his head, descend from the train and jump down the embankment. The guard with me yelled, while the second Turkish soldier leaped down the embankment, clutched at White, and almost caught him.
White dodged clear, and the last I saw of him that day was as he raced down a narrow, winding street, pulling and pushing out of his way the Turks and Greeks who streamed in the opposite direction, towards the scene of the collision. Close behind him the guard gave chase, while commanding passers-by to stop the British prisoner.
I jumped down the embankment, partly in a desperate attempt to elude the other guard, and partly to create a diversion for White. At the bottom of the slope I twisted an ankle and fell. My guard dropped on top of me. We scrambled to our feet, myself unstable on the weak ankle, and the Turk clutching my right arm with both his hands. Under the circumstances it was useless to struggle. I remained quiet, while the guard called to his aid a passing soldier.
I stood at the bottom of the embankment, gripped painfully by the two Turks. The moments that followed were indescribably bitter. White was probably at liberty, with the glorious prospect of a successful escape. I had failed, for the third time since capture, and was probably booked for a cell under the Turkish Ministry of War. My one consolation, my one hope, was in the wads of money distributed among various parts of my clothing. These would provide a chance to bribe the guards into silence, leaving me free for another attempt before the British prisoners at Psamatia were moved to Anatolia.
The three of us remained thus for ten minutes, an unregarded island in the sea of people that surged round the derailed coaches. The shaken passengers were climbing down the slope, the new arrivals were climbing up it to see the wreckage. A few yards away first aid was being administered to an injured woman.
Presently I saw Fulton and Stone, with their guards approaching from the front of the train. They stopped short on seeing me held by two soldiers. I shook my head and signalled them not to come any nearer, whereupon they turned away.
The guard who had chased White returned, alternately cursing and invoking the wrath of Allah on all Englishmen. In his anger he took off his cloth hat, threw it on the ground, shook his fist at me, and said, "English very bad!"
Although White had eluded him he did not give up hope at once, but led us through a maze of alleys and streets, peering forlornly into the doorways of shops and houses and through the gratings of cellars. Finally he held a conference with his companions, and determined to take me to Koum-kapou police station. My ankle, I was glad to find, had been ricked only slightly, and was now normal again.
"English very bad," said the man who had chased White, in the clipped Turkish used between prisoners and guards. "We"—pointing to himself and my own guard—"prison. Prison very bad. No food."
"Here is food for prison," I consoled him, handing over two Turkish pounds.
The sight of money partly pacified them, and their anger cooled. Soon they were in a fit state of mind to talkbaksheesh, that touchstone of the Turkish character.
I produced ten more banknotes, each of one Turkish pound. Again using pidgin-Turkish, with many an expressive gesture, I offered them to the guards, on condition that when we reached the police station they would say that although White had escaped I made no attempt to do so.
The matter needed several minutes of explanation before misunderstandings were cleared up, so that we withdrew into a side street. The two guards needed little persuasion to make them accept. Thereupon the third man (the soldier who helped to hold me at the bottom of the embankment) demanded a share. To satisfy him I was forced to produce a further sum of five Turkish pounds. He saluted and left us.
The two guards carried on an animated talk for some time longer, and, as far as I could understand, discussed what tale to the police would show them in the best light. They decided, apparently, not to admit having seen White escape and let him give them the slip, but to claim that he vanished when we were all knocked down by the collision.
I remembered that the food supplies in my pockets might be incriminating evidence. I had, also, a dangerous slip of paper, on which Wilkowsky had drawn a plan of the Galata beerhouse in which I was to meet Titoff's Russian friend. This I disposed of by tearing it into shreds behind my back, and dropping the fragments, a few at a time, as in a paper chase.
The packets of food were rather more difficult to lose. There was a tin of Oxo cubes, which I flung surreptitiously on to a dust-heap. Some sticks of bivouac chocolate I left on a convenient windowsill. The worst problem was a small bag containing a mixture of cocoa and grape-nuts, taken from one of White's parcels from home. I could scarcely throw this away unobserved; and the police station was already in sight.
A woman stood in the doorway, and gazed at us. As we brushed past her on the narrow pavement, I took the bag from my pocket, dumped it into her hand, and moved on without a word or a sign. When, from a few yards ahead, I looked back, she had opened the bag and was staring in wide-eyed surprise at the cocoa—then quite unobtainable in Constantinople—which had fallen as from heaven.
The guards told a rambling tale to the police officer, who took notes of their description of White and sent out three gendarmes to search the streets for him. Afterward I was taken into an inner room and searched. Nothing was found to brand me as a suspect. The pockets were quite empty; and my larger banknotes—one of a hundred Turkish pounds, one of fifty, and one of twenty-five—were undiscovered, being sewn into suspenders and braces.
Finally, as a result of the twelve Turkish pounds' worth of good character given me by the guards, I continued the journey to the military dentist in Stamboul, after a guard had telephoned the news of White's disappearance to Psamatia.
Desperate after my failure in face of White's success, I made an unwise bolt for freedom across the ruins of a recent fire. Before the guards had recovered from their surprise, I reached a half-demolished wall at the far end of an open space. I shinned over the wall, and found myself in a blind alley. Straight ahead was a house; and another building cut off the exit to the right. To the left was a bare wall, too high to be climbed. I turned round, walked back to meet the now furious guards, and handed them another pound note apiece. They gasped; but a sense of humour dissolved their rage into laughter.
We continued to walk toward Stamboul, each of my arms now being held tightly. Several times I heard the guards mention Theodore, so that I was not surprised when they led me into a small café near the quay (the Maritza restaurant being then out of bounds for prisoners), where one of them stayed with me while the other fetched the Greek waiter to act as interpreter.
"First," said Theodore after he had listened to the guards' story, "you must give parole for the rest of the day."
I agreed readily enough; and over pots of beer—I only met one Mohammedan guard whose religious principles prevented him from accepting alcoholic drink in a secluded spot—the party became more amiable. The Turks' object in fetching Theodore was that he might explain to me a story which would saddle them with a minimum of blame for White's escape. If I corroborated this yarn they would agree not to mention my own misdeeds to the commandant at Psamatia. Again I accepted.
We discussed and amended the story, which in its final form was divided into four parts—(1) a train collision; (2) a shock that knocked the four of us over and separated guards from prisoners; (3) the confusion; (4) the discovery that White had disappeared, unknown to the rest of the party.
Through Theodore I now offered the guards fifty Turkish pounds if they would turn their backs and let me walk out alone. They refused regretfully, saying that to lose two prisoners in one day would be as much as their lives were worth. They reminded me of my promise, and we left the café for the dentist's surgery, where I was obliged to allow a perfectly sound tooth to be stopped.
Back at Psamatia I found all the prisoners shut up in their rooms. The Turkish commandant was raving with rage. As we entered the arched doorway he rushed from his office, and boxed the guards' ears. They bore it without a sound, comforted no doubt by the six Turkish pounds which each of them had concealed in his clothing.
We told our separate but corroborative tales, how we had been knocked over by the shock and missed White in the confusion. White was queer in the head, I explained; and it was possible that having been further unbalanced by the collision he wandered away, not knowing where he was going. The commandant, ready to clutch at anything that might save his official knuckles from a rapping, affected to take the suggestion seriously, and embodied it in his report. He affected to hope that White would recover memory and senses, and return of his own free will.
Later that evening the commandant, after telephonic communication with the Ministry of War, ordered all the British prisoners to prepare for a journey into Anatolia on the following day. With Fulton and Stone, who returned from their visit to the optician without having had a chance to escape, I conferred on how we could get clear in the short time left to us.
Fulton and Stone planned to leave the prison-house during the night, but I decided to wait until morning. They wanted to leave Constantinople for San Stefano, whereas I wanted to remain in the city; and if I escaped before dawn I should have nowhere to spend the night hours, and so lay myself open to the curiosity of gendarmes. In any case, I was uncertain whether or not my parole, given to the guards, ought to extend till midnight.
The three of us occupied the same bedroom. A small window from the adjoining lavatory opened on to a drainpipe. It was decided that Fulton should climb up this pipe to the roof, until he was firmly established on the gutter. Stone would hand him a rope and their boots, and then himself climb the drainpipe. They would crawl along a succession of roofs, keeping in the shadow, until they reached the top of a house about fifty yards distant, which overlooked a side street outside the camp sentries' range of vision. Having fastened the rope to a chimney or to some other stable object, they could let themselves down to the road when it was conveniently deserted, with the boots slung round their necks. They planned to tramp the fifteen miles to San Stefano during the night, leaving Constantinople via the gate at Yedi-kuli.
That evening the sentries in the yard, stimulated by White's escape, were more alert than usual. Another drawback was the full moon, which for some hours lit up the corner outside the window. Not until just before midnight were conditions, in the form of shadow and an absent guard, suitable for the adventure.
With feet covered only by a pair of thick socks Fulton climbed through the tiny window, gripped a bend of the drainpipe, and made use of a metal joint for foot-hold. Stone, holding the rope and the boots, watched from the window. Fulton gripped the gutter and was beginning to haul himself up when—crunch!—the top of the flimsy drainpipe was severed from the roof by his weight, and he fell.
Instinctively he released his feet from the joint on which they had been resting. He thus managed to land on all fours in the yard, about fifteen feet below.
The noise, however, was startling. Stone and I expected every second that Fulton would be discovered, but with great presence of mind he jumped up and ran into our room, through the near-by door, before anybody had time to investigate.
An upper window opened noisily, and from it a Turkish officer, awakened by the sound of Fulton's fall, yelled to the guards. Within five minutes the yard was full of a disordered commotion. An excited group collected round the portion of the drainpipe which was lying on the ground.
Meanwhile, Fulton and Stone had torn off their outer clothing. When Zikki-Bey paid us a visit of suspicious inspection, the three of us were seemingly asleep. Soon afterward the chattering and clattering in the yard subsided. Fortunately a strong wind was blowing, and we heard afterward that the Turks thought a violent gust must have dislodged the drainpipe.
With nerves on edge and all our faculties keyed up, there was little sleep for the rest of that night. Our only remaining chance was to escape next morning, when we passed through the city on the way to the railway station.