CHAPTER XIIIN THE HILLSIn the hills of Gallipoli, between Uzundere and Biyuk Anafarta near the Salt Lake, a platoon of Kurdish troops had just joined a half-company of Anatolians. They were taking their midday meal on a level stretch of turf some seven hundred feet above sea-level. It was the only clear space of considerable size in a wilderness of scrub. Below them ran the rough track from Biyuk Anafarta to Boghali. The hill of Sari Bair, nearly three hundred feet above them, blocked the direct view to the nearest part of the sea; but north and south of that eminence the blue waters were clearly visible. The horizon was dotted with dark shapes, no doubt warships and transports of the Allied fleet. To the south, over the lower hills between them and Boghali, they looked down upon the Narrows, with Kilid Bahr on the European shore and Chanak on the Asiatic. To the north-east stretched the Dardanelles above the Narrows, and here too vessels, but Turkish, were passing up and down.It would have been apparent to the most casual observer that the arrival of the Kurds was not welcome to their Anatolian brethren-in-arms. The Kurd has a habit of assuming a swaggering air of superiority. The Anatolians were in charge of a captain and a lieutenant, the Kurds of a lieutenant only; but this latter officer, seated with the others a little apart from the men, was treating the captain as though he were a subaltern. Ignoring his inferiority in rank, he had questioned and cross-questioned in a bumptious way that raised the captain's gall. As the captain remarked in an undertone to his lieutenant, this barbarous Kurd could not have been more insolent if he had been a German. And as it was with the officers, so with the men. They ate their simple food together, but the Anatolians maintained a sullen silence amid the loud talking of the Kurds. When it was a question of fetching water from the stream that flowed through the rocky bottom below, it was two of the Anatolians who were told off to the job by the Kurdish sergeant, and went sulkily to obey.The Kurdish lieutenant was holding forth to the other officers."Wallahy!" he said. "Here I am, but it is not where I would wish to be. The fight against odds is the breath of his nostrils to a Kurd. If there had been a few squadrons of Kurds in Egypt the other day we should have been in Cairo by now.""But there were Kurds--many Kurds," the captain ventured to remark. "It was told me by my cousin in a letter.""Ahi! Are we in Cairo? In truth we are not. I repeat, if there had been Kurds we should have been in Cairo. Therefore there were no Kurds. Mashallah! Did not Liman Pasha whisper in my ear, the day after we set foot in Gallipoli, 'With ten thousand Kurds, noble Abdi, we could conquer the world. Therefore take me now twenty of your excellent men and catch this Englishman. Have we not had for ten days half a company of Anatolian asses on the trail?'"This was more than even an Anatolian captain could stand."You wish to insult me?" he cried."Wallahy! What is this? Insult you? I do but repeat the Alman Pasha's words. Mayhap I understood him wrongly; but it seemed to me that he spoke of Anatolian asses. Who am I to correct him? But come now, tell me what you have done and where you have been; what caves you have searched, what woods you have beaten."Unwillingly, sulkily, the captain gave particulars of his doings during the past few days. He felt that though nominally in command as senior officer, the Kurd was in reality superseding him. And he resented the implication that he had failed in what was at best a thankless task.Some ten days before, his information had been, an Englishman disguised as an Armenian had been recognised in Gallipoli as a fugitive from Erzerum. How he had contrived to reach Gallipoli was a mystery. Before he could be arrested by the person who had discovered him, he had made a violent attack on that person, and escaped to the hills. When the alarm was given, the Anatolian captain had been sent in pursuit. About sunset a peasant had seen an Armenian who answered to the description of the fugitive crossing the Karaman river near the Bergas road. Darkness prevented his being followed up, but the hunt was resumed at dawn next morning. It had proved fruitless hitherto. The captain complained that not a hundred, but ten thousand men would be required to beat thoroughly those rugged brush-covered hills."Think of it!" he said. "Climbing up and down these almost perpendicular hill-faces; through dense scrub; down one side of a valley, across a stream or a swamp and up the other side; beating bushes; exploring hill caves; searching secluded farms--and all the time without proper food. We were sent away in a hurry. 'Hunt till you find him,' was the order. We had two days' rations, and since then have had to depend on what we could pick up at the farms, and they, as you know, are in lonely places far apart. And we have not so much as caught sight of this elusive Englishman, though we have heard of him often enough. Wallahy! a farmer at Taifur Keui told me that a young Armenian had walked uninvited into his house and demanded food, holding a revolver to his head. Stricken with amazement and terror at this boldness on the part of an Armenian dog--but in truth a famished dog is bold as a lion--the farmer gave him bread and honey, and having satisfied himself, he paid for his entertainment and went away composedly and without haste, threatening to shoot any man that followed him. This being told me, I hunted diligently for two days through the Taifur district, and behold, it was then related that the fugitive had appeared at Kum Keui, ten miles away on the high-road, and there he had waylaid a supply wagon, and taken for himself a great quantity of the good things it contained, and forced the driver to unyoke the mules, and when this was done in fear and trembling because of the revolver, this bold brigand caused the wagon to run down a sloping place and over a precipice into the Ak Bashi river.""Mashallah! These are marvels indeed," said the Kurd, "and there is no truth in them. But say on, captain; let my ears feast on these fairy tales.""I speak what I have heard; as for the truth, Allah knows. It was told me also that the dog was seen at Kachili and Kuchuk Anafarta, but when I came to those places and was searching every nook and cranny, behold, one brought me word that he had been seen elsewhere. Yesterday, as I live, a major of artillery came wearily into Maidos, sick with shame at the garments he wore, which in very truth were the rags of an Armenian. And he told me that when he was riding without escort on the Gallipoli road near Boghali yonder, a young giant that was Armenian in dress but a very devil in mien and bearing leapt forth suddenly from the bushes of the wayside, and laying a mighty hand upon him, dragged him from his horse, and compelled him there and then to exchange his uniform for those filthy tatters the Armenian wore. Yet did the major confess that his ravisher was not without courtesy, for even as he put on the major's heavy coat he prayed his pardon for the robbery, saying that he would fain have left him the coat, but that he could not, because the nights in these hills are bitter cold. And that this is truth I tell is sure, for that same day--yesterday in the afternoon--an officer of artillery was seen, alone, above Baghche Keui, the hamlet you see below us yonder. And I came last night in haste to Biyuk Anafarta, and rose with the dawn, and for six hours I have been scouring these hills, and not a glimpse of that bold Englishman have I seen.""Wallahy! Truly it was time I came," said the Kurd. "Know you that it was I, Abdi, that found the Englishman searching for treasure in the ruins of a house in Gallipoli which an English shell had smitten. It was I, Abdi, whom the dog, taking me unawares--who can contend against deceitfulness?--hurled fainting to the ground. To me should have been given the task of hunting the dog; now to me it is given; and by the beard of the Prophet I will catch him and flay him; I, Abdi, say it."While the others were thus conversing, some of the men, having finished their meal, had got up and begun to stroll about the hillside. Others had gone down to fill their water-bottles at a spring that bubbled out of the rock some two hundred yards from the spot where the officers were sitting. Abdi, lighting a cigarette, watched them with a speculative eye."Your Anatolians may stray too far," he said. "That will not my Kurds do. Come now, let us make our plans. We must beat these hills as we beat for bear in Kurdistan. See, here and there below us are clear spaces in the scrub. Into the scrub between them I will send my own men; them I can trust to let nothing pass, not a rabbit nor a stoat nor any small creeping thing; they are not plainsmen, blind and deaf. Your Anatolians shall move six paces apart towards the spot where my mountaineers are posted: even they, surely, cannot let anything through so small a mesh. You will form them up in a crescent line, the horns pointing to where my men lurk in the scrub. So shall we beat a large circle, and if our quarry is not started there, we will go on and do likewise farther afield."They flung away the ends of their cigarettes, rose to their feet, and blew their whistles. From various directions the men hurried back, the Anatolians lining up on one side of the open space, the Kurds on the other. When the ranks were formed and numbered off, a Kurdish sergeant called out:"There is a man short. Where is Yusuf?"The men looked up and down the line, as if seeking their missing comrade; then one of them said:"I saw him go down to fill his bottle."The sergeant blew his whistle, and took a few paces in the direction of the stream. A few minutes passed. The absentee did not appear. The sergeant reported his absence to Abdi."Take a couple of men and look for him," said the Kurd, twirling his moustache.The three men went off and disappeared over the brow of the hill. Presently there were shouts from below, and one of the men came back at a run, saluted his officer, and cried excitedly:"We have found Yusuf, effendim, lying on his back, with his hands and feet tied with his own straps, and his cap thrust between his teeth."Abdi scowled, and would not meet the Anatolian captain's eye. In another moment the missing man appeared over the crest, led between the sergeant and his comrade."What is this, Yusuf?" demanded Abdi roughly, going to meet the man, whose bare head was streaming with water."Wallahy! I have been most grievously entreated. I was filling my bottle at the stream there below when there came a step behind me, which I heeded not, thinking one of my comrades had come to fill his bottle likewise. And then, behold, a strong hand seized me, and thrust my head under the water, and held it there until I well-nigh burst for want of breath; and when all the strength was gone out of me I was cast upon the ground, and my wet cap was thrust between my teeth, and my hands and feet were tied, and I was left half dead.""Who was it did this thing?" asked Abdi."Truly I know not, but he had the form of a major of our army, if in the confusion of my senses I could see aright.""Where is your rifle?""It was taken from me, together with my pouch and the hundred cartridges therein."Abdi spat and cursed, twirling his moustache more fiercely than ever. His fury was increased by a look of amusement on the faces of the Anatolian officers. Aggrieved that a Kurd should have been sent to make good their deficiencies, and enraged by his insolent and overbearing manner, they took no pains to conceal their delight in the discomfiture of the boaster at the hands of the man whose rumoured exploits he had derided and whom he had declared his intention of flaying. His chagrin almost reconciled them to the escape of the fugitive whom they had been vainly hunting for a week.But the incident spurred them to activity. The fugitive could not be far away. Here was an opportunity of proving whether Kurd or Anatolian was the better man. Abdi's deliberate dispositions were forgotten or ignored. While Abdi led his men at a furious pace in the direction of the stream, the Anatolian captain ordered his party to extend and advance methodically through the scrub. The hunt was up.Some two hours later a young man in the uniform of a major of Turkish artillery, but carrying a rifle, might have been seen threading his way through the dense scrub on the northern slopes of Sari Bair. Reaching a point where it was possible to obtain a good view to the north-east, he looked cautiously around, halted and listened. There was no sound but the whistling of the wind through the bushes. After a moment's hurried survey of his surroundings, he discovered a spot where he could see without being seen, unslung his field-glasses, and swept the opposite slope of Karsilar. For some little time the glasses moved slowly from left to right, then the watcher held them stationary and took a long and steady gaze. A line of figures was moving like ants across a clear space and disappearing into the scrub beyond. A little later they reappeared in another break in the vegetation, working towards Baghche Keui.Apparently satisfied, he shut up the glasses, and returned them to their case. The name of the maker caught his eye."Good English glasses!" he murmured, as men do who have lived for some time alone. "I am uncommonly obliged to you, my dear major. I needed something to equalise the odds."CHAPTER XIIISHARING A SEPULCHREKeeping well under cover, Frank worked his way upwards through the scrub round the north-east shoulder of Sari Bair. Every now and then he stopped, as it were to "sniff the air." He smiled to himself, thinking how like his movements must be to those of a fox that knows that the hounds are out. "I can believe now," he thought, "the huntsman's theory that the enjoyment is not all on one side."From the height to which he had now ascended he had a bird's-eye view of the pretty little village of Biyuk Anafarta, surrounded by tall and stately cypresses, lying below him in a gap in the hills to the north. He paused for a moment to admire the scene. Just above him was the head of a nullah forming a ravine on the northern face of Sari Bair, and joining as a tributary a larger nullah running westward past the village to the sea. A hundred yards up the hill a large cedar jutted out from the side of the nullah, here only a few feet deep, and towered above the prevailing scrub. Six or eight paces from the tree, near the bank of the nullah, there appeared the stone door of an ancient sepulchre, probably dating back before the Christian era. The stones were perfectly cut and squared, and solidly cemented together. The weather of twenty centuries had but lightly touched them.At this point Frank redoubled his precautions. The vegetation grew closely about the sepulchre; this solitude was apparently never visited by men; but he could not afford to leave anything to chance. He dropped into the nullah some eighty yards below the tree, and carefully worked his way up the bed of the ravine. Arriving at the tree, he took a final look round, pulled himself up by the roots, and climbed up on the western side, having the massive trunk between him and the men who were hunting for him far away to the east.At the first big fork the tree was hollow. Letting himself down within the hollowed trunk, he stood upon a litter of leaves, brushwood, and soft detritus, which he stooped in the semi-darkness to stir over. After a while he uncovered a hole about two feet across. Through this he wriggled, into a narrow passage not high enough to walk erect in, ending in a small square room a little higher than the passage, but still too low for the upright posture.The air was full of the sickly odour of decay. A feeble light filtered through a number of tube-like orifices bored in the stone on one wall of the room. At the further end, reaching almost from the floor to the roof, stood two enormous earthen jars. They were filled with human bones. This little room was the interior of the sepulchre.Frank had discovered the place by accident a day or two before. He had climbed the tree to learn, if he could, the whereabouts of his pursuers, and discovered the hollow trunk. Thinking that this would afford a secure hiding-place in case of need, though the quarters would in truth be rather cramped, he had dropped down and started to clear a space for sleeping. It was then that, in lifting a mass of brushwood, he had discovered the passage and the chamber beyond.The discovery set his imagination at work. The building was obviously so much older than the tree that this strange connection between them must be an afterthought. Within the sepulchre he found some articles of Greek pottery which suggested an explanation. Back in the middle ages the peninsula of Gallipoli, then a Greek possession, was overrun by the conquering Ottoman Turks. Was it not possible that some Greek fugitive, fleeing before the barbarians, had lighted upon this hollow tree just as he himself had done, and cut a passage through it into the ancient and forgotten tomb? How many centuries had passed before the Byzantine fugitive, if such he was, had intruded upon the solitude of its fleshless inhabitants?The stories which the Anatolian captain had related to Abdi did not exaggerate the truth. Frank had acted on the impulse of the moment in hurling Abdi into the ruins of Benidin's bomb-shelled house. He had not taken a moment's thought for the future, nor indeed, after his shattering experiences, was he in a condition to think collectedly. All that he was conscious of was a desperate anxiety to get as far from the Kurd as possible. He ran into the gathering dusk, retaining just enough presence of mind to direct his course away from the lower town. Benidin's house was on the outskirts, and in a few minutes he came into open country. He had met no one, but hearing the rumble of an approaching wagon ahead, he left the road and struck off into the rough ground at the side.It was now dark. He checked his pace, to recover breath and self-possession. What was he to do? Kopri had perhaps returned by this time in the vessel which was to convey him back to Constantinople, but to retrace his steps and seek the harbour was more than he dared. On regaining his senses the Kurd would certainly raise the hue and cry through the town: Gallipoli would be too hot for the fugitive. What then was left? It had been suggested that he should seek safety in Bulgaria, but the frontier was far away, he had no guide, and he had been so shaken by the recent explosion that he felt a nervous dread of the encounters that were inevitable if he attempted to find his way through strange country. A better course, he thought, was to hide among the hills for a few days, until he had recovered his nerve and will-power. With money in his pocket and a command of the Turkish tongue he might purchase food in some hill village or at some outlying farm.Guiding himself, therefore, by the stars, he struggled on for a while towards the hilly district south-westwards, intending presently to take refuge in some sheltered spot where he might pass the night. As he went he remembered that off the south-west extremity of the peninsula lay the British fleet; but at this moment the fleet seemed as remote from him as the stars themselves. After a time he heard noises below him--the creaking of carts, the voices of men; at short intervals he saw faint lights. Clearly there was a road beneath, and a convoy was on the road. He stood still; listened; watched. The convoy was moving in the opposite direction to his own course, and from the sound of the wagons he inferred that they were empty. Then they must be returning from the forts at the further end of the peninsula. He knew nothing about the geography of the interior of this tongue of land; but he was aware that a road ran close to the shore of the Dardanelles. That must be a shorter route to the forts than this second road, which apparently traversed the centre of the peninsula; and in a moment or two it occurred to him that the Turko-Germans employed the longer road in returning their "empties" in order to avoid congestion on the more direct route.Frank waited until the convoy had passed, then groped his way down to the road. It was so dark now that he might trudge the highway with little risk of discovery, and with a greater chance of finding a hovel where with good luck he might take shelter. But fatigue overcame him before he had gone more than a few miles, and he climbed up the hillside again, threw himself down under the lee of a rock upon a stretch of moss, and wrapping his sheepskin garment around him, slept until the verge of dawn.Resuming his way over the hills, within sight of the road, he saw by and by in the distance a village of considerable size. He was hungry, but his heart failed him; he felt that he could not face inquisitive villagers, and endure their cross-questioning. He passed above the village and went on. From the distance came the rumble of guns. Presently he caught sight of a farm in a hollow of the hills, and turned his steps towards it. As he drew nearer to it he became more and more nervous. How was he to account for himself? What story could he invent that would pass muster with people who probably seldom saw a stranger, and would certainly be suspicious? He could not think of anything that seemed plausible; yet he must have food, and at length, with the courage of desperation, he resolved to throw off the mask. He obtained food there at the point of his revolver, and betook himself with it to a thicket on the hill-top beyond, where having assuaged his hunger he slept through the rest of the day and the night.Next morning he finished his provisions and set off again on his journey--no longer aimless, for during the night the idea had come to him of making his way to the coast and swimming out to one of the British vessels whose guns he had heard. The project had seemed to him, in the hours of darkness, wonderfully easy; but in the cold light of morning it assumed, as such night thoughts often do, a very different complexion. "Silly ass!" he thought. "The ships will be miles out. I'd never get to them." And his mind was soon occupied with more immediate concerns.Looking back from his elevated position along the road, he perceived a number of soldiers, not marching in orderly ranks on the highway, but dotted here and there on the heights on either side. In a moment it flashed upon him that the troops were on his trail. This conviction acted as a tonic. There was a definite danger to contend with, a problem on which to exercise his wits. To proceed directly on his former course would be fatal. His best chance of ultimate escape was to worry the pursuers in the difficult hill country and tire them out. And so he had commenced that brief career of semi-brigandage which had up to the present supplied his needs and stimulated his mental activity. Now and then, of course, he was sunk deep in depression. He was very much alone, surrounded by enemies, often hungry, still more often very cold; but the necessity for constant exertion helped him to conquer despondency, and prevented him from dwelling over long on the darker side of things.Now, as he squatted on the couch of leaves which he had made for himself on the floor of the sepulchre, he pondered his situation seriously and with anxiety. It was clear that a determined effort was being made to capture him, and he ruefully acknowledged to himself that the very successes he had had in obtaining food, clothes, and arms would tell against him: they furnished his pursuers with an additional motive. The troops would certainly begin a methodical search of Sari Bair. They could not fail to discover the door of the sepulchre, and though this was sealed, and there was no entrance to the place from the ground, the entrance through the tree might be discovered by one of them in the same accidental way as in his own case. Fortunately, the surrounding rocks were too hard to show tell-tale traces of his footsteps, but if the pursuers should continue to haunt the neighbourhood, he might find himself compelled to remain in hiding, and the idea of being cooped up in these narrow gloomy quarters was far from inspiriting. The tomb was in truth a dismal abode. The sepulchral vases were not cheerful pieces of furniture. On the previous night he had had an attack of nerves, and climbed into the fork of the tree to sleep. But the physical discomfort due to the attentions of innumerable insects was less endurable than the intangible companionship of ghosts, and ashamed of his weakness he had clambered down again, and fallen asleep to the dull boom of British guns bombarding the forts."Well, I've got a rifle and ammunition now," he thought, as he settled himself for his second night's sleep in the tomb. "But I dare not go game-shooting with them. To-morrow I shall have to go foraging again. I'm getting tired of this."CHAPTER XIV'A CHIEL AMANG THEM'Next morning he woke late. Climbing into the tree, he saw that the sun was already many degrees up the sky. He looked around, up and down the nullah. No one was in sight. He clambered to the ground and made his way carefully to the hill-top, taking cover of the scrub. From this post he had a view, on the one side, of the upper channel of the Dardanelles, above the Narrows; on the other, of the waters of the Ægean. Vessels were to-day, as on previous days, moving up and down the former. One small craft, apparently a motor launch, which he had noticed before, was again slipping across the channel towards Chanak, the township which he could clearly see on the opposite shore. No doubt it had started from Maidos, which was tucked away under the hills beneath him: he had seen it many times from the deck of a steamer."Lucky beggars!" he thought, envying the occupants of the launch as he watched it through his borrowed field-glasses, and recalling trips, among the most enjoyable of his experiences, at home and in the Sea of Marmora."Now to forage," he said to himself.It was unlikely that the pursuers, after the excitement of yesterday, had abandoned the hunt, and in descending the hill he used as much caution as though they were still in sight. His destination was a small farm which he had noticed standing by itself some little distance westward of the village of Biyuk Anafarta: the village itself, of course, he durst not venture into. His progress was slow, for in flitting prudently from one patch of scrub to another, he had to make considerable detours to avoid more or less open spaces. Every now and again, too, he stopped to listen, placing his ear to the ground.Coming after some hours' difficult wandering to the outskirts of the plantations about the village, he was alarmed to see a herd of cattle in the charge of several herdsmen moving along the rough track that led past the farm, the direction in which he had himself intended to go. It was unsafe to continue his journey at present. He took a drink from a hill stream, and plunged into a thicket, resolving, in spite of his hunger, to wait there until late in the afternoon, when movements along the road were likely to have ceased.It was about four o'clock when he ventured to leave his hiding-place. There was no sign of movement in the hills. In the distance smoke was rising from the village chimneys. Stealing his way as carefully as before, he struck off in the direction of the farm. The husbandmen, as he had hoped, were still at work in the fields. There would not be many persons at the farm.Taking advantage of every inequality of the ground he crept to the back of the homestead--a small stone-built place with wooden byres and barns attached. He was well aware that the methods which had formerly served him could not be employed now. Without doubt his description had been circulated throughout Gallipoli. Whether he offered to buy food, or sought to extort it, he would run equal risk. Even if he escaped the hands of the country people, eager to obtain the reward which had probably been offered for his capture, he could not show himself without their putting the troops on his track. With every man's hand against him he could not afford to indulge the scruples that would be natural to him in normal circumstances. He meant to obtain food as quickly and as secretly as possible. But he was not going to steal. He would take what he could find, but leave a fair price.All was quiet around the farm. Gaining the outbuildings undetected, he slipped along under cover of them until he had nearly reached what was apparently the kitchen: a light smoke rose from the chimney above. More than once during his excursions he had realised how greatly his difficulties would have been increased if the dog were as popular in Turkey as in England. He had not the watchful farmyard dog to fear. The action which had cleared Constantinople of the curs that used to infest its streets seemed to have its counterpart in other parts of the country: at any rate, he had not hitherto been worried by dogs.But he found now, with as much surprise as consternation, that he had another kind of guardian to reckon with. He had almost reached what he supposed to be the kitchen when a small flock of geese advanced towards him in a mass with much hissing and cackling. There was no alternative but to beat a prompt retreat. He slipped through the open doorway of one of the outbuildings, closed the door behind him, and seeing another door ajar at the further end he hastened towards it, took a cautious peep outside and passed into the open. A glance round the corner of the wall showed him a middle-aged woman--dressed in the rusty black which the male Turk, himself inclined to bright colours, thinks appropriate to his women folk--hurrying from the kitchen to ascertain why the watchful geese were protesting so noisily.Here was his chance. He darted across the open space between himself and the kitchen, peeped in at the open door, and seeing that the room was empty slipped inside. From the upper floor came the voices of children. There was no time to waste. Frank knew nothing about the room except that it was large, that a pot was on the fire, and that some flat loaves of bread, recently baked, stood in a row upon a slab of stone beside the oven. Without a moment's hesitation he began to cram these into the capacious pockets of his military great-coat, and was on the point of taking out some money to replace them on the slab when he heard the woman returning, grumbling audibly at the geese for the needless interruption of her cooking.To escape by the door was impossible without being seen. The wooden steps in the corner invited him to the upper floor, but the children's voices repelled. There was no other door. He was caged. He was just making up his mind to brazen it out and trust to his ready wit in explaining his intrusion to the housewife when his eye fell on the long wide board, set against one wall and raised a few inches from the floor, which serves the humble Turk as a sleeping-place. On the impulse of the moment he tiptoed across the room, dropped to the floor, and was just able to wriggle under the board before the woman entered. For a moment he was doubtful whether, quick as he had been, the woman had not caught sight of the skirts of his coat, and he pressed himself against the wall in a fever of anxiety. But she clumped across the floor straight to her cooking pot, the sizzling of which mingled with her exclamations of annoyance. She stirred the pot, made up the fire, called to the children to go to sleep--and noticed that some of the loaves were gone."You limbs of Shaitan!" she called up the stairs. "Bring down those loaves. Gluttons you are. Did I not give you a supper fit for princes? Bring down the loaves, I say."Shrill voices answered her. A boy came half-way down the steps and protested that neither he nor his brothers or sisters had left their room above."Wallahy! are there evil djinni abroad?" exclaimed the woman. "Get you to bed. Allah preserve us! What will the man say when he returns?"She went to the door and looked out for her husband; it was time for him to come for his evening meal. Frank already regretted his hasty action. If only the woman would go out! If only she had not believed her small son, but had gone upstairs to prove him! Apparently he was a truth-teller. Frank felt himself condemned to a long and wearisome detention. The farmer would return; he would eat his supper; then rugs would be spread on the board, and the good people would sleep there. How in the world was he to get away without disturbing them? Meanwhile he could at least eat some of the bread which the woman supposed had been spirited away.The woman came back to her cooking. Frank's nose was tantalised by the savoury smell of the ragout simmering in the pot. It was growing dusk, and the woman lighted a small oil-lamp, then sat down on the board, muttering incantations against evil spirits. Presently footsteps and voices were heard from outside. The woman rose hastily to her feet and went to the door. A man's voice said a few words, which Frank could not catch. The woman responded with exclamations of surprise and annoyance. Then they came into the room, followed by several pairs of legs. Frank started and shrank more closely against the wall. In the dim light on the floor beyond his hiding-place he saw military boots. There were still loud voices outside. He heard the farmer speaking."It is a humble place, effendim, but you are welcome.""Ahi! That stew has a savoury smell. I have an appetite. Haste you, woman, and set before us what you have in the pot."Three pairs of legs moved towards the board. Three heavy forms dropped upon it, with clanking of accoutrements. The wood groaned above Frank's head. A chill perspiration broke out upon his skin. He was in the midst of his pursuers.So narrow was the space between the board and the floor that, lying flat, he could not lift his head more than two or three inches without striking it. To this grovelling posture he saw himself condemned for an indefinite period. He groaned in spirit. What an ass he had been! He breathed dust and smells; the air was stifling; how long could he endure it? Suppose he sneezed!--the very thought made his blood run cold, and he pinched his nose in anticipation.Meanwhile the three officers above him were conversing until their meal should be ready. Frank's attention was distracted from his woes to the conversation rumbling on above his head."Mashallah! It is useless," he heard one say: he thought it was Abdi."But the shells do enormous damage when they hit," said the Anatolian captain."True, but what do they hit? It is marvellous, I grant you, that they hit anything at all--anything of value--when the guns are miles away and the gunners can see no mark, and without their aeroplanes they would have wrought less havoc even than they have done. But what then? They cease bombarding, and our engineers repair the damage with exceeding swiftness.""Taught by the Germans," remarked the lieutenant."Ahi, the Germans! Your masters!""And yours.""Not so, by the Beard! We Kurds will never own them as masters. They are great men of war, truly, great devisers of machines; no soulless man, such as you Anatolians and the English, can stand against them. But if they think to crush the free spirits of us Kurds in their machinery--wallahy! I hate them.""Think you the English have no souls?" asked the captain. "That wily fellow we are hunting has, methinks, a spirit free as yours.""Allah choke him!" growled the Kurd. "It is a knife in my heart that I may not stay to catch him. Yet to spit Armenians is fitter work for a Kurd than to hunt an Englishman, and be sure that few of those dogs who are fleeing to the mountains near Antioch will escape us.""Did I dream, or did my ears hear from your lips the boast that you yourself would flay this very Englishman?" asked the captain gently: perhaps he could afford to be ironical now that Abdi was recalled for a more congenial task."Mashallah! would you taunt me, you pale knock-kneed son of an Anatolian cabbage?" shouted Abdi. "By the Beard, I will carve your carcase into gobbets before----""Peace!" said the lieutenant soothingly. "Here is supper. Let us comfort our souls in all peaceableness."The storm blew over, and for a brief space Frank heard nothing but gobbling above him. Then the Kurd shouted for more bread."Peace be with you, effendim," said the woman, "but there is no more.""No more!" roared the truculent Kurd. "What are these few crumbs that you have set before three illustrious officers, and me the most illustrious, even me, Abdi the Kurd?"[image]MAP OF THE SOUTHERN PART OF THE GALLIPOLI PENINSULA."Wallahy! noble effendim," the woman faltered, "I was but even now telling my man of the ill that befell this pious house this very night. Behold, there was a fair array of loaves fresh from the oven upon yonder stone, and I went from the house but for one moment to learn the meaning of a great outcry among my geese, and when I came in, lo! of all those fair loaves only two were left, and those two you have even now consumed, effendim. Surely an evil spirit has flown in, and stolen the loaves, and departed again secretly.""What is this tale, woman? You were absent but for a moment?""Even so, effendim; and we know the spirits move swifter than the wind.""By the Beard, it is that Englishman again," cried the Kurd, thumping the board. "Is it not his doing, like those other deeds that we have heard of him? Of a truth when the woman's back was turned he crept into the house like a dog and departed with our supper. Mashallah! to-morrow I must go to Chanak, or I would surely catch him and flay him alive.""We cannot seek him to-night in the darkness," said the captain. "Truly he has more than a dog's cunning.""Let us eat and drink," said the lieutenant. "The stew is good, even without bread. To-morrow we will run the fox to earth."They finished the meal, and lit cigarettes. The lieutenant went to the barn where the men were quartered, and posted a guard. He remarked on his return that it was a useless precaution, since there were no enemies on land."Except one--the Englishman," remarked his captain with a rueful laugh."He will not return here unless we ourselves bring him in bonds," returned the other.Piecing together the scraps of conversation he had already heard with those he heard subsequently, Frank came to the conclusion that Abdi had been recalled to take part in a battue of Armenians in Asia Minor, and was to leave next morning by motor launch for Chanak in advance of his men.By and by the officers stamped about the room while the housewife arranged rugs and cushions on the board for their night's repose. She then followed her husband upstairs to the higher floor, and the officers, after removing their boots and accoutrements, arranged themselves on the simple bed. The lamp was left alight, and, door and window being closed, the room was filled with a heavy, smoky air which soon lulled the three men to sleep.Frank was by this time suffering painfully from his cramped position and the foul air. At first he had intended to remain in his hiding-place until the officers departed in the morning, and then to seize the first opportunity of slipping away. But as time went on he became convinced that he could not endure his situation through the long night. Before morning he would be asphyxiated, or so racked with pain as to have lost the use of his limbs. If he did not escape during the hours of darkness he would be unable to escape at all. And when the heavy breathing and snores above him showed that slumber had sealed the senses of his enemies, he determined to make an attempt to get away. To be caught gamely at night was better than to be taken helpless in the morning.It was fortunate that the farmer's primitive bed was a flat board, and not a divan with mattresses bulging below. Otherwise he could hardly have moved without causing some pressure beneath the sleepers that would certainly have disturbed them. He lay for a time trying to visualise the room. The board ran along the whole length of the wall opposite the door. There was not space enough for him to creep out at either the head or the foot: to reach the door he must cross the whole width of the room. Dim though the light was, it was sufficient to reveal his form. But there was no other way.With infinite precaution he sidled his way from beneath the board, then lay still to listen. The three men were snoring in three different tones. He inferred from the sounds that two of the three had their faces towards the door. To rise at once might cause them to open their eyes; his best chance lay in crawling a little way over the floor. Raising himself on hands and knees, he drew himself along inch by inch; then, gaining courage from the uninterrupted regularity of the snores, he rose to his feet and ventured to glance round. The three men were curled up under their rugs; only the tops of their heads showed.At the same glance he noticed their accoutrements lying on the stone slab from which he had taken the loaves. Prompted by a dare-devil impulse that had also an element of precaution, he stole on tiptoe to the slab, and with slow careful movements, though his hands were trembling a little, he lifted the flaps of the revolver cases over their buttons and abstracted the revolvers one by one. If the men chanced to wake before he was clear of the door, they should at least have no weapons to fire at him. A slight click as he slipped the last revolver into his pocket caused a momentary pause in themoto continuoof one of the men's recitative, and Frank clutched his own revolver, ready for emergency; but the officer did not stir, and Frank, facing them, crept backward towards the door.He could not remember whether the door had been locked or bolted, and felt an inward quaking at the thought of having to turn a possibly rusty key or draw a creaking bolt. It was with immense relief that he perceived that the door was fastened only by a wooden catch. Just, however, as he was raising his hand to release it he heard a step outside, approaching the door. With instant presence of mind he took two quick silent paces to the shelf on which the lamp stood and pinched out the flame.There was a knock on the door. The snoring abruptly ceased, but no answer was given; the sleepers had not been fully awakened. The knock was repeated. A sleepy voice from the bed said "Enter." The door opened, and Frank, being unluckily almost behind it, could not slip out. There was a little diffused light from the moon below the horizon, just sufficient to reveal Frank's form, in its long military great-coat, to the newcomer."A runner with a despatch from headquarters, effendim," said the man, taking Frank for one of his own officers.At one and the same moment Frank silently held out his hand for the despatch and a voice from the other side of the room murmured, "Bring it here. Light the lamp first." Frank was conscious of surprise and hesitancy in the attitude of the visitor. The critical moment had come. Taking the despatch and thrusting it into his pocket, he bent suddenly, sprang at the man's knees, lifted him from his feet and hurled him across the room. A threefold shout followed him as he dashed into the open. The sentry hurried towards him."Fire!" cried Frank. "Fetch water!""Fire! Fire!" repeated the man, turning about and running towards the well in the yard.Frank had already rushed in the opposite direction to the dark side of the house. The clamour grew in volume; men were rushing hither and thither with the panic of disturbed sleepers; shrill screams from the startled housewife and her children mingled with the deeper shouts of the soldiers. And Frank dashed away into the darkness. At first heedless of his direction, he stopped when the sounds were faint in the distance, and, panting, tried to take his bearings. Somewhat more than an hour later he clambered down the hollow trunk to his sepulchral refuge, and threw himself exhausted on its earthy floor.
CHAPTER XII
IN THE HILLS
In the hills of Gallipoli, between Uzundere and Biyuk Anafarta near the Salt Lake, a platoon of Kurdish troops had just joined a half-company of Anatolians. They were taking their midday meal on a level stretch of turf some seven hundred feet above sea-level. It was the only clear space of considerable size in a wilderness of scrub. Below them ran the rough track from Biyuk Anafarta to Boghali. The hill of Sari Bair, nearly three hundred feet above them, blocked the direct view to the nearest part of the sea; but north and south of that eminence the blue waters were clearly visible. The horizon was dotted with dark shapes, no doubt warships and transports of the Allied fleet. To the south, over the lower hills between them and Boghali, they looked down upon the Narrows, with Kilid Bahr on the European shore and Chanak on the Asiatic. To the north-east stretched the Dardanelles above the Narrows, and here too vessels, but Turkish, were passing up and down.
It would have been apparent to the most casual observer that the arrival of the Kurds was not welcome to their Anatolian brethren-in-arms. The Kurd has a habit of assuming a swaggering air of superiority. The Anatolians were in charge of a captain and a lieutenant, the Kurds of a lieutenant only; but this latter officer, seated with the others a little apart from the men, was treating the captain as though he were a subaltern. Ignoring his inferiority in rank, he had questioned and cross-questioned in a bumptious way that raised the captain's gall. As the captain remarked in an undertone to his lieutenant, this barbarous Kurd could not have been more insolent if he had been a German. And as it was with the officers, so with the men. They ate their simple food together, but the Anatolians maintained a sullen silence amid the loud talking of the Kurds. When it was a question of fetching water from the stream that flowed through the rocky bottom below, it was two of the Anatolians who were told off to the job by the Kurdish sergeant, and went sulkily to obey.
The Kurdish lieutenant was holding forth to the other officers.
"Wallahy!" he said. "Here I am, but it is not where I would wish to be. The fight against odds is the breath of his nostrils to a Kurd. If there had been a few squadrons of Kurds in Egypt the other day we should have been in Cairo by now."
"But there were Kurds--many Kurds," the captain ventured to remark. "It was told me by my cousin in a letter."
"Ahi! Are we in Cairo? In truth we are not. I repeat, if there had been Kurds we should have been in Cairo. Therefore there were no Kurds. Mashallah! Did not Liman Pasha whisper in my ear, the day after we set foot in Gallipoli, 'With ten thousand Kurds, noble Abdi, we could conquer the world. Therefore take me now twenty of your excellent men and catch this Englishman. Have we not had for ten days half a company of Anatolian asses on the trail?'"
This was more than even an Anatolian captain could stand.
"You wish to insult me?" he cried.
"Wallahy! What is this? Insult you? I do but repeat the Alman Pasha's words. Mayhap I understood him wrongly; but it seemed to me that he spoke of Anatolian asses. Who am I to correct him? But come now, tell me what you have done and where you have been; what caves you have searched, what woods you have beaten."
Unwillingly, sulkily, the captain gave particulars of his doings during the past few days. He felt that though nominally in command as senior officer, the Kurd was in reality superseding him. And he resented the implication that he had failed in what was at best a thankless task.
Some ten days before, his information had been, an Englishman disguised as an Armenian had been recognised in Gallipoli as a fugitive from Erzerum. How he had contrived to reach Gallipoli was a mystery. Before he could be arrested by the person who had discovered him, he had made a violent attack on that person, and escaped to the hills. When the alarm was given, the Anatolian captain had been sent in pursuit. About sunset a peasant had seen an Armenian who answered to the description of the fugitive crossing the Karaman river near the Bergas road. Darkness prevented his being followed up, but the hunt was resumed at dawn next morning. It had proved fruitless hitherto. The captain complained that not a hundred, but ten thousand men would be required to beat thoroughly those rugged brush-covered hills.
"Think of it!" he said. "Climbing up and down these almost perpendicular hill-faces; through dense scrub; down one side of a valley, across a stream or a swamp and up the other side; beating bushes; exploring hill caves; searching secluded farms--and all the time without proper food. We were sent away in a hurry. 'Hunt till you find him,' was the order. We had two days' rations, and since then have had to depend on what we could pick up at the farms, and they, as you know, are in lonely places far apart. And we have not so much as caught sight of this elusive Englishman, though we have heard of him often enough. Wallahy! a farmer at Taifur Keui told me that a young Armenian had walked uninvited into his house and demanded food, holding a revolver to his head. Stricken with amazement and terror at this boldness on the part of an Armenian dog--but in truth a famished dog is bold as a lion--the farmer gave him bread and honey, and having satisfied himself, he paid for his entertainment and went away composedly and without haste, threatening to shoot any man that followed him. This being told me, I hunted diligently for two days through the Taifur district, and behold, it was then related that the fugitive had appeared at Kum Keui, ten miles away on the high-road, and there he had waylaid a supply wagon, and taken for himself a great quantity of the good things it contained, and forced the driver to unyoke the mules, and when this was done in fear and trembling because of the revolver, this bold brigand caused the wagon to run down a sloping place and over a precipice into the Ak Bashi river."
"Mashallah! These are marvels indeed," said the Kurd, "and there is no truth in them. But say on, captain; let my ears feast on these fairy tales."
"I speak what I have heard; as for the truth, Allah knows. It was told me also that the dog was seen at Kachili and Kuchuk Anafarta, but when I came to those places and was searching every nook and cranny, behold, one brought me word that he had been seen elsewhere. Yesterday, as I live, a major of artillery came wearily into Maidos, sick with shame at the garments he wore, which in very truth were the rags of an Armenian. And he told me that when he was riding without escort on the Gallipoli road near Boghali yonder, a young giant that was Armenian in dress but a very devil in mien and bearing leapt forth suddenly from the bushes of the wayside, and laying a mighty hand upon him, dragged him from his horse, and compelled him there and then to exchange his uniform for those filthy tatters the Armenian wore. Yet did the major confess that his ravisher was not without courtesy, for even as he put on the major's heavy coat he prayed his pardon for the robbery, saying that he would fain have left him the coat, but that he could not, because the nights in these hills are bitter cold. And that this is truth I tell is sure, for that same day--yesterday in the afternoon--an officer of artillery was seen, alone, above Baghche Keui, the hamlet you see below us yonder. And I came last night in haste to Biyuk Anafarta, and rose with the dawn, and for six hours I have been scouring these hills, and not a glimpse of that bold Englishman have I seen."
"Wallahy! Truly it was time I came," said the Kurd. "Know you that it was I, Abdi, that found the Englishman searching for treasure in the ruins of a house in Gallipoli which an English shell had smitten. It was I, Abdi, whom the dog, taking me unawares--who can contend against deceitfulness?--hurled fainting to the ground. To me should have been given the task of hunting the dog; now to me it is given; and by the beard of the Prophet I will catch him and flay him; I, Abdi, say it."
While the others were thus conversing, some of the men, having finished their meal, had got up and begun to stroll about the hillside. Others had gone down to fill their water-bottles at a spring that bubbled out of the rock some two hundred yards from the spot where the officers were sitting. Abdi, lighting a cigarette, watched them with a speculative eye.
"Your Anatolians may stray too far," he said. "That will not my Kurds do. Come now, let us make our plans. We must beat these hills as we beat for bear in Kurdistan. See, here and there below us are clear spaces in the scrub. Into the scrub between them I will send my own men; them I can trust to let nothing pass, not a rabbit nor a stoat nor any small creeping thing; they are not plainsmen, blind and deaf. Your Anatolians shall move six paces apart towards the spot where my mountaineers are posted: even they, surely, cannot let anything through so small a mesh. You will form them up in a crescent line, the horns pointing to where my men lurk in the scrub. So shall we beat a large circle, and if our quarry is not started there, we will go on and do likewise farther afield."
They flung away the ends of their cigarettes, rose to their feet, and blew their whistles. From various directions the men hurried back, the Anatolians lining up on one side of the open space, the Kurds on the other. When the ranks were formed and numbered off, a Kurdish sergeant called out:
"There is a man short. Where is Yusuf?"
The men looked up and down the line, as if seeking their missing comrade; then one of them said:
"I saw him go down to fill his bottle."
The sergeant blew his whistle, and took a few paces in the direction of the stream. A few minutes passed. The absentee did not appear. The sergeant reported his absence to Abdi.
"Take a couple of men and look for him," said the Kurd, twirling his moustache.
The three men went off and disappeared over the brow of the hill. Presently there were shouts from below, and one of the men came back at a run, saluted his officer, and cried excitedly:
"We have found Yusuf, effendim, lying on his back, with his hands and feet tied with his own straps, and his cap thrust between his teeth."
Abdi scowled, and would not meet the Anatolian captain's eye. In another moment the missing man appeared over the crest, led between the sergeant and his comrade.
"What is this, Yusuf?" demanded Abdi roughly, going to meet the man, whose bare head was streaming with water.
"Wallahy! I have been most grievously entreated. I was filling my bottle at the stream there below when there came a step behind me, which I heeded not, thinking one of my comrades had come to fill his bottle likewise. And then, behold, a strong hand seized me, and thrust my head under the water, and held it there until I well-nigh burst for want of breath; and when all the strength was gone out of me I was cast upon the ground, and my wet cap was thrust between my teeth, and my hands and feet were tied, and I was left half dead."
"Who was it did this thing?" asked Abdi.
"Truly I know not, but he had the form of a major of our army, if in the confusion of my senses I could see aright."
"Where is your rifle?"
"It was taken from me, together with my pouch and the hundred cartridges therein."
Abdi spat and cursed, twirling his moustache more fiercely than ever. His fury was increased by a look of amusement on the faces of the Anatolian officers. Aggrieved that a Kurd should have been sent to make good their deficiencies, and enraged by his insolent and overbearing manner, they took no pains to conceal their delight in the discomfiture of the boaster at the hands of the man whose rumoured exploits he had derided and whom he had declared his intention of flaying. His chagrin almost reconciled them to the escape of the fugitive whom they had been vainly hunting for a week.
But the incident spurred them to activity. The fugitive could not be far away. Here was an opportunity of proving whether Kurd or Anatolian was the better man. Abdi's deliberate dispositions were forgotten or ignored. While Abdi led his men at a furious pace in the direction of the stream, the Anatolian captain ordered his party to extend and advance methodically through the scrub. The hunt was up.
Some two hours later a young man in the uniform of a major of Turkish artillery, but carrying a rifle, might have been seen threading his way through the dense scrub on the northern slopes of Sari Bair. Reaching a point where it was possible to obtain a good view to the north-east, he looked cautiously around, halted and listened. There was no sound but the whistling of the wind through the bushes. After a moment's hurried survey of his surroundings, he discovered a spot where he could see without being seen, unslung his field-glasses, and swept the opposite slope of Karsilar. For some little time the glasses moved slowly from left to right, then the watcher held them stationary and took a long and steady gaze. A line of figures was moving like ants across a clear space and disappearing into the scrub beyond. A little later they reappeared in another break in the vegetation, working towards Baghche Keui.
Apparently satisfied, he shut up the glasses, and returned them to their case. The name of the maker caught his eye.
"Good English glasses!" he murmured, as men do who have lived for some time alone. "I am uncommonly obliged to you, my dear major. I needed something to equalise the odds."
CHAPTER XIII
SHARING A SEPULCHRE
Keeping well under cover, Frank worked his way upwards through the scrub round the north-east shoulder of Sari Bair. Every now and then he stopped, as it were to "sniff the air." He smiled to himself, thinking how like his movements must be to those of a fox that knows that the hounds are out. "I can believe now," he thought, "the huntsman's theory that the enjoyment is not all on one side."
From the height to which he had now ascended he had a bird's-eye view of the pretty little village of Biyuk Anafarta, surrounded by tall and stately cypresses, lying below him in a gap in the hills to the north. He paused for a moment to admire the scene. Just above him was the head of a nullah forming a ravine on the northern face of Sari Bair, and joining as a tributary a larger nullah running westward past the village to the sea. A hundred yards up the hill a large cedar jutted out from the side of the nullah, here only a few feet deep, and towered above the prevailing scrub. Six or eight paces from the tree, near the bank of the nullah, there appeared the stone door of an ancient sepulchre, probably dating back before the Christian era. The stones were perfectly cut and squared, and solidly cemented together. The weather of twenty centuries had but lightly touched them.
At this point Frank redoubled his precautions. The vegetation grew closely about the sepulchre; this solitude was apparently never visited by men; but he could not afford to leave anything to chance. He dropped into the nullah some eighty yards below the tree, and carefully worked his way up the bed of the ravine. Arriving at the tree, he took a final look round, pulled himself up by the roots, and climbed up on the western side, having the massive trunk between him and the men who were hunting for him far away to the east.
At the first big fork the tree was hollow. Letting himself down within the hollowed trunk, he stood upon a litter of leaves, brushwood, and soft detritus, which he stooped in the semi-darkness to stir over. After a while he uncovered a hole about two feet across. Through this he wriggled, into a narrow passage not high enough to walk erect in, ending in a small square room a little higher than the passage, but still too low for the upright posture.
The air was full of the sickly odour of decay. A feeble light filtered through a number of tube-like orifices bored in the stone on one wall of the room. At the further end, reaching almost from the floor to the roof, stood two enormous earthen jars. They were filled with human bones. This little room was the interior of the sepulchre.
Frank had discovered the place by accident a day or two before. He had climbed the tree to learn, if he could, the whereabouts of his pursuers, and discovered the hollow trunk. Thinking that this would afford a secure hiding-place in case of need, though the quarters would in truth be rather cramped, he had dropped down and started to clear a space for sleeping. It was then that, in lifting a mass of brushwood, he had discovered the passage and the chamber beyond.
The discovery set his imagination at work. The building was obviously so much older than the tree that this strange connection between them must be an afterthought. Within the sepulchre he found some articles of Greek pottery which suggested an explanation. Back in the middle ages the peninsula of Gallipoli, then a Greek possession, was overrun by the conquering Ottoman Turks. Was it not possible that some Greek fugitive, fleeing before the barbarians, had lighted upon this hollow tree just as he himself had done, and cut a passage through it into the ancient and forgotten tomb? How many centuries had passed before the Byzantine fugitive, if such he was, had intruded upon the solitude of its fleshless inhabitants?
The stories which the Anatolian captain had related to Abdi did not exaggerate the truth. Frank had acted on the impulse of the moment in hurling Abdi into the ruins of Benidin's bomb-shelled house. He had not taken a moment's thought for the future, nor indeed, after his shattering experiences, was he in a condition to think collectedly. All that he was conscious of was a desperate anxiety to get as far from the Kurd as possible. He ran into the gathering dusk, retaining just enough presence of mind to direct his course away from the lower town. Benidin's house was on the outskirts, and in a few minutes he came into open country. He had met no one, but hearing the rumble of an approaching wagon ahead, he left the road and struck off into the rough ground at the side.
It was now dark. He checked his pace, to recover breath and self-possession. What was he to do? Kopri had perhaps returned by this time in the vessel which was to convey him back to Constantinople, but to retrace his steps and seek the harbour was more than he dared. On regaining his senses the Kurd would certainly raise the hue and cry through the town: Gallipoli would be too hot for the fugitive. What then was left? It had been suggested that he should seek safety in Bulgaria, but the frontier was far away, he had no guide, and he had been so shaken by the recent explosion that he felt a nervous dread of the encounters that were inevitable if he attempted to find his way through strange country. A better course, he thought, was to hide among the hills for a few days, until he had recovered his nerve and will-power. With money in his pocket and a command of the Turkish tongue he might purchase food in some hill village or at some outlying farm.
Guiding himself, therefore, by the stars, he struggled on for a while towards the hilly district south-westwards, intending presently to take refuge in some sheltered spot where he might pass the night. As he went he remembered that off the south-west extremity of the peninsula lay the British fleet; but at this moment the fleet seemed as remote from him as the stars themselves. After a time he heard noises below him--the creaking of carts, the voices of men; at short intervals he saw faint lights. Clearly there was a road beneath, and a convoy was on the road. He stood still; listened; watched. The convoy was moving in the opposite direction to his own course, and from the sound of the wagons he inferred that they were empty. Then they must be returning from the forts at the further end of the peninsula. He knew nothing about the geography of the interior of this tongue of land; but he was aware that a road ran close to the shore of the Dardanelles. That must be a shorter route to the forts than this second road, which apparently traversed the centre of the peninsula; and in a moment or two it occurred to him that the Turko-Germans employed the longer road in returning their "empties" in order to avoid congestion on the more direct route.
Frank waited until the convoy had passed, then groped his way down to the road. It was so dark now that he might trudge the highway with little risk of discovery, and with a greater chance of finding a hovel where with good luck he might take shelter. But fatigue overcame him before he had gone more than a few miles, and he climbed up the hillside again, threw himself down under the lee of a rock upon a stretch of moss, and wrapping his sheepskin garment around him, slept until the verge of dawn.
Resuming his way over the hills, within sight of the road, he saw by and by in the distance a village of considerable size. He was hungry, but his heart failed him; he felt that he could not face inquisitive villagers, and endure their cross-questioning. He passed above the village and went on. From the distance came the rumble of guns. Presently he caught sight of a farm in a hollow of the hills, and turned his steps towards it. As he drew nearer to it he became more and more nervous. How was he to account for himself? What story could he invent that would pass muster with people who probably seldom saw a stranger, and would certainly be suspicious? He could not think of anything that seemed plausible; yet he must have food, and at length, with the courage of desperation, he resolved to throw off the mask. He obtained food there at the point of his revolver, and betook himself with it to a thicket on the hill-top beyond, where having assuaged his hunger he slept through the rest of the day and the night.
Next morning he finished his provisions and set off again on his journey--no longer aimless, for during the night the idea had come to him of making his way to the coast and swimming out to one of the British vessels whose guns he had heard. The project had seemed to him, in the hours of darkness, wonderfully easy; but in the cold light of morning it assumed, as such night thoughts often do, a very different complexion. "Silly ass!" he thought. "The ships will be miles out. I'd never get to them." And his mind was soon occupied with more immediate concerns.
Looking back from his elevated position along the road, he perceived a number of soldiers, not marching in orderly ranks on the highway, but dotted here and there on the heights on either side. In a moment it flashed upon him that the troops were on his trail. This conviction acted as a tonic. There was a definite danger to contend with, a problem on which to exercise his wits. To proceed directly on his former course would be fatal. His best chance of ultimate escape was to worry the pursuers in the difficult hill country and tire them out. And so he had commenced that brief career of semi-brigandage which had up to the present supplied his needs and stimulated his mental activity. Now and then, of course, he was sunk deep in depression. He was very much alone, surrounded by enemies, often hungry, still more often very cold; but the necessity for constant exertion helped him to conquer despondency, and prevented him from dwelling over long on the darker side of things.
Now, as he squatted on the couch of leaves which he had made for himself on the floor of the sepulchre, he pondered his situation seriously and with anxiety. It was clear that a determined effort was being made to capture him, and he ruefully acknowledged to himself that the very successes he had had in obtaining food, clothes, and arms would tell against him: they furnished his pursuers with an additional motive. The troops would certainly begin a methodical search of Sari Bair. They could not fail to discover the door of the sepulchre, and though this was sealed, and there was no entrance to the place from the ground, the entrance through the tree might be discovered by one of them in the same accidental way as in his own case. Fortunately, the surrounding rocks were too hard to show tell-tale traces of his footsteps, but if the pursuers should continue to haunt the neighbourhood, he might find himself compelled to remain in hiding, and the idea of being cooped up in these narrow gloomy quarters was far from inspiriting. The tomb was in truth a dismal abode. The sepulchral vases were not cheerful pieces of furniture. On the previous night he had had an attack of nerves, and climbed into the fork of the tree to sleep. But the physical discomfort due to the attentions of innumerable insects was less endurable than the intangible companionship of ghosts, and ashamed of his weakness he had clambered down again, and fallen asleep to the dull boom of British guns bombarding the forts.
"Well, I've got a rifle and ammunition now," he thought, as he settled himself for his second night's sleep in the tomb. "But I dare not go game-shooting with them. To-morrow I shall have to go foraging again. I'm getting tired of this."
CHAPTER XIV
'A CHIEL AMANG THEM'
Next morning he woke late. Climbing into the tree, he saw that the sun was already many degrees up the sky. He looked around, up and down the nullah. No one was in sight. He clambered to the ground and made his way carefully to the hill-top, taking cover of the scrub. From this post he had a view, on the one side, of the upper channel of the Dardanelles, above the Narrows; on the other, of the waters of the Ægean. Vessels were to-day, as on previous days, moving up and down the former. One small craft, apparently a motor launch, which he had noticed before, was again slipping across the channel towards Chanak, the township which he could clearly see on the opposite shore. No doubt it had started from Maidos, which was tucked away under the hills beneath him: he had seen it many times from the deck of a steamer.
"Lucky beggars!" he thought, envying the occupants of the launch as he watched it through his borrowed field-glasses, and recalling trips, among the most enjoyable of his experiences, at home and in the Sea of Marmora.
"Now to forage," he said to himself.
It was unlikely that the pursuers, after the excitement of yesterday, had abandoned the hunt, and in descending the hill he used as much caution as though they were still in sight. His destination was a small farm which he had noticed standing by itself some little distance westward of the village of Biyuk Anafarta: the village itself, of course, he durst not venture into. His progress was slow, for in flitting prudently from one patch of scrub to another, he had to make considerable detours to avoid more or less open spaces. Every now and again, too, he stopped to listen, placing his ear to the ground.
Coming after some hours' difficult wandering to the outskirts of the plantations about the village, he was alarmed to see a herd of cattle in the charge of several herdsmen moving along the rough track that led past the farm, the direction in which he had himself intended to go. It was unsafe to continue his journey at present. He took a drink from a hill stream, and plunged into a thicket, resolving, in spite of his hunger, to wait there until late in the afternoon, when movements along the road were likely to have ceased.
It was about four o'clock when he ventured to leave his hiding-place. There was no sign of movement in the hills. In the distance smoke was rising from the village chimneys. Stealing his way as carefully as before, he struck off in the direction of the farm. The husbandmen, as he had hoped, were still at work in the fields. There would not be many persons at the farm.
Taking advantage of every inequality of the ground he crept to the back of the homestead--a small stone-built place with wooden byres and barns attached. He was well aware that the methods which had formerly served him could not be employed now. Without doubt his description had been circulated throughout Gallipoli. Whether he offered to buy food, or sought to extort it, he would run equal risk. Even if he escaped the hands of the country people, eager to obtain the reward which had probably been offered for his capture, he could not show himself without their putting the troops on his track. With every man's hand against him he could not afford to indulge the scruples that would be natural to him in normal circumstances. He meant to obtain food as quickly and as secretly as possible. But he was not going to steal. He would take what he could find, but leave a fair price.
All was quiet around the farm. Gaining the outbuildings undetected, he slipped along under cover of them until he had nearly reached what was apparently the kitchen: a light smoke rose from the chimney above. More than once during his excursions he had realised how greatly his difficulties would have been increased if the dog were as popular in Turkey as in England. He had not the watchful farmyard dog to fear. The action which had cleared Constantinople of the curs that used to infest its streets seemed to have its counterpart in other parts of the country: at any rate, he had not hitherto been worried by dogs.
But he found now, with as much surprise as consternation, that he had another kind of guardian to reckon with. He had almost reached what he supposed to be the kitchen when a small flock of geese advanced towards him in a mass with much hissing and cackling. There was no alternative but to beat a prompt retreat. He slipped through the open doorway of one of the outbuildings, closed the door behind him, and seeing another door ajar at the further end he hastened towards it, took a cautious peep outside and passed into the open. A glance round the corner of the wall showed him a middle-aged woman--dressed in the rusty black which the male Turk, himself inclined to bright colours, thinks appropriate to his women folk--hurrying from the kitchen to ascertain why the watchful geese were protesting so noisily.
Here was his chance. He darted across the open space between himself and the kitchen, peeped in at the open door, and seeing that the room was empty slipped inside. From the upper floor came the voices of children. There was no time to waste. Frank knew nothing about the room except that it was large, that a pot was on the fire, and that some flat loaves of bread, recently baked, stood in a row upon a slab of stone beside the oven. Without a moment's hesitation he began to cram these into the capacious pockets of his military great-coat, and was on the point of taking out some money to replace them on the slab when he heard the woman returning, grumbling audibly at the geese for the needless interruption of her cooking.
To escape by the door was impossible without being seen. The wooden steps in the corner invited him to the upper floor, but the children's voices repelled. There was no other door. He was caged. He was just making up his mind to brazen it out and trust to his ready wit in explaining his intrusion to the housewife when his eye fell on the long wide board, set against one wall and raised a few inches from the floor, which serves the humble Turk as a sleeping-place. On the impulse of the moment he tiptoed across the room, dropped to the floor, and was just able to wriggle under the board before the woman entered. For a moment he was doubtful whether, quick as he had been, the woman had not caught sight of the skirts of his coat, and he pressed himself against the wall in a fever of anxiety. But she clumped across the floor straight to her cooking pot, the sizzling of which mingled with her exclamations of annoyance. She stirred the pot, made up the fire, called to the children to go to sleep--and noticed that some of the loaves were gone.
"You limbs of Shaitan!" she called up the stairs. "Bring down those loaves. Gluttons you are. Did I not give you a supper fit for princes? Bring down the loaves, I say."
Shrill voices answered her. A boy came half-way down the steps and protested that neither he nor his brothers or sisters had left their room above.
"Wallahy! are there evil djinni abroad?" exclaimed the woman. "Get you to bed. Allah preserve us! What will the man say when he returns?"
She went to the door and looked out for her husband; it was time for him to come for his evening meal. Frank already regretted his hasty action. If only the woman would go out! If only she had not believed her small son, but had gone upstairs to prove him! Apparently he was a truth-teller. Frank felt himself condemned to a long and wearisome detention. The farmer would return; he would eat his supper; then rugs would be spread on the board, and the good people would sleep there. How in the world was he to get away without disturbing them? Meanwhile he could at least eat some of the bread which the woman supposed had been spirited away.
The woman came back to her cooking. Frank's nose was tantalised by the savoury smell of the ragout simmering in the pot. It was growing dusk, and the woman lighted a small oil-lamp, then sat down on the board, muttering incantations against evil spirits. Presently footsteps and voices were heard from outside. The woman rose hastily to her feet and went to the door. A man's voice said a few words, which Frank could not catch. The woman responded with exclamations of surprise and annoyance. Then they came into the room, followed by several pairs of legs. Frank started and shrank more closely against the wall. In the dim light on the floor beyond his hiding-place he saw military boots. There were still loud voices outside. He heard the farmer speaking.
"It is a humble place, effendim, but you are welcome."
"Ahi! That stew has a savoury smell. I have an appetite. Haste you, woman, and set before us what you have in the pot."
Three pairs of legs moved towards the board. Three heavy forms dropped upon it, with clanking of accoutrements. The wood groaned above Frank's head. A chill perspiration broke out upon his skin. He was in the midst of his pursuers.
So narrow was the space between the board and the floor that, lying flat, he could not lift his head more than two or three inches without striking it. To this grovelling posture he saw himself condemned for an indefinite period. He groaned in spirit. What an ass he had been! He breathed dust and smells; the air was stifling; how long could he endure it? Suppose he sneezed!--the very thought made his blood run cold, and he pinched his nose in anticipation.
Meanwhile the three officers above him were conversing until their meal should be ready. Frank's attention was distracted from his woes to the conversation rumbling on above his head.
"Mashallah! It is useless," he heard one say: he thought it was Abdi.
"But the shells do enormous damage when they hit," said the Anatolian captain.
"True, but what do they hit? It is marvellous, I grant you, that they hit anything at all--anything of value--when the guns are miles away and the gunners can see no mark, and without their aeroplanes they would have wrought less havoc even than they have done. But what then? They cease bombarding, and our engineers repair the damage with exceeding swiftness."
"Taught by the Germans," remarked the lieutenant.
"Ahi, the Germans! Your masters!"
"And yours."
"Not so, by the Beard! We Kurds will never own them as masters. They are great men of war, truly, great devisers of machines; no soulless man, such as you Anatolians and the English, can stand against them. But if they think to crush the free spirits of us Kurds in their machinery--wallahy! I hate them."
"Think you the English have no souls?" asked the captain. "That wily fellow we are hunting has, methinks, a spirit free as yours."
"Allah choke him!" growled the Kurd. "It is a knife in my heart that I may not stay to catch him. Yet to spit Armenians is fitter work for a Kurd than to hunt an Englishman, and be sure that few of those dogs who are fleeing to the mountains near Antioch will escape us."
"Did I dream, or did my ears hear from your lips the boast that you yourself would flay this very Englishman?" asked the captain gently: perhaps he could afford to be ironical now that Abdi was recalled for a more congenial task.
"Mashallah! would you taunt me, you pale knock-kneed son of an Anatolian cabbage?" shouted Abdi. "By the Beard, I will carve your carcase into gobbets before----"
"Peace!" said the lieutenant soothingly. "Here is supper. Let us comfort our souls in all peaceableness."
The storm blew over, and for a brief space Frank heard nothing but gobbling above him. Then the Kurd shouted for more bread.
"Peace be with you, effendim," said the woman, "but there is no more."
"No more!" roared the truculent Kurd. "What are these few crumbs that you have set before three illustrious officers, and me the most illustrious, even me, Abdi the Kurd?"
[image]MAP OF THE SOUTHERN PART OF THE GALLIPOLI PENINSULA.
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MAP OF THE SOUTHERN PART OF THE GALLIPOLI PENINSULA.
"Wallahy! noble effendim," the woman faltered, "I was but even now telling my man of the ill that befell this pious house this very night. Behold, there was a fair array of loaves fresh from the oven upon yonder stone, and I went from the house but for one moment to learn the meaning of a great outcry among my geese, and when I came in, lo! of all those fair loaves only two were left, and those two you have even now consumed, effendim. Surely an evil spirit has flown in, and stolen the loaves, and departed again secretly."
"What is this tale, woman? You were absent but for a moment?"
"Even so, effendim; and we know the spirits move swifter than the wind."
"By the Beard, it is that Englishman again," cried the Kurd, thumping the board. "Is it not his doing, like those other deeds that we have heard of him? Of a truth when the woman's back was turned he crept into the house like a dog and departed with our supper. Mashallah! to-morrow I must go to Chanak, or I would surely catch him and flay him alive."
"We cannot seek him to-night in the darkness," said the captain. "Truly he has more than a dog's cunning."
"Let us eat and drink," said the lieutenant. "The stew is good, even without bread. To-morrow we will run the fox to earth."
They finished the meal, and lit cigarettes. The lieutenant went to the barn where the men were quartered, and posted a guard. He remarked on his return that it was a useless precaution, since there were no enemies on land.
"Except one--the Englishman," remarked his captain with a rueful laugh.
"He will not return here unless we ourselves bring him in bonds," returned the other.
Piecing together the scraps of conversation he had already heard with those he heard subsequently, Frank came to the conclusion that Abdi had been recalled to take part in a battue of Armenians in Asia Minor, and was to leave next morning by motor launch for Chanak in advance of his men.
By and by the officers stamped about the room while the housewife arranged rugs and cushions on the board for their night's repose. She then followed her husband upstairs to the higher floor, and the officers, after removing their boots and accoutrements, arranged themselves on the simple bed. The lamp was left alight, and, door and window being closed, the room was filled with a heavy, smoky air which soon lulled the three men to sleep.
Frank was by this time suffering painfully from his cramped position and the foul air. At first he had intended to remain in his hiding-place until the officers departed in the morning, and then to seize the first opportunity of slipping away. But as time went on he became convinced that he could not endure his situation through the long night. Before morning he would be asphyxiated, or so racked with pain as to have lost the use of his limbs. If he did not escape during the hours of darkness he would be unable to escape at all. And when the heavy breathing and snores above him showed that slumber had sealed the senses of his enemies, he determined to make an attempt to get away. To be caught gamely at night was better than to be taken helpless in the morning.
It was fortunate that the farmer's primitive bed was a flat board, and not a divan with mattresses bulging below. Otherwise he could hardly have moved without causing some pressure beneath the sleepers that would certainly have disturbed them. He lay for a time trying to visualise the room. The board ran along the whole length of the wall opposite the door. There was not space enough for him to creep out at either the head or the foot: to reach the door he must cross the whole width of the room. Dim though the light was, it was sufficient to reveal his form. But there was no other way.
With infinite precaution he sidled his way from beneath the board, then lay still to listen. The three men were snoring in three different tones. He inferred from the sounds that two of the three had their faces towards the door. To rise at once might cause them to open their eyes; his best chance lay in crawling a little way over the floor. Raising himself on hands and knees, he drew himself along inch by inch; then, gaining courage from the uninterrupted regularity of the snores, he rose to his feet and ventured to glance round. The three men were curled up under their rugs; only the tops of their heads showed.
At the same glance he noticed their accoutrements lying on the stone slab from which he had taken the loaves. Prompted by a dare-devil impulse that had also an element of precaution, he stole on tiptoe to the slab, and with slow careful movements, though his hands were trembling a little, he lifted the flaps of the revolver cases over their buttons and abstracted the revolvers one by one. If the men chanced to wake before he was clear of the door, they should at least have no weapons to fire at him. A slight click as he slipped the last revolver into his pocket caused a momentary pause in themoto continuoof one of the men's recitative, and Frank clutched his own revolver, ready for emergency; but the officer did not stir, and Frank, facing them, crept backward towards the door.
He could not remember whether the door had been locked or bolted, and felt an inward quaking at the thought of having to turn a possibly rusty key or draw a creaking bolt. It was with immense relief that he perceived that the door was fastened only by a wooden catch. Just, however, as he was raising his hand to release it he heard a step outside, approaching the door. With instant presence of mind he took two quick silent paces to the shelf on which the lamp stood and pinched out the flame.
There was a knock on the door. The snoring abruptly ceased, but no answer was given; the sleepers had not been fully awakened. The knock was repeated. A sleepy voice from the bed said "Enter." The door opened, and Frank, being unluckily almost behind it, could not slip out. There was a little diffused light from the moon below the horizon, just sufficient to reveal Frank's form, in its long military great-coat, to the newcomer.
"A runner with a despatch from headquarters, effendim," said the man, taking Frank for one of his own officers.
At one and the same moment Frank silently held out his hand for the despatch and a voice from the other side of the room murmured, "Bring it here. Light the lamp first." Frank was conscious of surprise and hesitancy in the attitude of the visitor. The critical moment had come. Taking the despatch and thrusting it into his pocket, he bent suddenly, sprang at the man's knees, lifted him from his feet and hurled him across the room. A threefold shout followed him as he dashed into the open. The sentry hurried towards him.
"Fire!" cried Frank. "Fetch water!"
"Fire! Fire!" repeated the man, turning about and running towards the well in the yard.
Frank had already rushed in the opposite direction to the dark side of the house. The clamour grew in volume; men were rushing hither and thither with the panic of disturbed sleepers; shrill screams from the startled housewife and her children mingled with the deeper shouts of the soldiers. And Frank dashed away into the darkness. At first heedless of his direction, he stopped when the sounds were faint in the distance, and, panting, tried to take his bearings. Somewhat more than an hour later he clambered down the hollow trunk to his sepulchral refuge, and threw himself exhausted on its earthy floor.