“It’s up to you to show them some tricks.I’ll say it’s magic, you get them keen,Then offer to show them one still more wonderfulIf they’ll stand outside the door while you prepare.”
“It’s up to you to show them some tricks.I’ll say it’s magic, you get them keen,Then offer to show them one still more wonderfulIf they’ll stand outside the door while you prepare.”
“It’s up to you to show them some tricks.I’ll say it’s magic, you get them keen,Then offer to show them one still more wonderfulIf they’ll stand outside the door while you prepare.”
“It’s up to you to show them some tricks.
I’ll say it’s magic, you get them keen,
Then offer to show them one still more wonderful
If they’ll stand outside the door while you prepare.”
Hill squeezed my arm to show that he understood, and I turned to Sabit and asked for a Turkish song. He complied readily enough. By the time we got back to the room we were all singing together, except Hill. He went back to his corner and his Bible.
“That last tune of Bekir’s reminds me of one I heard from a witch doctor in Togoland,”[49]I said to the Pimple. “He was a great magician and held converse with djinns. Ask Bekir if he has ever seen magic.”
Bekir had often heard of magic and djinns, but had never seen any. Yes, he would like very much to see some, but where?
I pointed to Hill, huddled up in his corner, and told them he knew all the magic of the aborigines of Australia. I’d make him show us some, if they wished it. They were delighted at the idea. But Hill refused to oblige. He said magic was “wicked” and he had given it up.
“Shall I force him to do it?” I asked.
Bekir and Sabit nodded. They were very keen already, and knew that Hill usually obeyed me—it was a feature in his insanity that he gave in to me more readily than to anyone else. But tonight he simulated great reluctance. I had to threaten to take his Bible away before he would do as he was told. Finally he stood up, the picture of mournful despondency, and slowly rolled up his sleeves. We lit a second candle and placed it on the table. We moved the table to the spot we wanted it—not directly under the rings but slightly to one side, so that we would swing clear when we stepped off. Then Hill began.
It was a very wonderful little performance. He showed his empty hand to the sentries, then closed it slowly under their noses (his audience was never more than three feet away). When he opened it a rupee lay shining in his palm. The sentries gasped—here was a man turning thin air into silver. Could he make gold too? Hill took the rupee in his right hand and threw it into his left three times. The third time it turned into a Turkish gold lira. The sentries, dumb with surprise, took it from his palm, examined it closely by the candlelight, bit it, rang it on the table. “It is good,” said Bekir, handing it back. “Make more, many more.” Hill smiled a little sourly and threw the lira back into his left hand, and it turned back into a rupee. Sabit gave a short, very nervous bark of a laugh. Bekir was disappointed—he wanted more gold. With a look of utter boredom on his face Hill began extracting gold coins from the air, from under the table, from the back of his knee, slipping his harvest into his pocket as he garnered it. The sentries gaped in open-mouthed astonishment. Hill picked up his Bible and made to sit in his corner again.
“More!” said Bekir. “Show us more magic.”
Hill turned back. “Would you like to see the table float about the room?” he asked.
They would like it very much.
“Then step outside the door while I speak to the djinns.”
We all rose to go out, I with the rest.
“You’ll be out there about 15 minutes,” Hill went on; “better take a candle with you. And if you value yourlives don’t come in till I call you. But I want one of you to stay and help me.”
I suggested Moïse should stay, and in the same breath twisted my button and told him to leave me behind. It ended by the sentries going out with Moïse quite happily. We closed the door. It fitted badly, and Moïse had but to watch the space between the lintel and door to see when our light went out. Darkness was to be his signal for breaking in.
The moment the door closed, Hill handed me my rope, and we mounted the small table together. My hands shook so from excitement that the ring rattled against the staple with a noise like castanets, and I could scarcely control my fingers to knot the rope. It was not unlike the “stag-fever” which afflicts young hunters of big game.
“Steady,” said Hill in a low voice, “they’ll hear you.”
He was already standing with the rope round his neck. His ring and staple had not made a sound. His voice pulled me together, and next moment my task too was done.
“Ready?” I whispered.
“I’m O.K.,” he replied.
We shook hands.
“Take the strain,” I said.
Holding the rope above my head in my right hand, I bent my knees till it was taut about my neck. I could not see Hill, but knew he was doing the same. We did not want an inch of “drop” if we could avoid it.
The candle was ready in my left hand. I blew it out, and we swung off into space.
To anyone desirous of quitting this mortal coil we can offer one piece of sound advice—don’t try strangulation. Than hanging by the neck nothing more agonising can be imagined. In the hope of finding a comfortable way of placing the noose we had both experimented before leaving Yozgad, but no matter how we placed it we could never bear the pain for more than a fraction of a second. When we stepped off our table in the dark at Mardeen we simply had to bear it, and though we had arranged to grip the rope with one hand so as to take as much weight as possible off the neck until we heard Moïse at the door, the pain was excruciating. Moïse did not at once notice that our light had gone out. I revolved slowly on the end of my rope. My right arm began to give out and the rope bit deeper into my throat. My ears were singing. Iwondered if I was going deaf, if I could hear him try the door in time to get my hand away, if he was ever going to open the door at all. It was impossible to say how long we hung thus, revolving in the dark. I suppose it was about 90 seconds, but it seemed like ten years.
“Hill, Jones, are you ready?” At last the Pimple had seen the signal.
We instantly let go of our ropes and hung solidly by the neck—it was awful.
“Hill, Jones!” The Pimple was shouting now. We could not have answered had we tried.
The door crashed open. The Pimple saw us, yelled at the top of his voice, and kept on yelling. Somebody rushed past (I was next the door) bumping against me so that my body swung violently, and the rope tightened unbearably round my throat. Then a pair of strong arms clasped my legs and—oh, blessed relief!—lifted me a little. (I found out afterwards it was Sabit, the sentry. The Pimple was doing the same for Hill.) There was soon pandemonium in the room; in answer to the Pimple’s cries people came rushing in from all over the hotel. The place was in darkness and everybody except Hill and myself were shouting as loud as they could, while the Pimple’s shrieks sounded clear above the din. Then somebody took me by the waist and threw all his weight on me. Through my closed eyelids I saw a whole firmament of shooting stars. I don’t quite know what happened after that until I found myself on the floor. The same thing was done to Hill. I believe it was one of the drovers who did it, but what his intention was I never knew. Perhaps he was testing us, to see if we would put up our hands, or perhaps he was a good Mohammedan anxious to finish off two infidel “giaours.” Whatever his object may have been, he did not succeed.
I don’t think either Hill or I ever quite lost consciousness, but for a time everything was very confused. We have quite clear recollections ofunnamabletortures being inflicted upon us, which we endured without sign as best might be. Turkish methods of resuscitation are original and barbarous. At last somebody poured a bucketful of extraordinarily cold water over me and I half opened my eyes. The first thing I saw was Hill. He lay on a bed still feigning unconsciousness, withdropped jaw and protruding tongue. The local expert in anatomy was practising on him the same abominable treatment as I had just undergone. Another gentleman was pouring water impartially over Hill and the bed. The hotel-keeper, in a vain effort to save his mattresses, was tugging at Hill’s head so as to bring it over the edge of the bed and let the water fall on the floor. Hill opened his eyes and began to cry, as Doc. O’Farrell had warned him to do. They continued to pour water over us both, until the floor was an inch deep in it.
Doc.’s orders to me on “coming to” had been to be as abusive and noisy as possible, and to curse everybody for cutting me down. It was the only unfortunate bit of advice he ever gave us. As soon as I felt up to it, I tried to struggle to my feet, shook my fist at the Pimple and added to the general din by roaring out, “Terjuman chôk fena! Terjuman chôk fena!” (Interpreter very bad.)
Bekir, who had a firm grip on my collar, thrust me back to a sitting position on the floor and relieved his feelings at finding me so much alive by striking me a heavy blow with his fist under the ear. I paid no heed to him, though my head was singing, and continued to roar, “Terjuman chôk fena!” at the top of my voice, but Bekir’s action was the signal for a general assault by everyone within reach. Sabit, from behind, drove his rifle-butt into my back, a shepherd in front smote me on the head with a coil of rope, and a gentleman in wooden clogs on my left kicked me hard in the stomach. The rope and the rifle had been just endurable, but “clogs” was the last straw. An overwhelming nausea came over me, everything swam in a giddy mist, and my voice sank like Bottom the weaver’s from a good leonine roar of wrath to the cooing of a sucking-dove. I have never felt so ill in my life, and it was hard to keep at it, even in a whisper. They were going to do something more to me, when Moïse intervened. I was profoundly thankful, but went on raving at my rescuer between gasps. Bekir and Sabit contented themselves with holding me down on the floor.
Meantime my melancholic companion in crime was weeping and wailing on the bed. He was a most distressful figure, with his pale contorted face and streaming eyes and the great red weal round his neck where the rope had been.His shirt was torn half off, and everything about him from his hair to his socks was as wet as water could make it. Nobody paid the least attention to him and he wailed on in solitude.
The whole population of Mardeen seemed to be in the room or in the passage outside trying to get in. Gentlemen with swords; gentlemen with daggers; gentlemen with rifles, and blunderbusses, and knobkerries; shepherds and drovers with long sticks; a shoemaker with a hammer; and a resplendent gendarme with a long shining chain. On the table the hotel-keeper was standing; he held a torch in one hand and with the other exhibited a clasp-knife he had broken in cutting us down. Everyone was talking at once. The din was indescribable and the smell was beyond words. The Pimple, with fresh marks of tears on his cheeks (he had shrieked himself into hysterical weeping), waved his arms and explained over and over again about Hill’s gold trick and how we had fooled them into leaving the room. The mention of the gold fired the mob to search us. They did it very thoroughly, but found nothing but notes. Hill kept the gold out of sight by the aid of his sleight of hand, but let them find the rupee. This caused a fresh discussion—the rupee was evidence of the truth of what Moïse and the sentries had said, and it must be that the gold was magic gold, and had disappeared into the thin air whence it came. They looked at Hill’s weeping figure with something of awe in their glances.
After about half an hour, when Hill and I had begun to quieten down, Moïse questioned us for the benefit of the crowd as the Spook had previously ordered him to do. I admitted having attempted suicide, and said I did it because twenty English prisoners were chasing us (the Afion party which was two days’ behind), and Major Baylay was going to kill me. I managed to work myself up into a great state of terror. It was easy enough to do. I had only to let my body “go,” as it were, and as a result of our drenching, the extreme cold of the night and the rough treatment we had just come through, it did all that was necessary for a perfect simulation of fear. My teeth chattered and I shook all over as if with ague. The sentries were quite alarmed at the sight, and assured me for the hundredth time that no Englishman could come near me.
Then Hill, questioned in the same way, sobbed out that he knew suicide was a very wicked thing, but I had told him todo it. Moïse told him angrily that he was a fool to take any notice of me. Hill turned his face to the wall and went on weeping. His acting was wonderful. Next day Moïse told us the “control” had been marvellous.
I soon found that “letting myself go” had been a mistake; having once begun shivering I could not stop. It was a curious sensation: my body had taken command of the situation and was running away with me. I had an uneasy feeling that a lunatic ought not to feel cold or exhaustion, and I struggled hard to pull myself together, talking the while of my terror of Englishmen in general and Baylay in particular, in the hope that the Turks would ascribe the trembling to fear. They did. They showed me their rifles and knives and knobkerries and promised to kill off my English foes as they had done in the Dardanelles. Gradually my shivering wore itself out, but I felt colder than ever. I began joking with the crowd, telling what I would do to Baylay when I caught him. I was joking in a mist, and their voices were beginning to sound very far away. I knew I was on the point of fainting, and I made a mistake which might well have been fatal to our plans. I twisted my coat-button and said in English to Moïse, “Send us to bed.” It was a foolish, insensate thing to say. Had the crowd in the room contained anyone who knew English that single sentence was enough to show that Moïse was our confederate. The moment the words were out of my mouth I realised what I had done, and could have bitten my tongue out. By sheer good fortune, nobody understood, but I have never forgiven myself. The contrast between my weakness of spirit in Mardeen, and Hill’s superlative endurance later on in Constantinople when he kept a close tongue through a month of incredible illness and suffering in Gumush Suyu hospital, has cured me of any pride in my will-power. But the lesson was not entirely lost, and never again was my hatred of physical suffering allowed to gain the upper hand.
Luckily the crowd thought the order to change into dry things and go to bed emanated from Moïse. Hill helped to save the situation by sobbing out that he didn’t want dry clothes and preferred to remain as he was and contemplate his sins. He had to be forced into his pyjamas. Meantime Moïse had thrown me a towel and I was drying myself, joking with the mob as I did so. We noticed that at this they beganmuttering among themselves. Moïse told us later that the hotel-keeper said no lunatic would dry himself under the circumstances. Moïse replied I did it under his orders, which was true enough and satisfied everybody except the hotel-keeper, who was angry at the disturbance we had caused in his hotel and the damage done by the water to his bedding.
At the time we did not know what the muttering was about, but we saw something was wrong and raised a successful diversion by quarrelling amongst ourselves. Hill wanted to hold a prayer-meeting to ask forgiveness for our suicide, while I wanted him to obey the Turks who were protecting us from the English, and go to bed. In the end Moïse was asked by the hotel-keeper to make me shut up, as I was keeping everybody in the hotel awake. I obeyed Moïse, and so far as Hill was concerned he held his prayer-meeting and then turned in. I refused to go to bed myself, and plagued Moïse to give me back the money he had taken from me at the search, in order that I might buy a rifle from one of our audience to protect myself against Major Baylay and the English. After about an hour of fruitless begging and raving on my part the last of the onlookers went away. Our cart drivers and two villagers were brought in to support Bekir and Sabit in case we turned violent again and I was made to lie down.
My throat was too sore to let me sleep, so I saw that all six of our guards remained awake all night, with their weapons ready in their hands.