only went for a walk. Well, I have your word of honour that you will keep quiet, and the Herr Dokter must decide what is to be done." Tired out and so despairing as to care nothing of what might happen, I fell asleep. In the heat of mid-morning I was awakened by the corporal, who told me to come with him to the doctor's room, As I limped painfully along the corridor I was still tired and but half awake, so that while I remembered something vaguely unpleasant, I could not define exactly what had happened. "Herr Hauptmann," said the corporal with a grin, "your injured leg was not improved by the walk during the air raid "-and only then did I remember fully the bitter happenings of a few hours earlier. Charming and decorative as ever, the blue-uniformed, muchmedalled doctor rose from his chair and shook hands with exaggerated ceremony. The priest stood silent and bowed coldly, as if to imply that my misdeeds were exactly what one would expect from an admirer of Másaryk. "Night walks," said the doctor, "are bad for people with injured legs and faces. As your medical adviser, I should advise you to remain in bed for the future." "I hope I shall be permitted to follow your advice, Herr Doktor." "That being so, perhaps you will tell us exactly where you went and why you did it." Well knowing that with so many proofs of an attempted escape, anything but frankness would be futile, I admitted having tried to return to the British Army. My leg had failed me after half a mile, I added, and realising the madness of the adventure, I had tried to return unobserved. "So! I ought to have known that you would find some chance of escape when so near the front. And now, what do you expect?" "If I may presume on your kindness, I ask that I may stay here until sent away in the normal course of events. I hope you will let me remain in hospital, on the understanding that I give my word of honour to be good, so long as I am in Tul-Keran." "That will be difficult. I myself have no objection, and the word of honour is guarantee enough against further wanderings. But if the news of your escapade got beyond the hospital I should be forced to make a full report." The doctor learned from the corporal that, apart from the four of us present, the only person who knew the story was the night-orderly, who could be trusted to keep quiet. After a low-voiced discussion with the priest, he gave instruotions that nobody else must be told. He then promised to make no report, unless the news leaked out, and his hand was forced thereby. I thanked him and withdrew. But the news did leak out. Either the orderly told it, or the Turkish patient who had seen me in the passage, after my return, formed his own conclusions and communicated them to other people. At any rate, several Turks came into the ward and discussed (according to the Syrian's whispered translations) my sortie of the early morning. One man even went so far as to say that I had gone out and signalled to the British aeroplanes. The Syrian, by the way, was greatly concerned about whether any. body suspected that he had been privy to the attempt, but I was able to reassure him. Evidently the story became so widely known that the hospital authorities had to make their report. Late in the afternoon I was told to dress and collect my belongings, as the Turks were taking me from the hospital. Having obeyed, I was handed over to an escort of two Turkish soldiers, with drawn bayonets. "Adieu," said the Syrian. "I shall pray for you and for happier times.' The doctor shook hands ceremoniously when I left, and the priest-affable once more-gave me a heavy stick to help support my thigh, saying that he hoped we should meet as friends after the war. Bareheaded in the searing sun (for my friends had forgotten to include a hat in my kit) I was led through a gaping orowd to the railway station. There my guard joined forces forces with with another Turk, who had in his charge the dirtiest Arab I have ever seen. His sole dress was a pair of tattered trousers and a faded overcoat, from the left side of which a filthy arm protruded naked. His headdress, a much-torn strip of dingy rag, seemed to have lain for a long time in some muddy pool. Clots of dirt dotted his face, his feet, and the lower part of his legs, which were bare. His moustache and straggling beard were powdered with sand and gravel; and on looking closely at his middle, where the trouserstops gave place to uncovered flesh, I saw two lice on the inner surface of the rough cloth. The Arab and I looked at each other curiously, after the manner of fellow prisoners seeing each other for the first time. Then an interrogation, evidently interrupted by our arrival, was continued. This consisted of a Turkish officer shouting menaces at the Arab, who replied, whenever he was given a chance, with fluent explanations and pleading gestures. Presently a German Unteroffizier, who spoke Arabic well, and seemed to be an interpreter, joined the group. He also threatened the Arab, and I saw him place thumb and finger on his windpipe, as if to suggest strangling. This badgering of the poor brute continued until finally the Arab opened his hands and said something in a resigned tone, whereat a thrill of excitement passed through the gathering; and the Turkish officer, before leaving us, wrote several lines on the official papers carried by the Arab's guard. The Unteroffizier turned his attention to me, and finding that I could speak German, talked of many things, from Hindenburg's advance in France to his own home in the former German colony at Jaffa. "You have a pleasant companion," he said, nodding towards the Arab. I asked who the pleasant companion might be and what was his crime, and heard in reply a strange tale. The Arab, it appeared, had been found wandering suspiciously behind the front of the 8th Turkish Army. His garment was found to be a relic of what had once been an evercoat of Turkish military pattern, 80 that he was arrested as a deserter and possibly a spy. He told a rambling tale of how he had been a soldier in an Egyptian battalion fighting for the British, but, after undergoing torture from his officers, had escaped across the lines. Even the Turks could not be convinced that British officers tortured their men; and, the Arab having shown himself to be a liar, they were more than ever eonvinced that he was a spy. The Turkish officer, in the course of the conversation I had heard, theatened to hang him unless he confessed. At last the Arab (whe, in my opinion, was not a spy, whatever he might be), terrorstricken at the threat that he could only save himself from hanging by a "confession," let himself be badgered into a declaration-true or falsethat he was a spy. So they hanged him, as I learned afterwards, at Damasous. For several hours we remained on the platform, where the Arab and I were rival attractions for general ouriosity. Then, late in the evening, we were hustled into a truck marked in German "12 horses or 40 men." As a matter of fact, more than fifty Turkish soldiers must have crowded into the truck before the train started. Our party kept together in one of the corners, where we found just room enough to sit down without being trampled upon. I placed the kit-bag between myself and the Arab as a barrier against lice—although, for that matter, most of the Turkish soldiers were verminous. That night I performed the first of many nightmare journeys on Turkish railways. Although each side of the truck was open for about three feet, the atmosphere was intensely stuffy, so that it was difficult to breathe when seated on the floor. The filthy crowd of Turks spat all over the place, and exuded dozens of different smells. The train jolted unevenly, with many a bump and halt, over the badlykept track. Sleep was impossible, and by the time I was hauled on to the platform at Afuleh, nine hours later, I was heavy eyed and faint with wakefulness, weakness, and disgust. Afuleh is but a few miles from Nazareth (then the Turco-German General Head- treatment by hanging on to quarters on the Palestine my coat-tails, the Arab had front), and to Nazareth we elaborated his story by saytrudged. This beautiful little ing that I brought him from town is on a high hill, around the British Army in my aerowhich the road to it winds up- plane. Evidently the Platzward at a steep angle. With kommandant, without giving its white buildings and setting, me the chance to deny this it offers a magnificent view as fantastie tale, had telephoned one climbs the hill. But really to Turkish General Headto enjoy it the conditions quarters, which ordered that should be other than when, the "spy" and I, as 80although weak and ill, and complices in crime, should be soarcely able to to walk by kept together. And here we reason of a bad leg, one must were, inside what I learned climb painfully up the steep was the civil oriminal jail. slope, under an intense sun, with a retinue of half-savage guards. The Arab and I were led through the old winding streets, gaped at by listless pedestrians, to the Turkish Platzkommandant's office. The Platzkommandant-a swollen balloon of a man-asked a question, and the Arab's reply drew all eyes in my direction. Having understood only a few words of the Arabic, I wondered how I could be concerned in the charges against the pleasant companion. The Platzkommandant, after examining my papers, spoke with somebody on the telephone. Then, although not a word had been spoken to me, we were both led outside and through some narrow streets to a square stone building. Not until we were inside it did I hear, from a policeofficer who spoke a little French, why I was there. Having noticed that rather more consideration was given to me than to him, and thinking that he might obtain better I protested with vehemence and ridicule against the belief in the Arab's absurd statement. I pointed out that my machine was a singleseater, and that it had been shot down in the mountains. His story was therefore impossible. The police officer promised to forward these protests to military headquarters, but as for him, his orders were that the Arab and I were to remain together. In any case, he added, I was probably being punished for trying to escape. I Remain together we did in a superlatively filthy cell would rather live in a British jail than in most of the poorer dwellings of the Turkish provinces, where donkeys and dogs and hens and men and women and children herd together in mud huts. As for most Turkish jails, I would rather live in a British pigsty. Even after my experience on the train from TulKeran, I was surprised by the first sight of that cell. The walls were neither stone nor wooden, but of hard earth, with holes and cracks all over the surface. The various kinds of dirt that crusted the floor, which must have been left uncleaned for years, had mingled and intermingled until they became a thin layer of slime, giving forth a dank odour. The room was partly underground, although the small iron-barred window, on a level with the floor of the yard and two feet below the ceiling, let in a certain amount of light. Through it crawled all sorts of insects, and hundreds of vermin were to be seen moving in and out of the fissures on the walls. Former tenants had left filth in each of the corners. The cell's dimensions were about twelve feet long, nine wide, and eight high. Unadulterated bravery, without any trace of suppressed or subconscious fear, does not exist; wherefore, if a man who fought in the war tells you that he never felt the least bit afraid, call him a liar of the goriest. But my experience has convinced me that ordinary bravery-the sort of bravery which is self-control in the face of danger-is the most ordinary of qualities, possessed by most people of every race, sex, and age. But endurance is another matter. To all but the lion-hearted there comes a point at which the will to endure breaks down under abnormal strain. Being far from lion-hearted, this now happened to me. When the gendarme banged and bolted the door I became morally dead, and past caring about surroundings or events. Physical weakness, mental agony, a terrible dizziness that resulted from having been bareheaded in the Palestine sun, the succession of privations and revolting surroundingsall these combined to break my spirit. I grabbed the shrinking Arab, who evidently had not reckoned upon being left alone with me, and flung him across the cell. I then sat down in the nearest corner, and, physically and mentally sick, remained inert for many hours. The next three days I remember as a semi-conscious nightmare. Yet a dreadful nightmare is easier to bear than a dreadful reality, because the horror of it is confined to subconsciousness, and does not touch the surface brain. So it was with me in the criminal jail of Nazareth. I sat through hours of inertia, without comprehension, energy, or sense of my surroundings, so that I scarcely realised the dirt, the stench, and the general beastliness of the cell. Three times I tried to pass the door, so that I might protest to the police-officer, but I was pushed back by an incredibly stupid guard, who made frequent use of the words that every prisoner in Turkey knew so well-"yok" and "yassak ("not" and "forbidden "). I gave up the attempt, and relapsed into a state of moral lethargy. The changes from night to day, from stuffy heat to damp |