ober 1918, five of our party ings often, in cold and nakedreached England together, ness." preceded by Cochrane, who had managed to arrange for a seat in a "Rapide" across Europe, and followed by the Old Man and Nobby, who had had to remain in hospital in Egypt for another fortnight. Soon after arrival in England, each of us had the very great honour of being individually received by His Majesty the King. His kindly welcome and sympathetic interest in what we had gone through will ever remain a most happy recollection. Finally, we arranged a dinner for all our party, the date fixed being 11th November. This, as it turned out, was Armistice Night, and with that night of happy memories, and a glimpse of the eight companions once again united, we will draw the tale of our adventures to a close. There is one note, however, which we feel we must add before laying down our pens. Many of our readers will have already realised that there was something more than mere luck about our escape. St Paul, alluding to his adventures in almost the very same region as that traversed by us, describes experiences very like our own. Like him, we were "in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, ... in perils by the heathen, in perils in the oity, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea; . . . in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fast To be at large for thirty-six days before escaping from the country, to have been so frequently seen, sometimes certainly to have aroused suspicion, and yet to have evaded recapture, might perhaps be attributed to Turkish lack of organisation. Our escape from armed villagers; our discovery of wells in the desert, of grain in an abandoned farmhouse, and of the water (which just lasted out our stay) in the ruined wells on the coast; and finally, the timely reappearance of the motor-tug with all essential supplies for the sea voyage,any one even of these facts, taken alone, might possibly be called "luck," or a happy coincidence; taken in conjunction with one another, however, they compel the admission that the escape of our party was due to a higher Power. " It would seem as if it were to emphasise this that on at least three occasions, when everything seemed to be going wrong, in reality all was working out for our good. Our meeting with and betrayal by the two "shepherds ought, humanly speaking, to have proved fatal to the sucoess of our venture: we had thrown away valuable food, and were committed to crossing a desert which previously, without a guide, we had looked upon as an impassable obstacle. And yet we know now that it would have been entirely beyond us to have reached the coast by the route which we had mapped for escape every important step out to Rendezvous X, and was made a matter of prayer; that it was only the deflec- and when the final scheme tion from our proposed route was settled, friends in Engcaused by this rencontre which land were asked, by means of brought the land journey a code message, to intercede within our powers of en- for its success. That message, durance. It was the same we now know, was received when we were forced, against and very fully acted upon. our will, to replenish supplies We had also friends in Turkey at a village; the breakdown who were interceding for us; of one of the party which and on the trek it was more compelled us to do so un- than once felt that some one at doubtedly saved us from home or in Turkey was rememmaking an impossible attempt bering us at the time. To us, to reach the coast with the then, the hand of Providence food which remained at the was manifest in our escape. time. Still more remarkable We see in it an answer to was our failure to take the prayer. Our way, of course, rowing-boat on the night of might have been made 10th/11th September, which smoother, but perhaps in that resulted in the motor tug oase should not we have falling into our hands and learnt the same lessons of debeing the final means of our pendence upon God. As it escape on the night following. was, it was made manifest to us that, even in these materialistic days, to those who can have faith, "the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save." We feel then that it was a Divine intervention which brought us through. It was in addition an answer to prayer. Throughout the preparations OPPORTUNITY. BY DOUGLAS WALSHE. OSMAN's father was a hammal, and he really could carry a piano on his back. That has nothing to do with the story, but I simply can't leave it out. The sight of Osman père staggering with a piano through the streets of Salonica is one of my most vivid memories of the Balkans. He was incredibly bent and filthy-five feet two if straightened out, which he never was, and three feet nine with the piano on his back. His clothes were rags, many - coloured and astonishingly thick. The temperature varied between twenty degrees of frost and ninety odd in the shade, but the costume was always the same. It was only the British who undressed into "shorts" for the heat. Summer and winter, Osman père wore a red cummerbund several yards long, thick baggy underclothes, and thick patched trousers on top, a shapeless upper garment of a carpet-like material, and a fez. So much for Osman's father. I know very little about his mother. Women don't matter in the Balkans. It is safe, however, to assert that whatever else she might be, she was no "moon of delight." Also that she worked much harder than either the hammal or his son. Osman père would see to that. The family residence was situated in the Turkish quarter. There was no bath h. and o., or any other convenience whatsoever. Drawing-room, diningroom, morning-room, and bedrooms were all thrown into one nine feet by seven. It was, in short, what plainspoken folks would have called a shed, or a British house agent have advertised as self-contained maisonette, convenient of access to the City." You stepped out of the front door-not too boldly, or you might step into the mansion across the way-held your nose as you turned right, and fifty paces brought you to the top of Venizelos Street, the hub of the universe. There was very little furniture in Osman's home. The floor was earth, and the three beds were "made" direct upon it. One was occupied by Osman, one by his sister, and one by his father and mother. Each had a pile of rags for a mattress, and each was covered with a greasy, ragged eiderdown-for purposes of concealment rather than additional warmth. Under the quilt on number one was a French horsecloth; number two boasted a long Italian cavalry cloak; and number three, the marital couch, sported a British Army blanket. There were no chairs or seats of any description. In the hammal's domicile, one lived as one slept on the floor Everything was on the floor, even the family's spare gar- the sun was hot. The floor ments for 28 there were soon dried. The one window neither pegs nor nails in the was broken and stuffed with walls, there was no other place rags. Allah was Great, but for them. The only aetual glass was dear. article of furniture was a table, ten inches high, sometimes used for meals. Johnny.... When absolutely unavoidable, bread was also bought in dark flat round loaves in the shops-dingy open-fronted places with public ovens for those who could afford such things. All the hammal's cooking, however, was done outside, among the smells, in a copper pan over a wood fire. Roasts were unknown. When there was meat, it was stew. Strings of bright red paprika, for flavouring purposes, hung to dry on the outside walls, gave the establishment a sort of meretricious decoration. In the driest corner inside there was also a heap of ripening maize-oobs, some day to become bread when money was short. The roof leaked, and nobody thought of trying to mend it, er minded that the rain made the house a welter of slimy mad. Allah was Good, and The landlord, a Spanish Jew, had forgotten or never learned the Turkish word for "repairs." But he always remembered "rent." Furtively one spat upon his infidel shadow on the pavement in front of his draper's shop in the Rue Ignatia-bat one paid, all the same, in cash or kind. The “kind" consisted in Osman, a boot-black, daily cleaning the landlord's shoes, and the hammal doing all his porterage. The difference was made up in drachmae. Life was always dear, and food was always scarce, but both were dearer and scarcer now that all these foreign soldiers and unbelievers had got themselves between the Faithful and the Sun. They brought much money-and of course one got what one could; but a hammal and a bootblack had few chances of fleecing them. Every thing had gone up. Allah was great and Mahomed was his prophet, but prices were painfully high and the feasts of the Faithful were unworthy of His goodness. The mother and sister worked in the fields, walking four miles each way to Kalamaria morning and evening in the season. The sister, Fatima But this is Osman's story, so enough of his family. He was eighteen in 1917a handsome, dark-eyed, lazy youth, who thought much of women and little of work. His profession, that of a boot-black, was chosen because in that easy occupation one could loll in the sun, look at the women, and earn a few leptae when necessity drove. Most lads drifted on to something else before eighteen, but Osman found it difficult to discover another opening suitable to his temperament. He was not without education. He could read with difficulty, if compelled; and write, with his tongue out, if writing were absolutely unavoidableor profitable. His arithmetio, however, was faulty. In the matter of giving change he invariably made an error in his own favour. Sometimes he was kicked for it; sometimes it came off-especially with the British. He was not alone in this foible. Malaria, murder, and wrong change appear to be indigenous to the Balkan soil. He spoke Turkish, modern Greek, and "Macedonski" fluently (especially the bad bits), though Turkish was the only tongue he had learned during his brief period at school. He also, as a result a result of the war which, so far as he was concerned, began in October 1915, when the Allies landed at Salonica, spoke Franco-British when opportunity offered. . . ... This language is even simpler than Esperanto, and for the wealth of meanings concentrated in single words it knocks spots off Chinese. Its vocabulary is ten words all told, and numbers are by fingers. "Feenish is its foundation and principal word. What “finish” can be made to mean, space forbids me to try to tell. Suffice it to record that you say "Feenish" to a Frenchman and "Feenish Johnny" to a Britisher, whether he is a brigadier or a corporal. Further detailed investigations must be left to the philologists. I really must get on with the story. Osman's opportunity arose on the day of the Great Fire which started in the afternoon of Saturday, August 18, 1917. A gentleman in a residence very similar to Osman's father's was frying aubergine in oil. The pan overturnedand the fat was in the fire. It so happened that one of the miseries of the climatethe Vardar wind-was very much in evidence at the time. This wind is a persistent powerful blast that "oarries on at intervals all the year round for three or four days at a stretch. It is damnable in the cold weather and disgusting in the hot. Sleep is difficult on account of the raoket, and tents and tempers are torn to shreds. Anything more ideal for fanning a fire on a hot August afternoon it would be hard to imagine. The gentleman whose culinary clumsiness was to render a hundred thousand people homeless took to his heels, and even so the fire almost caught him. The whole of the Ghetto and most of the Turkish quarter were involved with unbelievable rapidity. Those nests of |