Caught by the Turks Part 19

There were no smiles and soap in that Military Prison, no scissors, no sanitation. There was nothing human or clean about it. Nothing but destruction will rid it of its vermin, or scour it of its taint of disease and death.

Perhaps the lack of scissors was the amenity of life whose absence I most deplored. Try to do without a cutting instrument for a month, and you will realise why it was that some sort of cutting edge was the first need of primitive man and remains a prime necessity to-day.

However, as a matter of fact, I did not remain a whole month without a cutting edge. Before a fortnight had elapsed I had bettered my position in many ways. I had secured a knife (which I stole from the restaurant), a wash-basin (sent from the Emba.s.sy), and pencil and paper from a friendly clerk. With these writing instruments I used to correspond voluminously with the other British prisoners, by various privy methods.

I had a regular routine for my days now. Early mornings were devoted to walking briskly up and down my room in various gaits--the sailor's roll, for instance, and the Napoleonic stride, and the deportment of various of my acquaintances. During this time I avoided thinking, but generally imagined some incident in which I took a distinguished part. In the forenoon I played games, such as throwing my soap to the ceiling and catching it again, or juggling with cigarettes, both lighted and unlighted. The afternoon generally pa.s.sed in sleep, but the evening and nights were bad. It was then that the second hand of my watch began to exert its fascination. The electric light bulb, however, could occasionally be tampered with, and on these occasions there was always the hope that the sentries would get a shock in putting it right. Also I found amus.e.m.e.nt in my watch chain, which I made into an absorbing puzzle.

But, curiously enough, I found it impossible to write anything, except lengthy letters.

A real prisoner in a well-const.i.tuted prison does not enjoy his days any more than I did. On the other hand, he knows how long his sentence is going to last, whereas in my case I was confined during Djevad Bey's pleasure, or the duration of the war, and each day brought me nearer nothing--except insanity.

One evening, however, an Imperial Son-in-law entered my room, and lit my life with a certain interest. His father, who was a Court official, had betrothed him to a princess, and he had consequently a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of Damad, or Son-in-law. This youth had had a remarkable career. While still a guileless lad, scarcely broke from the harem, he had used his revolver so injudiciously that he had seriously damaged one of the Imperial apartments, besides killing the elderly Colonel at whom he was aiming. Enver Pasha had of course himself a weakness for this sort of thing, but still, to save appearances, the Damad had to be punished. He was therefore condemned to three months' confinement in the Military Prison. Although nominally in residence there, he used, however, to leave prison every Friday to attend the Sultan's Selamlik, and only return on Monday night. Moreover, he not only thoroughly amused himself during his protracted week-ends, he also squeezed every bit of pleasure possible out of his prison days. Life was a lemon, which he sucked with grace. He was free to wander where he wished in the prison, and to eat and drink what he liked. The best of everything was good enough for the Damad. Grapes came for him from the Sultan's garden, and a faithful negro slave was always at his heels.

The Damad had rather charming manners. He knocked politely before entering my cell.

"Excuse my interrupting," he said, "but----"

"You are not interrupting me at all," I answered, getting up from my bed. "I do wish you would stop and talk. Have a cigarette? I haven't talked to anyone for a fortnight."

"I am so sorry, but I daren't talk to you. That is a pleasure to come. I wanted to borrow something, that's all. And, I say, will you allow me to offer you one of my cigarettes--they're the Sultan's brand, you know.

Better take the box. Well, I saw you with an eyegla.s.s through the window in the pa.s.sage. Will you lend it me to appear at the next Selamlik?"

I was delighted, and said so. To my sorrow, the Damad instantly took his departure.

"Smuggle me in something to read," I said, as he left with profuse apologies for his hurry.

He nodded, and his long left eyelash flickered.

Next day his little n.i.g.g.e.r boy, when the sentry's back was turned, popped about twenty leaflets into my window. I seized them avidly, and found that they were the astounding adventures of Nat Pinkerton in French. Never have my eyes rested so gleefully on a printed page. I consumed them cautiously, else I should have gorged myself with excitement at a single sitting. Like an epicure, I made them last, by always breaking off at the critical juncture of the great detective's affairs. From that moment my life flowed in more agreeable channels.

"Devouring time, blunt though the lion's paws." . . . I suddenly understood Shakespeare's meaning afresh. Time had dulled the clawing of regret.

I had failed to escape, it is true, but there was always hope. Things were getting better. The women had been released. Themistocle only awaited a formal trial. My own condition had improved. I had been moved from my solitary confinement, just when I had secured a Bible, and a large tin of Keating's, wherewith to combat the devils of captivity. But any change is better than none at all, I thought. The mortal hunger for companionship is strong, and my new room, besides containing an officer, also enjoyed an excellent and varied view.

After a few days' experience of my new room-mate, however, who was a Bulgarian Bolshevik, I began to pine for solitude again. A more unmitigated Tishbite I have never seen, but fortunately he was smaller than I. When I found him washing his feet in my basin one night, I smote him, hip and thigh.

That Bulgarian has coloured my whole view of the Balkans. The less said about him, the better.

One day about thirty British officers arrived from the camp at Yuzgad, whence they had escaped and been recaptured on the occasion when Commander Cochrane and his gallant band of seven marched four hundred and fifty miles to freedom. All the party who arrived in the Military Prison were in uniform, and in excellent spirits. They were like a breath of fresh air in that sordid place. On being put into three rooms, these thirty brave men and true at once demanded beds to sleep on. In due time the beds arrived, in the usual condition of beds in that place.

They might have been so many Stilton cheeses. Our thirty prisoners, despite the protest of the guards, carried out their couches into the pa.s.sage, and lit two Primus stoves. Over these stoves they proceeded to pa.s.s the component parts of each bed, so that its occupants were utterly exterminated.

Imagine the scene. A dismal corridor, a flaming stove, Turkish sentries protesting with Hercules in khaki, cleansing the Augean stable. . . .

But protests were useless. The smell of burnt bugs mingled with the other contaminations of the prison. Our officers had done in little what civilisation will one day do at large throughout that land.

A British officer, going to the feeding place, looked into a window which gave on to my room. But I was kept strictly apart from my fellows, and the sentry consequently tried to drag the officer away.

"Leave me alone, you son of Belial!" said he. "Isn't a window meant to look through?"

Windows in that prison were certainly not meant to look through.

From my new eyrie I had a composite view of startling contrasts. Down below, some soldiers were living in a verandah, behind wooden bars.

Anything more animal than their life it would be impossible to conceive.

Every afternoon at three o'clock a parade of handcuffed men were marshalled two by two, and then pushed into these dens. Beyond them lay the city of Stamboul with its cl.u.s.tered cupolas and nine-trellised alley-ways. And beyond the city were the blue waters of the Marmora.

Then there was the window in the pa.s.sage through which the British officer had observed me. This gave me a view of the rank and fashion of the prison, so that I knew who was being tried, who received visitors, and so on.

And directly opposite me, in another face of the building, was yet another window, with curtains drawn. That was the window of the Hall of Justice. Directly under my perch, but rather too far to jump, were some telegraph lines which might possibly have provided a means of escape.

Sentries used to watch me carefully, whenever I looked at these telegraph lines. I was considered a dangerous, indeed a desperate character, and my every movement was regarded with apprehension. Not only was no one (except now the Bulgarian) allowed to speak to me, but I was not even permitted to look at anything, or anyone, for long, without being bidden to desist. Whatever I did, in fact, I was told not to do.

Eventually I made a scene.

The immediate cause of the row was that I had a glimpse of a sitting in the Hall of Justice. I had often wondered what pa.s.sed there, for at times faint screams used to hint of the infamies that pa.s.sed behind those curtains.

One day I saw.

The Hall of Justice is a fine room, with a lordly sweep of view over the city and the sea. Why anyone chose such a situation as a torture chamber I do not know. But there it was. There was something dramatic about the beautiful prospect and the b.e.s.t.i.a.l people who sat with their backs turned to it, interrogating the Armenians.

"Every prospect pleases and only man is vile."

Very vile were the two Turkish officers, judges I suppose, who sat smoking cigarettes, while an old Armenian woman and her son stood before them to be tried. What pa.s.sed I could not hear, but evidently her answers were not satisfactory, for presently the policeman who stood behind her kicked her violently, so that her head jerked back and her arms flung forward, and she was sent tottering towards the judges'

table. Then the policeman took a stick as thick as a man's wrist, and began to beat her over the head and shoulders. Her son meanwhile had fallen on his knees and was crawling about the room, dragging his chains, and supplicating first the judges and then the policeman. He was imploring them, no doubt, to have pity on his mother's age and weakness.

She fell down in a faint. The policeman kicked her in the face, and then prodded her with a stick until she rose.

I wish the people who are ready to "let the Turk manage his own country"

could have seen that savage pantomime.

I tried to get out to stop it, but was driven back with bayonets.

Djevad Bey, the Military Commandant of Constantinople, with a resplendent retinue, arrived one day to inspect us. With his long cigarette-holder, and long shiny boots, he swaggered round, followed by _ormulu_ staff officers and diligent clerks and pompous gentlemen in dog-collars. Everywhere around him was dirt, disease, dest.i.tution, and despair. But Djevad Bey in his shiny boots "cared for none of these things." He was himself, with his medals and moustaches, and that was enough.

"What more do you want, _effendi_?" he asked me after I had made a few casual complaints (for it was useless to take him seriously). "You have one of the most beautiful views in Europe from the garden."

"But I am not allowed into the garden."

"Have a little patience, _mon cher_," said he. "It is rather crowded with older prisoners now. But in a little time perhaps, when I have discovered the name of that forger . . ."

And with a condescending smile he pa.s.sed on between ranks of sentries standing stiffly at attention, to inspect another portion of his miserable menagerie.

Ah, Djevad, _mon cher_, those days seem distant now! You and your popinjays have pa.s.sed. . . .