Eastern Nights - and Flights Part 17

Ten minutes before we should have reached Stamboul station the G.o.d of coincidence sent an extraordinary opportunity. Just beyond Koum-kapou the train rounded a sharp corner, and ran into some empty trucks that were stationary on the line. There was a succession of clangs, a violent shock, and many a jolt and jar, mingled with screams, gasps, and frightened confusion.

One of the two guards with White and I fell on to an iron platform between two carriages. The other, unfortunately, kept both his balance and his head. I was standing a yard in front of him, behind White.

"Now's our chance. I'm off." said White as he pushed his way through the struggling pa.s.sengers to the farther end of the compartment. I began to follow, but seeing that the guard was already suspicious of White's movements, I slowed down, and pretended to pacify a nervous woman, thus blocking the guard's advance and allowing White more room.

"He's after you," I called, as White turned his head.

In the confusion White misunderstood these words as "I'm with you."

Thinking that I was ready to follow him, he edged his way to the steps at the far end of the compartment. The guard, meanwhile, shouted a warning to his companion, who had picked himself up and left the train.

This second guard ran toward White along the railway embankment.

White was wearing a cap. In his inside pocket he had a felt hat, his idea being to change headgear in a crowd, so that the guards, looking for a man with a cap, would fail to notice him. I now saw him fling the cap under the carriage, jam the felt hat on his head, descend from the train and jump down the embankment. The guard with me yelled, while the second Turkish soldier leaped down the embankment, clutched at White, and almost caught him.

White dodged clear, and the last I saw of him that day was as he raced down a narrow, winding street, pulling and pushing out of his way the Turks and Greeks who streamed in the opposite direction, towards the scene of the collision. Close behind him the guard gave chase, while commanding pa.s.sers-by to stop the British prisoner.

I jumped down the embankment, partly in a desperate attempt to elude the other guard, and partly to create a diversion for White. At the bottom of the slope I twisted an ankle and fell. My guard dropped on top of me. We scrambled to our feet, myself unstable on the weak ankle, and the Turk clutching my right arm with both his hands. Under the circ.u.mstances it was useless to struggle. I remained quiet, while the guard called to his aid a pa.s.sing soldier.

I stood at the bottom of the embankment, gripped painfully by the two Turks. The moments that followed were indescribably bitter. White was probably at liberty, with the glorious prospect of a successful escape.

I had failed, for the third time since capture, and was probably booked for a cell under the Turkish Ministry of War. My one consolation, my one hope, was in the wads of money distributed among various parts of my clothing. These would provide a chance to bribe the guards into silence, leaving me free for another attempt before the British prisoners at Psamatia were moved to Anatolia.

The three of us remained thus for ten minutes, an unregarded island in the sea of people that surged round the derailed coaches. The shaken pa.s.sengers were climbing down the slope, the new arrivals were climbing up it to see the wreckage. A few yards away first aid was being administered to an injured woman.

Presently I saw Fulton and Stone, with their guards approaching from the front of the train. They stopped short on seeing me held by two soldiers. I shook my head and signalled them not to come any nearer, whereupon they turned away.

The guard who had chased White returned, alternately cursing and invoking the wrath of Allah on all Englishmen. In his anger he took off his cloth hat, threw it on the ground, shook his fist at me, and said, "English very bad!"

Although White had eluded him he did not give up hope at once, but led us through a maze of alleys and streets, peering forlornly into the doorways of shops and houses and through the gratings of cellars.

Finally he held a conference with his companions, and determined to take me to Koum-kapou police station. My ankle, I was glad to find, had been ricked only slightly, and was now normal again.

"English very bad," said the man who had chased White, in the clipped Turkish used between prisoners and guards. "We"--pointing to himself and my own guard--"prison. Prison very bad. No food."

"Here is food for prison," I consoled him, handing over two Turkish pounds.

The sight of money partly pacified them, and their anger cooled. Soon they were in a fit state of mind to talk _baksheesh_, that touchstone of the Turkish character.

I produced ten more banknotes, each of one Turkish pound. Again using pidgin-Turkish, with many an expressive gesture, I offered them to the guards, on condition that when we reached the police station they would say that although White had escaped I made no attempt to do so.

The matter needed several minutes of explanation before misunderstandings were cleared up, so that we withdrew into a side street. The two guards needed little persuasion to make them accept.

Thereupon the third man (the soldier who helped to hold me at the bottom of the embankment) demanded a share. To satisfy him I was forced to produce a further sum of five Turkish pounds. He saluted and left us.

The two guards carried on an animated talk for some time longer, and, as far as I could understand, discussed what tale to the police would show them in the best light. They decided, apparently, not to admit having seen White escape and let him give them the slip, but to claim that he vanished when we were all knocked down by the collision.

I remembered that the food supplies in my pockets might be incriminating evidence. I had, also, a dangerous slip of paper, on which Wilkowsky had drawn a plan of the Galata beerhouse in which I was to meet t.i.toff's Russian friend. This I disposed of by tearing it into shreds behind my back, and dropping the fragments, a few at a time, as in a paper chase.

The packets of food were rather more difficult to lose. There was a tin of Oxo cubes, which I flung surrept.i.tiously on to a dust-heap. Some sticks of bivouac chocolate I left on a convenient windowsill. The worst problem was a small bag containing a mixture of cocoa and grape-nuts, taken from one of White's parcels from home. I could scarcely throw this away un.o.bserved; and the police station was already in sight.

A woman stood in the doorway, and gazed at us. As we brushed past her on the narrow pavement, I took the bag from my pocket, dumped it into her hand, and moved on without a word or a sign. When, from a few yards ahead, I looked back, she had opened the bag and was staring in wide-eyed surprise at the cocoa--then quite un.o.btainable in Constantinople--which had fallen as from heaven.

The guards told a rambling tale to the police officer, who took notes of their description of White and sent out three gendarmes to search the streets for him. Afterward I was taken into an inner room and searched. Nothing was found to brand me as a suspect. The pockets were quite empty; and my larger banknotes--one of a hundred Turkish pounds, one of fifty, and one of twenty-five--were undiscovered, being sewn into suspenders and braces.

Finally, as a result of the twelve Turkish pounds' worth of good character given me by the guards, I continued the journey to the military dentist in Stamboul, after a guard had telephoned the news of White's disappearance to Psamatia.

Desperate after my failure in face of White's success, I made an unwise bolt for freedom across the ruins of a recent fire. Before the guards had recovered from their surprise, I reached a half-demolished wall at the far end of an open s.p.a.ce. I shinned over the wall, and found myself in a blind alley. Straight ahead was a house; and another building cut off the exit to the right. To the left was a bare wall, too high to be climbed. I turned round, walked back to meet the now furious guards, and handed them another pound note apiece. They gasped; but a sense of humour dissolved their rage into laughter.

We continued to walk toward Stamboul, each of my arms now being held tightly. Several times I heard the guards mention Theodore, so that I was not surprised when they led me into a small cafe near the quay (the Maritza restaurant being then out of bounds for prisoners), where one of them stayed with me while the other fetched the Greek waiter to act as interpreter.

"First," said Theodore after he had listened to the guards' story, "you must give parole for the rest of the day."

I agreed readily enough; and over pots of beer--I only met one Mohammedan guard whose religious principles prevented him from accepting alcoholic drink in a secluded spot--the party became more amiable. The Turks' object in fetching Theodore was that he might explain to me a story which would saddle them with a minimum of blame for White's escape. If I corroborated this yarn they would agree not to mention my own misdeeds to the commandant at Psamatia. Again I accepted.

We discussed and amended the story, which in its final form was divided into four parts--(1) a train collision; (2) a shock that knocked the four of us over and separated guards from prisoners; (3) the confusion; (4) the discovery that White had disappeared, unknown to the rest of the party.

Through Theodore I now offered the guards fifty Turkish pounds if they would turn their backs and let me walk out alone. They refused regretfully, saying that to lose two prisoners in one day would be as much as their lives were worth. They reminded me of my promise, and we left the cafe for the dentist's surgery, where I was obliged to allow a perfectly sound tooth to be stopped.

Back at Psamatia I found all the prisoners shut up in their rooms. The Turkish commandant was raving with rage. As we entered the arched doorway he rushed from his office, and boxed the guards' ears. They bore it without a sound, comforted no doubt by the six Turkish pounds which each of them had concealed in his clothing.

We told our separate but corroborative tales, how we had been knocked over by the shock and missed White in the confusion. White was queer in the head, I explained; and it was possible that having been further unbalanced by the collision he wandered away, not knowing where he was going. The commandant, ready to clutch at anything that might save his official knuckles from a rapping, affected to take the suggestion seriously, and embodied it in his report. He affected to hope that White would recover memory and senses, and return of his own free will.

Later that evening the commandant, after telephonic communication with the Ministry of War, ordered all the British prisoners to prepare for a journey into Anatolia on the following day. With Fulton and Stone, who returned from their visit to the optician without having had a chance to escape, I conferred on how we could get clear in the short time left to us.

Fulton and Stone planned to leave the prison-house during the night, but I decided to wait until morning. They wanted to leave Constantinople for San Stefano, whereas I wanted to remain in the city; and if I escaped before dawn I should have nowhere to spend the night hours, and so lay myself open to the curiosity of gendarmes. In any case, I was uncertain whether or not my parole, given to the guards, ought to extend till midnight.

The three of us occupied the same bedroom. A small window from the adjoining lavatory opened on to a drainpipe. It was decided that Fulton should climb up this pipe to the roof, until he was firmly established on the gutter. Stone would hand him a rope and their boots, and then himself climb the drainpipe. They would crawl along a succession of roofs, keeping in the shadow, until they reached the top of a house about fifty yards distant, which overlooked a side street outside the camp sentries' range of vision. Having fastened the rope to a chimney or to some other stable object, they could let themselves down to the road when it was conveniently deserted, with the boots slung round their necks. They planned to tramp the fifteen miles to San Stefano during the night, leaving Constantinople via the gate at Yedi-kuli.

That evening the sentries in the yard, stimulated by White's escape, were more alert than usual. Another drawback was the full moon, which for some hours lit up the corner outside the window. Not until just before midnight were conditions, in the form of shadow and an absent guard, suitable for the adventure.

With feet covered only by a pair of thick socks Fulton climbed through the tiny window, gripped a bend of the drainpipe, and made use of a metal joint for foot-hold. Stone, holding the rope and the boots, watched from the window. Fulton gripped the gutter and was beginning to haul himself up when--_crunch!_--the top of the flimsy drainpipe was severed from the roof by his weight, and he fell.

Instinctively he released his feet from the joint on which they had been resting. He thus managed to land on all fours in the yard, about fifteen feet below.

The noise, however, was startling. Stone and I expected every second that Fulton would be discovered, but with great presence of mind he jumped up and ran into our room, through the near-by door, before anybody had time to investigate.

An upper window opened noisily, and from it a Turkish officer, awakened by the sound of Fulton's fall, yelled to the guards. Within five minutes the yard was full of a disordered commotion. An excited group collected round the portion of the drainpipe which was lying on the ground.

Meanwhile, Fulton and Stone had torn off their outer clothing. When Zikki-Bey paid us a visit of suspicious inspection, the three of us were seemingly asleep. Soon afterward the chattering and clattering in the yard subsided. Fortunately a strong wind was blowing, and we heard afterward that the Turks thought a violent gust must have dislodged the drainpipe.

With nerves on edge and all our faculties keyed up, there was little sleep for the rest of that night. Our only remaining chance was to escape next morning, when we pa.s.sed through the city on the way to the railway station.

CHAPTER XI

A GREEK WAITRESS, A GERMAN BEERHOUSE, A TURKISH POLICEMAN, AND A RUSSIAN SHIP

At half-past eleven of a scorching morning every Britisher at Psamatia marched away from the prison-house. As a result of the furore that followed White's escape, twenty-four hours earlier, the Turks were sending us into the interior of Anatolia. About fifty Tommies, with a detachment of guards, left first; and we--the fifteen officer prisoners--followed twenty yards behind them. In the rear was the Turkish officer in charge, with a screen of six guards, who showed fixed bayonets, loaded rifles, and smiling ferocity.