Part 35 (2/2)

This was my first sc.r.a.p with Ali. He was afraid, as Zia Bey had arrived at the Serai just after. Zia was off to Angora, but travelling in luxury in a landau. We had a good supper after paying huge amounts for water and firewood, and to the owner of the wretched _khan_ or shed. The place teemed with fleas and bugs. In the early dawn we had breakfast of Cambridge sausage, biscuits, tea, and jam, from our parcels. My travelling companion likewise had a large box full of stores just arrived, and I should think ours was the best supplied caravan that ever crossed that mountain.

We walked along beside the wagon up the incline. The horses were so poor that they could scarcely pull the empty wagon. The route led among pine woods and water-falls alongside a sparkling brook. I exchanged a few words with Zia, who was also walking, but he soon pa.s.sed us. He had seen service in the Dardanelles and at Sivas.

Slowly we climbed, sometimes walking, sometimes riding.

The great forests of fir with tiny log houses perched among the heights on every clearance, were above us as we started.

By three o'clock we were on the summit above them. Al Ghaz Dhag, a fine peak, lay alongside us wreathed in mists.

We were kept together, and quite an army of gendarmes convoyed us. Recently the brigands who swarmed in these hills had robbed the mails and repeatedly held up pa.s.sengers for tribute.

My eyes became troublesome, and Greenwood's arm inflamed. However, we made a good halt and lunch in the summit among pines, and here met our old good Commandant, Fatteh Bey, who was storming against Enver Pasha and Sheriff Bey. He had had some difference at last with Sheriff Bey, whom he was too weak to restrain. This led to Fatteh's getting removed to Eski Chehir. He had had so many contradictory orders to go that at last he set off without them.

While he was away the escape occurred, and he was interrupted at Changrai and ordered to return. Sheriff, the nominal commandant when the affair occurred, accused Fatteh of conniving. He caused Fatteh's kit to be searched secretly at Changrai, and a letter, really innocent, was found from an officer in Kastamuni to a friend at another camp. So Fatteh got in disgrace, and was now pensioned off. It was all worked by Sheriff. Fatteh told us he wanted to leave Turkey and go to England to live. Every now and then he produced a Cook's English-Turkish. He has already learned the money quite well!

That night we reached another wretched _khan_, and slept on the roof. We smoked a little while the drivers slept, and the gates being well secured we could not escape. Ali became obstreperous and obstinate, and wished to show his authority even in the matter of our walking or riding or getting firewood or procuring water to wash. He wants us to get it from the place where we must, of course, pay for it. But these have been wonderful days of movement, a voyage of rediscovery of the world, a pa.s.sing from sleep to dreamland, from death to life.

We find very many old landmarks that we now remember perfectly to have seen on our outward trip--a lonely cabin, a path over the mountain, a deserted mill, a desolate Armenian house. Thus in moments of tragedy can the eye collect vivid impressions of things so commonplace that they are usually missed. A very hot day of trekking, followed with frequent collapsing of the horses, and more frequently of the harness, which was tied with string or rope. Periodically came a louder crash from our groaning wheels, which wobbled dreadfully, sometimes so ominously as to threaten to tip us out altogether. We were at an angle certainly of forty degrees off the perpendicular quite often, and Greenwood, being a sapper, developed a trick of making elaborate calculations as to how many more fractions we might go over, and what the momentum of our boxes packed behind our heads would be in a general roll. We were hemmed in by the ribs of the wagon's cover, and in case of accident could not move a foot. Once we actually did go over, but only tipped on to the side of the bluff, and luckily not the other way. We kept Ali in cigarettes, and gave him more than one tin of food. Fatteh and another very fat Turkish officer who accompanied him lived, I verily believe, on the same onion and melon from Kastamuni to Changrai. They ate bread and olives.

I was not altogether free from suspense lest I should be held up in Angora and not allowed to proceed to Constantinople, and I had asked Ali if Zia's letter to the medical officer at Angora really existed. He said we would both go to Constantinople, but this in the lying way of appearing pleasant the Turk has. As we had been quite good friends, I asked Fatteh in German to have a look for me. He got the letter, and said aloud that it was for us to go to Stamboul. I asked him again that night, and he admitted it was only for examination in Angora, and did not mention Stamboul! However, I saw the line. There was no need to pretend, as my eyes were really bad. More than once I had to be completely blindfolded, and sometimes lie down in the roadside.

We pa.s.sed the Hitt.i.te caves in the cliffside near Kosah river, and then reached Changrai, the halfway village. Here we were taken into another serai in the town, an empty room with hanging doors and broken windows. We ate hard, and drank bad _raki_ hard, and slept hard. We stayed there all the next day. Here I hid a section of my papers I had not shown to Sheriff. When he p.r.o.nounced his intention with regard to my book, I slung the rest of my kit back into the box in a great rage, and, of course, over the other parts of the book he had not yet seen. These I expected to lose here. I now forestalled a search by getting them sewn into some old rugs.

Fatteh promised to do all sorts of things for us, but I had the usual doubts. He wishes us well, but is a Turk.

We saw the wretched little bazaar, and heard that the whole of Kastamuni camp was to be moved to some lonely barracks outside the town, so as to prevent more escapes. On the morning of our departure we walked out slowly about a mile over the fields to these barracks which lay en route.

They stood alone in the plain beside what in winter was a stream, a four-sided great building of many rooms enclosing possibly an acre of ground with a pump of bad water in the centre. The rooms, or rather divisions, were large, enclosed on two sides only, and strewed with filth and litter. Sheep and goats ran from corridor to room as we went the round.

Windows were broken, and doors long since burned. The building itself was fairly solid, as these go in Turkey, but altogether the change from Kastamuni to this would be a serious one for the worse. I tried very hard to get some cryptic word back to our friends in Kastamuni, so that they might put up every objection. (This I heard later never reached them, and they were told excellent quarters were awaiting them in Changrai.)

My resolution to leave this part of the country increased, and I prepared to risk much, even life itself, for a change.

From Changrai on our voyage was much more uncomfortable.

It lay through the region of dry arid land, stony and dusty tracks, or bare rocky defiles. The horses collapsed, our guard got sick, and was reduced to Ali the _choush_, and Mustapha the guard. The gendarmes had turned back on emerging from the pa.s.ses. Escape from here was hopeless, so barren was the land. We hoped brigands might surprise us. We hatched schemes for knocking Ali on the head and wrecking the wagon.

With one good friend something might have been possible, but as it was I was half blind, in fact in the last month my eyes had become very much worse, and my companion walked with pain. So we went on. Ali, or rather Peter Pan, as we called him, with a huge revolver and tin sword grew more overbearing as the trek wore on. When we were most weary he pressed on. The fellow was congenitally a fool, and often after pa.s.sing a decent camping place with shade and water, stopped on a burned-up patch. At night he stuck us into some vile _khan_. However, one way and another we got through.

At Changrai I doctored the wheel, which was nearly off, and decided by pocketing the rivet to stop the caravan when necessary. This I did more than once. However, two marches off Angora, in the middle of some ruined and sacked villages, two wheels had got so bad that they came off, the wagon nearly going over a _khud_. They fixed it up with sticks and rope, and then a few miles farther the spokes fell out, two or three at a time. Just here Mustapha, who had walked the whole way, collapsed with acute ague and malaria, and shook violently on the ground. This simple soldier had come along pluckily, and often did sentry duty at night as well, after eating his bread ration that he carried. We admired him, and although tired and in pain with over-walking ourselves, we got out at once to give him a lift. Imagine our feelings when the malignant Peter Pan broke into a terrible rage, bullied, and struck his soldier for daring to ride, kicked him into going on, and took our seat himself. We had a general row, and Peter Pan struck the _arabunchi_. It was he and the _choush_ against us three, but Mustapha, the patient soul of the Turkish peasant, and the best thing we had found in this country, was too good a soldier not to submit. He was fond of us, and even cursed his officer. He said he wished their officers were like ours, who considered their men a little, but no word of rebellion escaped him, and so collapsing every few moments he staggered on. Then Peter Pan half drew his sword on Greenwood and jostled him, a cripple. This was too much. I seized his arm, and in a most impressive rage told him if he drew it I would disarm him. He was speechless. It was a most colossal row.

Then we sat down and refused to go, unless we could get our seats. ”We are invalids, special cases _en route_ for hospital.

You have no right to sneak our seats.” His defence was that he was to be an officer by and by, and if his man could ride, he could. The _choush_ sided with him, and we had to follow, while he rode. But I showed him some letters, and swore to report him to Zia Bey, who was not far ahead. He then showed his teeth, and said his secret orders were to _s.h.i.+kar_ us, and give no liberty, as I was a dangerous person whom they couldn't catch. Anyway I took good care the wagon went phut again soon, although he proposed to go on still a distance, dragging the broken wheel. Finally the whole show crashed, and he had to get out. Another driving _arabana_ of much the same quality was commandeered, and we were wanted to move without our kit. This we wouldn't do, and smoked cigarette after cigarette on the road like disobedient schoolboys.

Finally the kit was put up, and we had to walk. The _choush_ then became very ill with what he thought was cholera, but what was evidently cold in the stomach and malaria.

He was rather a coward. He asked me for medicine and prescription. I told him castor oil was a good thing, and gave him enough of this and some ginger to put him out of any future arguments. Peter Pan then had to capitulate, for he was all that was left. We walked side by side, and more than once made off as if we were escaping after water. Then he let us drive a spell, at least I drove, and the _choush_ lay huddled up frightfully ill in the back of the wagon. His rifle lay resting on our knees, and if there had been five per cent. of chance I believe we would have risked everything. But we were pretty rocky by now.

Eventually we had to deposit the _choush_ by the roadside near a _khan_. The wagon couldn't get up the hills, and so, on foot, blundering on in the dark without a guard, and almost too weak to go a step further, we at last staggered into Angora.

Here we were shown into a _gasthof_ of sorts where men and women, Turks and Jews, and mongrel Armenians all seemed mixed up in one living-room. Eventually we got rid of Peter Pan, who went to his wife.

I squared the proprietor. Mustapha, who had come along in some conveyance, was most accommodating. So when Ali returned the next morning he found us in the hotel next door, we two with Mathews our servant in one small room which I had got emptied, and Mustapha asleep outside. He said I had to go to a medical board at once, and Greenwood was for Stamboul that night.

I found several dignified Turks around a table who proposed to examine my eyes and spine. Before they did so I asked leave to tell them something. This I did in German and indifferent Turkish, but I told them certain things about their politics that made them stare, also about the responsibility of medical boards to whom a sick officer after eighteen months' neglect had been sent in a wretched conveyance 150 miles over mountains in a Turkish cart. I refused to stay in Angora, and said I wanted a diagnosis in Constantinople. It was a long compet.i.tion between their disinclination to send to the capital one who had seen so much of Turkish maltreatment, and their fear. I won. In fact, I made myself such a nuisance that they had to do so. But I am certain it was only a parade of arguments that won. The Turk can't grant a straight-out request to a prisoner. But there are ways of getting him not to object to a certain thing happening.

We went to the Military Commandant of Angora for a servant, as we are in no condition to move our boxes. He is the same evil-looking old villain we remember of old. He literally spat at us and roared. I roared also, and when he ordered me out of the room I walked the other way, being blindfolded. He caught my arm rudely, but had scarcely touched it than I sprang up as if electrocuted, almost upsetting him. I told him that it was merely surprise, as Zia Bey told us no one in Turkey must touch a British officer. He snapped and snarled like a dog. We got out. I reappeared to ask him if he could let us have any of our parcels that were _en route_ to Kastamuni. We were quite polite. But he barked that there were none. Oh yes, pardon! there were. We had seen them. He screamed that he had finished the interview.

We withdrew with chuckles. To-night we had the usual appalling scenes about leaving. Eventually we got to the station, and after a score of interviews and running about the station against orders, I managed to get two seats in a carriage with Fatteh, our old commandant. One had to browbeat the officials, who said they had no orders for us unless we paid. Our boxes must come on by a slow train.

Finally, weak to exhaustion, but elated at heart, we got into the stifling carriage.

_En Route._--It is night, and delicious music of a train that is carrying me away, away, is in my ears. We drank two bottles of beer and a small bottle of Julienne, which we got from an Armenian at the station. I met there my excellent former acting-sergeant-major, Sergeant Graves. He looked well, and said the survivors were now more or less free, but these good times came only after all the terrible deaths and complaints.

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