No. 2 was now allowed to lead the way. Of this he said he knew every foot; but we had only just started when the course he took almost to due north. Cochrane, who was next to him, caught hold of his arm and told him we were not imbeciles, and the man then led us along a fair line of country bearing between S.S.W. and S. He informed us that we would come to water on that night's march after four hours, and that we would then halt. It was to leave affairs in his hands: if his plans were successful, well and good; if not, we would go our own way.
Not more than two hours later we came to a small stream where the peaceful shepherds wanted to halt for the night, but we insisted on . Finally, we settled down to go to sleep on the side of a small valley at about 2.30 A.M. on August 13th. Nothing happened till about 7 A.M. Then suddenly there was a shout, and shepherd[125] No. 1 could be seen dashing down the hillside above us. He had been keeping watch, he said, but as events turned out it is more than likely that he had been signalling while we were asleep. As daylight appeared the eight of us had moved for better to the bottom of what was seen to be a horseshoe valley, and when the shout was heard we were lying there in a small nullah which was narrow and steep-sided.
On up, the first things we saw were two ragged-looking , one of whom was dressed in a long black coat, and had a black handkerchief tied pirate-wise round his head. Compared to the black-coated gentleman, the other was almost dressed in a very dirty old grey uniform and "Enveri" cap. What was more important than their dress, however, was the fact that we found ourselves looking down the of a rifle and revolver carried ready for trigger-pressing by Beau Brummell and his seedy-looking friend. These two gentlemen now came to the kneeling position for greater effect.
The shepherds were greatly ; but whether their excitement was due to fear or the of more loot we cannot say. They told us to close up towards the rifle , which was steady and enfiladed the length of the nullah; so we all bunched up. It is very hard to remember what one thinks about on these occasions:[126] perhaps the reason is that one does not think of much. One wants something to happen and the to end; the "Come on! get done with it quickly" sort of feeling.
Our two old friends now tried to show that they were not really fond of us. They made threatening gestures, and when moved to pick up his hat, shepherd No. 1 hit him a terrific blow on the side of the head with a thick and heavy stick. Grunt was , and had a bad on the right ear, but he soon came round or there would have been a free fight.
Fortunately the stick had been very dry and had snapped off at the force of the blow; otherwise without a doubt Grunt's would have been broken. We put on the wound and bound it up with and bandages, and in a few minutes he was discussing matters with the new folk.
Beau Brummell said he was a of gendarmes; his companion had failed to reach the rank of N.C.O. They now produced rope, and, to add insult to injury, they produced it out of our own packs. Two of us were bound together at the elbows, back to back; the rest round the wrists with their hands behind them.
The sergeant then started talking—we need not say lying. He was going to take us back to his . He wanted to know where we were going, and we broadly mentioned the . He thought we were men[127] who had escaped from some camp on the railway, and it took long to convince him that we were officers from Yozgad. How had we managed to escape? We out to him that a Turkish is so overworked that his only time for sleep is on sentry duty. At this he had enough sense of humour to smile. He was curious as to the route taken by the others who had escaped the same night as ourselves: had we told him he would no doubt have called on them too, so we merely said we had not seen any of them since we left Yozgad.
Finally the whole point of the story was reached, and he started talking business. We had felt for some time that the conversation was in that direction, but these delicate situations have to be very carefully handled; so we left it to him to open the subject. He led up to his proposition by asking whether we would prefer to be recaptured or to go to our "memlikat" (home). We need hardly say what was our reply. He then wished to know what money we , and with moderate truth we told him. As already mentioned, we had started each with at least thirty Turkish pounds in paper in addition to some gold; this, then, with the exception of the sums No. 1 and No. 2 had already received from us, and a little we had fortunately in odd places in our clothing, he now took from our pockets.
He seemed quite pleased with his takings,[128] as indeed he should have been with such a windfall, and was graciously pleased to signify that he would now let us go. As we were supposed to be penniless, we pointed out that we had yet many miles to the coast and would need to buy provisions on the way: unless, therefore, he left us with some money we should still have to give ourselves up. Upon this he magnanimously gave us back a bunch of small notes, to the value of about seven Turkish pounds.
For the same reason he prevented our quondam guides from themselves to the essentials contained in our packs; for by this time they had opened them and were fingering our spare boots and clothing. Instead of being allowed to make off with further loot, they were now ordered to our bonds; after this they went away under the escort of the black-coated gentleman. He being a representative of Turkish law, could make his own selection of a souvenir of this happy occasion, and his choice fell on Johnny's fez. This was to prove a great loss, and on future occasions when fezes were the order of the day, Johnny had to wear a khaki handkerchief tied round his head.
Beau Brummell himself remained behind for a friendly chat. He advised us to make as quickly as possible for the Tchitchek Dagh to the south, lest the peaceful shepherds should again get on to our tracks and hand us over[129] to further . By this time he was quite frank. If we did this, he said, he would undertake to look after them for the next four hours. (No doubt he also took care of any money they still had on them.)
As we prepared to take his advice he remarked that we were soldiers and he had been one too, and that we were therefore friends. He then went off, waving his hand and saying, instead of the usual Turkish , "Adieu." That had more of the sportsman in him than any Turk we had met.
The moment the brigands were out of sight we moved away over the head of the valley in the opposite direction, and keeping a little west of south, marched for an hour, taking it in turns to carry Grunt's pack. We saw a fairly good hiding-place in a small ravine. It was a question of halting and taking the risk of being caught again by the brigands, or moving on and being almost certainly seen by fresh people; so we decided to stop. The time was half-past ten.
Let us quote from a diary written that day. "It is now 1.30 P.M., and no one has asked for money for four hours, so things look brighter. The clouds are getting up, which is a godsend, as our last night's water-bottle will probably have to do us for many hours more. The position is this: we are bound to go by the southern route, as we have thrown away a lot of food. We have no[130] guide, thank goodness. We have already had to four people, and there is not much power left. We are likely to be very thirsty in the near future. In fact, in appreciating the situation it cannot in any sense be called a hopeful one. Nevertheless, we are still free men!"
During the day we made a chargal to replace one which leaked. For this purpose we had brought along the sleeves of a coat, the remainder of which had been left in the cave when we reduced loads. Boots, too, in some cases, already needed repairs.
Towards evening Grunt's ear was again bathed and dressed. As dusk came on Cochrane and Nobby went off to look for water near a small of trees a quarter of a mile away. Here they found a patch of , and there was probably water in the vicinity; but so many people were about that the two had to come back without having found any. There was no choice but to trust to finding water while on the march. We started at 8.30 P.M., when the moon was up, keeping in the shadow of the hills which ran along the edge of the valley containing the cultivated patch. After going a mile we saw some damp green grass, and a short way farther on we came to a four-feet square pool of an average depth of an inch. The water gave out a most horrible stench, and must have been the last summer[131] resort of the cattle and of the neighbourhood. Nevertheless, we were very glad to drink it and fill our water-bottles, though a second mugful nearly made us sick, and we each had to eat a few sultanas to take away the taste. That drink is not a pleasant memory.
Over the rise at the end of the valley we came to good going, and finally reached a road running in the right direction. Our luck, however, did not take us very far, as a short distance ahead was a village where we could hear men talking and dogs barking. To avoid the village we made a long to the east and soon found ourselves in the middle of numerous steep and rocky ravines. Unable to get back to the road owing to the nature of the country, we were forced to bear to the left or east, and spent the whole night going up and down the features of the mountain that had been pointed out to us that morning by Beau Brummell.
As already mentioned, this range is called Tchitchek Dagh, or Flower Mountain, the oak-scrub with which it is covered being in Turkey a near enough approach to flowers to give it that name. On this night we made our first acquaintance with sheep-dogs. Shortly after midnight we heard one barking not far ahead of us, and the of bells, so we again sheered off a little. The dog, however, was not going to miss a really[132] good opportunity of barking, and it came nearer and nearer in the darkness, making an almost noise. The sheep-dogs are the only ones in Turkey that are well treated; some of them are magnificent animals and ugly customers to meet, especially at night. The finally stopped ten yards short of us, and as we moved hastily on he sped us on our way with a series of roars.
Half an hour later, to our general depression due to the events of the last few days and to the heart-breaking country we were traversing, Cochrane found a spring of good water. He had suddenly turned off to the right, saying he it, and sure enough before we had gone fifty yards we came on a spring. Here we had a huge drink and got rid of the water in our water-bottles.
On this march we found that if we drank enormous quantities of water—in fact, if we forced ourselves to drink more than we wanted—we could carry on like a camel for a long time without a drink when the need arose. It may here be said, though a digression, that the fact about camels going for many days without water only holds good if they are trained to it. A friend of ours—a colonel in a Gurkha regiment—had told us that in the attempt to reach Gordon at Khartoum the camels with the relieving force were marched for a few days along the Nile[133] and were watered twice daily. They naturally became used to drinking only a little at a time, and when they were suddenly taken across the desert it needed but two or three days without water to kill most of them.
We moved on from the spring in very much better spirits. At 2.30 A.M. we rested for an hour till daylight, for we were now at the summit of the range, and might only involve ourselves in unnecessary difficulties if we went on without being able to see the country. Sleep, however, was impossible. It was , indeed, to find that by night it was too cold to sleep, and too hot by day. It seemed there was some truth in the saying—
"As a rule a man's a fool:
When it's hot he wants it cool;
When it's cool he wants it hot,—
Always wanting what is not."
At daylight we marched on for another two and a half hours. The whole mountain range was covered with the oak-scrub, which practically hid us as we walked along the bed of a valley. At 6 A.M. we turned up a small ravine off the main valley we were in, and hid in pairs in the scrub. As we climbed to our hiding-places we disturbed a pair of huge eagle-. With these birds we were acquainted at Yozgad. "Patters," one of the with whom Johnny[134] went out that Sunday morning, had kept a tame one. Whilst out hunting he had found a nest in a , and, with the aid of a rope and two assistants, had managed to reach it. The nest contained two baby owls, one of which he brought back to the camp with him. It was at that time only a week old, and merely the size of a , but in a few weeks it became a fine upstanding bird, guaranteed to terror within the most breast. At the age of three weeks it would swallow with skill any dead sparrow that might be thrown to it: nothing remained to tell the tale except a few straggling feathers attached to his majesty's and a satisfied leer in his eyes. Mice, of course, were as easy for him to down as sugar-coated pills would be to a sword-swallower. One day the youngster and a full-grown gander were placed face to face a few feet apart. Panic-stricken, they eyed each other for a few breathless seconds, then both turned tail and fled.
But to return to our story. While in hiding in the scrub we did not dare to move, though it was agony lying at a steep angle, one's on a pointed rock. We hardly a word all day, which was very creditable; but none of us had any desire to be caught again by brigands. By reason of the cover it afforded the Flower Mountain was obviously very suitable for what[135] the Turk calls a "Haidood." From this word, which means "outlaw," we coined an adjective, and were to talk of a "haidoodish" bit of country. Towards sunset we felt in having been so cautious, for we saw five armed men driving half a dozen cows over the of an opposite , and the haste with which they were moving made it seem very probable that they were cattle-lifting.
We left our hiding-place about 7 P.M. and our steps down the valley to a pool where we had seen a little water in the morning. On reaching it we found that nothing remained except some moist earth by cattle, a of which must have been there during our absence. An hour after sunset we were back again at the foot of the slope where we had hidden all day, and now commenced a long march. It took us two and a half hours to get clear of the Tchitchek Dagh. It was very up and down, but fairly smooth going. After this the country opened up a little, but once again it became very difficult, with all the valleys running transversely to the southerly course we were . These valleys and two villages, to avoid which we had to make , cut down our speed in a useful direction to about one mile an hour. During the night we halted in order to get some sleep, but once more the cold was too great. Even during the five minutes' halts[136] at the end of each hour we were chilled to the bone, and it was an effort to get moving again. On these short halts it was a waste of precious resting-time to remove our packs, though we had done this at the start. We now used to lie on our backs without taking anything off, and with our legs up a slight slope, so that the blood could run away from our feet. At 4 A.M. we resumed our march, meaning to go on for the first hour of daylight, then to find a hiding-place and stop there. Unfortunately an hour's marching found us in unpleasantly open cornland and surrounded by villages and harvesters working in the fields.
There was no hope of concealment, so we had to carry on. Coming over a rise, we found ourselves forced to march boldly through a village which, by the headgear of the women, we took to be Turcoman, though this part of Asia is rather out of the Turcoman's beat. Along the road we passed scores of people, mostly women, riding on donkeys. Having once started, however, the only thing to do was to follow a track leading as much as possible in the desired direction, and to pretend to have some business there. Grunt, with his head bandaged, looked like a wounded soldier, and the rest of us might have looked soldiers of a sort.
On the far side of the village we marched[137] across a broad valley, in which were more women working at the crops and some men tending cattle. After on for four more hours, the last three in broad daylight, we at length reached a range of bare hills, at the foot of which we saw a dozen splendid wild geese, but these potential dinners flew away at our approach. Painfully climbing half-way up a rocky and ravine, we threw down our packs. We had started marching over thirteen hours before, and, except for one and a half hours rest, had been on the move all the time, so we were very weary. The daily had been about twelve ounces of food—not very much, when one was carrying a heavy load and marching many miles a day over mountainous country.
Some cocoa was made; and when that was finished we boiled up a mixture of rice, Oxo cubes, and sultanas, which for lack of water was very uncooked. On arriving at the ravine we had found a small tortoise; but while every one was busy making the cocoa, Master Tortoise disappeared, and though we hunted for him, with a view to adding him to the rice, we never saw him again.
This day we worked out a new distribution list for the extra biscuits, rice, and sultanas, which we had made into two packages in the cave for our two guides to carry for themselves. When our two friends had threatened not to come with us, these had[138] been taken away from them and hurriedly distributed amongst the party; even when they afterwards did accompany us we had providentially kept these supplies in our own packs. Counting everything, we found that we had nine days' supply of food, on the basis of about twelve ounces a day each.
As there still remained some 200 miles to go before reaching the coast, we realised that we should have our work cut out to get through. So far we had obtained no food from the country, though when we started we had hoped to do so. By now we were beginning to feel really hungry. For the first few days of the march the heat had taken away our appetites, but we were getting acclimatised, and the of our reserve of strength made us feel the full effects of a reduced diet. At we regretted having left nearly half our food behind in the cave. At the time we did so, however, it was the wisest course, and had we not reduced our loads it is certain we should not have been able to make the same progress.
A mile north of the range of hills in which we were hiding we had passed a line of telegraph poles, and what we had supposed to be a main road running east and west. This was in a very bad state of repair, but was evidently the road which our forty-year-old map informed us was only six miles from the Kizil Irmak. More than once[139] we discovered that the map was a mine of misinformation. It is only fair to say, however, that the river in this part was shown in a dotted line, an admission that it had not been surveyed.
During the day one or two marmots came out of their holes to inspect us, standing up like pins the while, but without a trap they are very hard to catch. Looking up between the sides of the ravine, which were at least 300 feet high, we saw several vultures over our heads. A few butterflies flitted about near us; and these were the only signs of life. Nevertheless it was not pleasant waiting there, as we had to do for nearly ten hours till darkness should come. We knew we had been seen by many people in the village and in the fields, and any gendarmes who might have been given news of our whereabouts would have ample time to catch us up.