Two days later, in the evening, we came to Angora, the first stage in our journey.  
The passports had arrived next morning, as Frau von Einem had promised, and with them a plan of our journey. More, one of the Companions, who a little English, was to accompany us—a wise precaution, for no one of us had a word of Turkish. These were the sum of our instructions. I heard nothing more of Sandy or Greenmantle or the lady. We were meant to travel in our own party.
 
We had the railway to Angora, a very comfortable German Schlafwagen, to the end of a troop-train. There wasn’t much to be seen of the country, for after we left the Bosporus we ran into of snow, and except that we seemed to be climbing on to a big plateau I had no notion of the landscape. It was a that we made such good time, for that line was congested beyond anything I have ever seen. The place was crawling with the Gallipoli troops, and every siding was packed with supply trucks. When we stopped—which we did on an average about once an hour—you could see vast camps on both sides of the line, and often we struck on the march along the railway track. They looked a fine, lot of ruffians, but many were deplorably , and I didn’t think much of their boots. I wondered how they would do the five hundred miles of road to Erzerum.
 
Blenkiron played Patience, and Peter and I took a hand at picquet, but mostly we smoked and . Getting away from that infernal city had cheered us up wonderfully. Now we were out on the open road, moving to the sound of the guns. At the worst, we should not perish like rats in a . We would be all together, too, and that was a comfort. I think we felt the relief which a man who has been on a lonely outpost feels when he is brought back to his . Besides, the thing had gone clean beyond our power to direct. It was no good planning and scheming, for none of us had a notion what the next step might be. We were fatalists now, believing in Kismet, and that is a comfortable faith.
 
All but Blenkiron. The coming of Hilda von Einem into the business had put a very ugly on it for him. It was curious to see how she the different members of our gang. Peter did not care a rush: man, woman, and hippogriff were the same to him; he met it all as calmly as if he were making plans to round up an old lion in a patch of bush, taking the facts as they came and working at them as if they were a sum in arithmetic. Sandy and I were impressed—it’s no good denying it: horribly impressed—but we were too interested to be scared, and we weren’t a bit fascinated. We hated her too much for that. But she fairly struck Blenkiron dumb. He said himself it was just like a rattlesnake and a bird.
 
I made him talk about her, for if he sat and brooded he would get worse. It was a strange thing that this man, the most and, I think, about the most I have ever met, should be paralysed by a slim woman. There was no doubt about it. The thought of her made the future to him as black as a thunder cloud. It took the power out of his , and if she was going to be much around, it looked as if Blenkiron might be counted out.
 
I suggested that he was in love with her, but this he denied.
 
“No, Sir; I haven’t got no sort of affection for the lady. My trouble is that she puts me out of , and I can’t fit her in as an . I guess we Americans haven’t got the right for with that kind of female. We’ve our womenfolk into little tin gods, and at the same time left them out of the real business of life. Consequently, when we strike one playing the biggest kind of man’s game we can’t place her. We aren’t used to regarding them as anything except angels and children. I wish I had had you boys’ upbringing.”
 
Angora was like my notion of some place such as Amiens in the retreat from Mons. It was one mass of troops and transport—the neck of the bottle, for more arrived every hour, and the only was the single eastern road. The town was into which distracted German officers were trying to introduce some order. They didn’t worry much about us, for the heart of Anatolia wasn’t a likely hunting-ground for suspicious characters. We took our passport to the commandant, who visaed them readily, and told us he’d do his best to get us transport. We spent the night in a sort of hotel, where all four crowded into one little bedroom, and next morning I had my work cut out getting a motor-car. It took four hours, and the use of every great name in the Turkish Empire, to raise a sort of Studebaker, and another two to get the petrol and spare tyres. As for a , love or money couldn’t find him, and I was compelled to drive the thing myself.
 
We left just after midday and swung out into bare downs patched with scrubby woodlands. There was no snow here, but a wind was blowing from the east which searched the . Presently we climbed up into hills, and the road, though not badly engineered to begin with, grew as rough as the channel of a stream. No wonder, for the traffic was like what one saw on that awful stretch between Cassel and Ypres, and there were no gangs of Belgian roadmakers to mend it up. We found troops by the thousands striding along with their impassive Turkish faces, ox , convoys, by sturdy little Anatolian horses, and, coming in the contrary direction, many shabby Red Crescent cars and wagons of the wounded. We had to crawl for hours on end, till we got past a block. Just before the darkening we seemed to the first press, and had a clear run for about ten miles over a low pass in the hills. I began to get anxious about the car, for it was a poor one at the best, and the road was guaranteed sooner or later to knock even a Rolls-Royce into iron.
 
All the same it was glorious to be out in the open again. Peter’s face wore a new look, and he the bitter air like a stag. There floated up from little wayside camps the odour of wood-smoke and dung-fires. That, and the curious winter smell of great wind-blown spaces, will always come to my memory as I think of that day. Every hour brought me peace of mind and resolution. I felt as I had felt when the battalion first marched from Aire towards the firing-line, a kind of keying-up and wild expectation. I’m not used to cities, and lounging about Constantinople had slackened my fibre. Now, as the sharp wind us, I felt to any kind of risk. We were on the great road to the east and the border hills, and soon we should stand upon the farthest battle-front of the war. This was no commonplace intelligence job. That was all over, and we were going into the firing-zone, going to take part in what might be the downfall of our enemies. I didn’t reflect that we were among those enemies, and would probably share their downfall if we were not shot earlier. The truth is, I had got out of the way of regarding the thing as a struggle between armies and nations. I hardly bothered to think where my sympathies lay. First and foremost it was a contest between the four of us and a crazy woman, and this personal made the of armies only a dimly-felt background.
 
We slept that night like logs on the floor of a dirty khan, and started next morning in a powder of snow. We were getting very high up now, and it was perishing cold. The Companion—his name sounded like Hussin—had travelled the road before and told me what the places were, but they conveyed nothing to me. All morning we through a big lot of troops, a brigade at least, who swung along at a great pace with a fine free stride that I don’t think I have ever seen bettered. I must say I took a fancy to the Turkish fighting man: I remembered the testimonial our fellows gave him as a clean fighter, and I felt very bitter that Germany should have him into this dirty business. They halted for a meal, and we stopped, too, and lunched off some brown bread and dried and a of very sour wine. I had a few words with one of the officers who spoke a little German. He told me they were marching straight for Russia, since there had been a great Turkish victory in the Caucasus. “We have beaten the French and the British, and now it is Russia’s turn,” he said , as if repeating a lesson. But he added that he was mortally sick of war.
 
In the afternoon we cleared the column and had an open road for some hours. The land now had a , as if we were moving towards the valley of a great river. Soon we began to meet little parties of men coming from the east with a new look in their faces. The first lots of wounded had been the ordinary thing you see on every front, and there had been some at organization. But these new lots were very weary and broken; they were often barefoot, and they seemed to have lost their transport and to be starving. You would find a group stretched by the roadside in the last stages of . Then would come a party limping along, so tired that they never turned their heads to look at us. Almost all were wounded, some badly, and most were horribly thin. I wondered how my Turkish friend behind would explain the sight to his men, if he believed in a great victory. They had not the air of the backwash of a conquering army.
 
Even Blenkiron, who was no soldier, noticed it.
 
“These boys look bad,” he observed. “We’ve got to , Major, if we’re going to get seats for the last act.”
 
That was my own feeling. The sight made me mad to get on faster, for I saw that big things were happening in the East. I had reckoned that four days would take us from Angora to Erzerum, but here was the second nearly over and we were not yet a third of the way. I pressed on recklessly, and that hurry was our .
 
I have said that the Studebaker was a rotten old car. Its steering-gear was pretty dicky, and the bad surface and continual bends of the road didn’t improve it. Soon we came into snow lying fairly deep, frozen hard and rutted by the big transport-wagons. We bumped and bounced horribly, and were shaken about like peas in a bladder. I began to be acutely anxious about the old boneshaker, the more as we seemed a long way short of the village I had proposed to spend the night in. was falling and we were still in an unfeatured waste, crossing the shallow glen of a stream. There was a bridge at the bottom of a slope—a bridge of logs and earth which had been freshly strengthened for heavy traffic. As we approached it at a good pace the car ceased to answer to the wheel.
 
I struggled to keep it straight, but it to the left and we over a bank into a hollow. There was a sickening bump as we struck the lower ground, and the whole party were shot out into the frozen slush. I don’t yet know how I escaped, for the car turned over and by rights I should have had my back broken. But no one was hurt. Peter was laughing, and Blenkiron, after shaking the snow out of his hair, joined him. For myself I was examining the machine. It was about as ugly as it could be, for the front axle was broken.
 
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