Caught by the Turks Part 10

Crump! crump! Woof!--said the bombs.

Woo-woo-woom!--answered the Archies.

Kk-kk-kk-kk! chattered the machine guns.

"G.o.d is great," muttered the hospital staff.

"Give me a gun!" cried one of the two British officers posing as lunatics (I have already related how they had pretended to hang themselves). "Give me a gun," he reiterated loudly--"this is all a plot to kill me, and I must defend myself!"

Calmly and confidently our machines sailed through the barrage, dropped their bombs, turned to have a look at Constantinople, and then sailed away.

The British lunatic shook his fist at them, as he was led back gibbering to his ward. The head doctor was much concerned as to his condition.

"Every day," he told me--"some new madness takes that poor deluded creature. Eighteen pounds were paid to him recently and he promptly tore the notes in half and scattered them about the room. When he was asked if he wanted anything from the Emba.s.sy he wrote for a ton of carbolic soap, and half a ton of chocolate. On another occasion he jumped into the hospital pond with his pipe in his mouth, declaring he was on fire.

I dare not send him to England without an escort, for he would do himself some injury. As to the other British lunatic, he has not spoken for five weeks. I do not know what is to be done."

Neither did I, for I was not then aware of the patient's true condition, and had no desire to "b.u.t.t in." They had lived for several months among the other madmen in hospital, and I thought it probable that they had really lost their reason.

The lunatics' ward was a terrifying place. My experience of it, although limited to a few hours, was enough to last a lifetime. In order to secure drugs for "doping" sentries I complained of severe insomnia one day, and was sent to the mental specialist. While waiting for him, I noticed that one of the British lunatics was regarding me with unblinking furious eyes, while the other was praying--apparently for the souls of the d.a.m.ned. The Greek financier was singing softly to himself, and applauding himself. There is something very alarming about madness.

One feels suddenly and closely what a narrow margin divides us from a world of terror. Their souls stand forlornly by their bodies, knocking at the door of intelligence.

When the mental specialist arrived, I was seized by grave alarm. What if he should find me insane? . . .

He held up a finger, tracing patterns in the air, and told me to watch it closely. While I watched him, he watched me.

"The moving finger writes," I thought, "and having writ . . ."

"I can see your finger perfectly," I protested nervously.

"Far from it," said the enthusiastic specialist. "You are not following it with your eyes."

"I am--indeed I am," said I, squinting at his fat forefinger.

"I am told you cannot sleep," continued my interlocutor. "You seem to me to be suffering from nervous exhaustion."

"A little sleeping draught . . ." I suggested.

"I ought to observe you for a few days," he answered.

"Not here?" I quavered.

"Yes, here."

"But I do not like the--other lunatics," said I, in a small voice.

Eventually, to my great delight, I was allowed to remain where I was, and was given (as reward for the danger I had endured) several cachets of bromide and a few tablets of trional.

I returned in triumph to my ward, and Robin and I laid our heads together. With the drugs we now possessed it would be possible to send our sentries to sleep when we were moved from hospital, if the person who was making plans for us to be taken on board a Black Sea steamer failed to communicate in time. But the question now arose as to how much of these drugs was suitable for the Turkish const.i.tution. The object was to administer a sleeping draught, not a fatal dose. If we were transferred from Haidar Pasha we knew we should be sent for a time to the garrison camp of Psamattia (a suburb of Constantinople on the European side) and our intention was to inveigle our attendants into having lunch during our journey there, and ply them with Pilsener beer, suitably prepared, until they were somnolent and unsuspicious enough to make it feasible to bolt.

Neither the bromide nor the trional could be tasted in cocoa or coffee, we discovered, so one evening, I regret to say, I carried out an experiment on a wounded patient, who was otherwise quite fit, although rather sleepless, by giving him a cachet of bromide and a tablet of trional in a cup of cocoa. In about half an hour his eyelids began to flicker, and he was soon sleeping like a lamb. Next morning he complained of a slight headache. Should he chance to read these lines I hope he will accept my apologies. _a la guerre comme a la guerre._

So now we had the beginning of a second plan, in case the box business _via_ the Black Sea failed. But, in the event of escaping during our journey to Psamattia, we had no very clear idea of where to hide. That there were Greek and Jewish quarters in Galata and in Pera we knew, and also in the northern part of Stamboul, but the chances of detection in any of these localities were great, especially as we had no disguises at the time. There remained a possibility of hiding in the ruins of recent fires, but it was difficult to see how we were to live there. On the whole the Black Sea trip seemed to offer the most favourable opportunities of success. But to carry it out, we had to wait, and wait, and still to wait, until we heard from our agent again. And eventually the time came when we could wait no longer. . . .

A week or two is nothing in Turkey, but unfortunately we had attracted a certain amount of undesirable attention in hospital by our popular supper-parties and reputed wealth. There was also a Bulgarian nurse who had an uncanny intuition about our intentions. She told the visiting doctor that two other nurses were in the habit of bringing us brandy.

She also said we were both quite well and had never in fact been ill at all. The latter statement was true, but the former I can only attribute to pique, the brandy having come from other sources. However, this did not affect the fact that we were politely but firmly told that we had greatly benefited by our stay in hospital. This was equivalent to a notice of dismissal. We would have to go. Thereupon we both instantly pulled very long faces, and went to see the ear and nose specialist. He was our one hope of being allowed to stay on.

While waiting for an interview, I had an opportunity of seeing an eminent army surgeon at work on the Turkish soldiers. Let me preface this description by emphasising the fact that he _was_ eminent. He was no rough bungler, but a clever pract.i.tioner, well known for his professional and human sympathy. This is the scene I saw.

The doctor sat on a high stool, by the window, with a round reflector over his right eye. A gla.s.s table beside him was strewn with instruments. A lower stool seated his victims. In his hand he held a thing like a small glove-stretcher. Behind him two young a.s.sistants stood, looking like choir boys who had been fighting, in their robes of blood-stained white. The room was full of miserable s.h.i.+vering soldiers.

A deaf old man takes the vacant seat in front of the doctor. The glove-stretcher darts into his ear. A question is asked. The old man gibbers in reply. Glove-stretcher darts into the other ear. Another question. More gibbering. Both his ears are soundly boxed, and he is sent away. The next is a goitre case, too unpleasant for description.

Suddenly the attendants come forward, and pull off all his clothes. The doctor removes the reflector from his right eye, and stares for a moment at the ghastly skinny shape with a sack hanging from its throat. Then he dictates a prescription to one of the attendants, and seizes the next soldier. Prescription and clothes are thrown at the naked man, who walks out s.h.i.+vering, holding his apparel in his arms. Meanwhile another victim is already trembling on the stool. This man trembles so violently that he falls down in a faint. The attendants cuff him back to consciousness.

Painfully he gets up and tries to face the instrument again. But as the glove-stretcher is being inserted into his nostril, he turns the colour of weak tea and again silently collapses. The doctor does not give him a second look. One of the attendants drags his limp body to a corner, while another patient takes the seat in front of the doctor. After a few more cases have been examined, the two attendants return to the unconscious man in the corner, drag him back to the doctor and hold his lolling head to the light, while the glove-stretcher does its work. Then he is pulled away, like a dummy from an arena, to the door of the consulting room, where (and here I confess I expected a scene) a woman awaited him. But she seemed to consider it all in the day's work.

Perhaps poor Willie was subject to fainting fits. . . .

I knew I would not faint, but I cannot say I took my turn on that seat with a light heart. The surgeon was alarmingly sudden, and already the room looked like a shambles.

To my relief, he used a new glove-stretcher.

"Slightly deflected septum," he p.r.o.nounced, and his diagnosis was later confirmed in London.

"I hurt my nose boxing," I explained conversationally, "and cannot now breathe through it. I would like to stay----"

"Can't stay here." he said instantly and incisively; "no time to deal with your case."

"But I can't breathe through my nose."

"Breathe through your mouth," he suggested kindly, but a little coldly.

Now, it is impossible to "w.a.n.gle" a man who sits over you with a reflecting mirror screwed into his right eye. I vanished with suitable thanks.

Robin had better luck with his ear. He could have stayed on in hospital and would very likely have been invalided back to England eventually.

But he absolutely refused to exchange the comfortable security of a bodily affliction for the vivider joys of escape. In spite of my advice to stay in hospital, he decided, to my great delight, that we would try our luck together.

All hope of remaining in hospital was now at an end.

That evening at sunset we were in the garden, looking across the blue waters of the Marmora to the mosques and minarets of old Stamboul, flushed with the loveliest tints of pink.

It was the last evening but one of Ramazan. To-morrow the crescent of the new moon would appear over the dome of San Sofia, as a sign to all that the fast had ended, and the time of rejoicing come. Between that moon and the next moon an unknown future lay before us. And whatever our fate, it was sure to be something exciting.

CHAPTER VIII

OUR FIRST ESCAPE