CHAPTER VIII

OUR FIRST ESCAPE

Our crossing from Haidar Pasha to the garrison camp at Psamattia was a tame affair. Early in the day we had made up our minds that it would be unwise to escape, as well as unkind to our indulgent sentries: unwise, because we realised that if we bolted blindly from a restaurant, we would probably be caught at the first lodging-house at which we tried to gain admission; and unkind because, in common chivalry, we decided that our sentries were too trustful to be drugged.

Our day, therefore, was spent in seeing the sights of Pera, gossiping over a cocktail bar, purchasing some illicit maps under cover of a large quantity of German publications, and generally learning the lie of the land. But it might be indiscreet even at this distance of time to describe in too great detail the sources from which we obtained our information. One name, however--like King Charles' head with Mr. Dick--will keep coming into this book. I cannot keep it out, because it is impossible to think of my escape and escapades without thinking of the gallant lady who made them possible.

Miss Whitaker, as she then was (she is now Lady Paul), knew something about all the escapes which took place in Turkey, and a great deal about a great many of them. Against every kind of difficulty from foes, and constant discouragement from friends[6] she boldly championed the cause of our prisoners through the dark days of 1916 and 1917. She visited the sick in hospital, she carried plum puddings to our men working at San Stefano, she was a never-failing source of sympathy and encouragement. She sent messages for us, and wrote letters, and lent us money and clothes. She was the good angel of the English at Constantinople, a second--and more fortunate--Miss Cavell.

And she was the _Deus ex machina_ of my escapes. Having said this, I will say one thing more. I cannot here put down one-tenth of the daring work that Lady Paul did for me and others. The reason may be obvious to the reader; at any rate it is binding on me to say far less than I would wish.

On reaching the prisoners' camp at Psamattia, our first object was to get in touch with her whom we had already heard of as the guardian spirit of prisoners. With this object in view, we asked to be allowed to attend Sunday service at the English church. Religious worship, we pointed out, should not be interfered with, further than the necessities of war demanded. After some demur the Commandant agreed, and accordingly we went to church. Here it was[7] that we met our guardian angel for the first time. She trembled visibly when we mentioned our plans for escape, and I thought (little knowing her) that we had been rash to speak so frankly.

"I strongly advise delay," she whispered--"but I will meet you again at the gardens in Stamboul in two days' time--four o'clock. I'll be reading a----"

"_Haidé, effendim, haidé, haidé_," said our sentry, and her last words were lost.

Further conversation was impossible, but the forty-eight hours which followed were vivid with anticipation.

How were we to manage to get to the gardens of the Seraglio? Would we meet her? Could we talk to her? Would she have a plan? . . .

On the day appointed, Robin and I complained of toothache, and asked to be allowed to go into the city to see the dentist. We were at once granted permission.

From the dentist's to the Seraglio garden was only a step, but we were four hours too early as yet to keep the rendezvous. However, a large lunch, in which our sentries shared, smoothed the way for a little shopping excursion into Pera. Here, amongst other things, we bought some black hair dye, which completed our arrangements for escape. Other paraphernalia, such as jack-knives, twenty fathoms of rope, maps, compasses, sand-shoes, chocolate and "dope," we had already acquired. Nothing now remained but to find a hiding place, when once we had escaped.

At about three o'clock we were sitting in a café, eating ices, with our complacent sentries, who had every reason to be complacent for they had been sumptuously fed, as well as liberally tipped. They were quite willing to do anything in reason, and nothing could have been more natural than a stroll in the Seraglio gardens.

But just then Robin began to get "Spanish 'flu," which was raging in the city. The symptoms were as sudden as they were unmistakable. Violent shivering, giddiness, weakness--all the ills that flesh is heir to, waylaid him at this vital juncture. He was completely incapable of action.

There was no help for it. I left him shaking and shivering in the café, in charge of one of our two sentries, and, after a little persuasion and some palaver (during the course of which another bank-note changed hands) I induced the other sentry to accompany me for a stroll. Unless we walked in the gardens, I assured him, we should both fall ill with the deadly contagion of my friend. Nothing but fresh air and iced beer could avert that fever. On the way, therefore, we stopped for a glass and I managed to drop a small dose of potassium bromide into the sentry's mug before it was given to him.

A little before four the sentry and I were smoking cigarettes on a seat in the Seraglio gardens quite close to the Stamboul entrance gate.

It was a hot day, with thunder-clouds hanging low. Toilers of the city passed us fanning themselves. Turkish officers had pushed back their heavy fur fezzes, and civilians wore handkerchiefs behind theirs. German ladies panted loudly, and even the _hanoums_ appeared to be a little jaded: their small feet and great eyes, that so often twinkle in the streets, had grown dull with the oppression of the day. Small wonder my sentry nodded.

Presently, with a walk that no one could mistake, a tall and slim figure entered, dressed in white serge coat and skirt. I watched her, on the opposite footpath, strolling down the shady avenue with an insouciant grace. She held a novel and a little tasselled bag in her right hand. She sat down some two hundred yards away, and began reading calmly and coolly, apparently quite unconscious of the feverish world about her.

With a hasty glance at my sentry, I rose and walked very slowly away. He woke at once, and followed. I stopped to look at some flowers, yawned, lit another cigarette and said to the sentry that it was too hot to walk. I intended to sit for a little in the shade on the opposite side of the road, and then we would go back to join our friend at the café.

We meandered across the road, and I sank into a seat beside the guardian angel. There was no room for the sentry, so he obligingly retired into the shrubbery behind.

Without taking her eyes from her novel, she began by saying I was not to look at her, and that I was to speak very low, looking in the opposite direction.

She then asked where my companion was, and on hearing he had the 'flu, she told me that she also had been attacked by it at the very moment that we had spoken to her at church, and that it was only with difficulty she had been able to keep the rendezvous to-day. I tried to thank her for coming, but she kept strictly to business, and concentrated our conversation to bare facts. Her news ranged from the world at war, to plans for Robin and me, in vivid glimpses of possibility. She covered continents in a phrase, and dealt with the plans of two captives in terse but sympathetic comment. When she had told me what she wanted to say, she opened her small bag and took out a piece of paper, rolled up tight, which she flicked across to me without a moment's hesitation.

"You had better go now," she said.

But my heart was brimming over with things unsaid.

"I simply cannot thank----" I began to stammer.

"Don't!" said she, to the novel on her knees.

And so, with no salute to mark the great occasion, I left her. Neither of us had seen the other's face.

Here I must apologise for purposely clouding the narrative. The plans I made are only public so far as they concern myself.

On rejoining Robin, I found him palpitant and perturbed. The fever was at its height and he ought to have been in bed. Yet it was urgently necessary that evening, before returning, to make certain investigations in the native quarter of the city. How to do this without attracting the notice of the two sentries, perspiring but still perceptive, was a matter of great concern to me. I thought of saying that I was going to buy medicine for Robin, but in that case one of the sentries (probably Robin's, for my own had grown very somnolent with beer and bromide) would certainly accompany me. Then I bethought me of going to wash my hands in a place behind the café and slipping out of a back door. But there was no back door, and Robin's sentry had followed me to the wash-place, and stood stolidly by the door until I came out.

I sat down again, thinking and perspiring furiously,[8] and ordered more beer. But this time I failed to manipulate the bromide. Robin's sentry saw me with the packet in my hand and asked me what it was.

"It is a medicine for reducing fat," said I, and of course after this I had to keep the drugged beer for myself. But the sedative did no harm. After sipping for some minutes I had a happy thought.

There was a particular brand of cigarettes which were only obtainable at a few shops in Constantinople. I asked the waiter if he had them. He had not.

"I must have a packet," I said, standing up--"there is a shop just down the street where I can get them."

And without taking my hat or stick (as a proof of the innocence of my intentions) I strolled out of the café.

The sentries did not follow. It was too hot.

I rushed down the crowded thoroughfare as if all the hounds of heaven were on my trail. I fled past policemen, dodged a tram, bolted up a side-street, and arrived gasping at the doorway I sought. After a hasty survey of the locality, so as to identify it again at need, I rushed back to the restaurant, buying a box of Bafra-Madène cigarettes on the way. Robin was still shivering; the sentries were mopping their large faces. All was well. Our work was done.

Trying not to look triumphant, I got Robin into a cab, and we drove back to Psamattia camp.

During the next few days I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Not so Robin, who was grappling with his fever. Later, however, when he was convalescent, we used to go down to the seashore together to bathe. In the evening, we used to sup off lobsters at a restaurant on the beach. In the water one felt almost free once more, and in the restaurant, when one was not gambling "double or quits" with the lobster-merchant as to whether we should pay him two pounds for his lobster or nothing at all, we were talking politics with other diners. Those days of Robin's convalescence were delightful. The moon was near its full, which is the season when lobsters ought to be eaten, and the climate was perfect, and our hopes were high.

* * * * *

Psamattia is one of the most westerly suburbs of Stamboul. From it, a maze of tortuous streets lead to the railway terminus of Sirkedji, and the Galata bridge over the Golden Horn. On the eastern side of the Golden Horn lie the European quarters of Galata and Pera. From our camp at Psamattia to the house where we intended to hide was a distance of five miles, and there were at least two police posts on the way. But with our hair dyed black (we had already effected this transformation, and it is astonishing how it changes one's appearance) and fezzes on our heads, we trusted to pass unnoticed as Greeks.

Our plan had a definite and limited objective. We wanted to escape by night from Psamattia and hide in Constantinople. Once in hiding, we trusted to going by boat to Russia, or else going with brigands to the Mediterranean coast, where our patrols might pick us up. But the first object was to get away from the camp. Until this was achieved it was almost impossible to make definite arrangements. At first we had thought that it would be an easy matter to give our sentries the slip when we were out shopping. But when it came to the point, we felt scruples about bolting from men we had bribed and wheedled so often. All's fair in love and war, but yet if it could be avoided we did not want to abuse their trust in us.

There remained the alternative of escaping by night from the house where we were interned. But when Robin had become fit enough to try (and of course he was all agog to be off at the first possible moment) we found the guards were more alert than we thought.

Our situation was roughly this: We were housed in the Armenian Patriarchate, next to the Psamattia Fire Brigade, and there were sentries in every street to which access was possible, by craft or by climbing. The window of our room, which was directly over the doorway where the main guard lived, looked out on to a narrow street, across which there was another house, inhabitated by Russian prisoners of war. At first we thought it might be possible to pretend to go to the Russian house, and, while casually crossing the street, to mingle with the passers-by, and melt away unnoticed in the crowd. We tried this plan, but it was no good. The guards on our doorway were alert, and followed our every movement. . . . To slip out with the Armenian funerals which used to go through our gateway was another project doomed to failure. . . . To get into the Armenian church, on the night before a burial, remove the occupant of a coffin and so pass out next morning in the centre of the funeral procession, was an idea which excited us for a time. But the melodrama we had planned could not be executed, because the church was locked and guarded at night. . . . To climb out of the back window of the Russian house also proved impossible, because a sentry stood outside it always. . . . Every point was watched. Two sentries armed with old Martini rifles (of archaic pattern but unpleasantly big bore) were posted directly below our window. Two more similarly equipped were opposite, at the door of the Russian house. One man with a new rifle was behind the Russian house. Two more were behind ours, and one was in a side street. There were also men on duty at the entrance to the Fire Brigade.

After considering all sorts of methods we decided on a plan whose chief merit was its seeming impossibility. No one would have expected us to try it.

Our idea was to climb out of our window at night, and by crossing some ten foot of wall-face, to gain the shelter of the roof of the next door house. This roof was railed by a parapet, behind which we could crouch. Along it we would creep, until we reached a cross-road down the street. Here we would slip down a rope to the pavement, and although we would be visible to at least five sentries during our descent, it seemed probable that no particular sentry would consider himself responsible for the cross-roads, which was beyond their beat.

To climb out of a window set in a blank wall, about thirty feet above a busy street where four sentries stood, did not seem a reasonable thing to do. But the wall was not as impassable as it seemed. Two little ledges of moulding ran along it, under our window-sill, so that we had a narrow yet sufficient foothold and handhold until we reached the roof of the adjoining house. And although we would be visible during our precarious transit of the wall-face, we knew that people rarely look up above their own height, and rarely look for things they don't expect.

It was the night of the twenty-seventh of July, when a bright full moon rode over the sea behind our house, that we decided to make the attempt.

The first point was to get out of the window without being seen. . . . A Colonel of the Russian Guards, a little man with a great heart, volunteered to help us. Directly we extinguished the lights in our room, he was to engage the sentries at the door of the opposite house, where he lived, in an animated conversation, keeping them interested, even by desperate measures if need be, until our first ten yards of climbing was successfully accomplished.

After a cordial good-bye, he left us. We took off our boots and slung them round our necks, drank a stirrup cup to our success, roped ourselves together, coiled the remainder of the rope round our waists, stuffed our pockets and knapsacks with our escaping gear, and then blew out our lamp, as if we were going to bed. Crouched under the window-sill we waited. . . . The sentries below us were sitting on stools in the street. The two men opposite were lolling against the doorpost, and the moon, rising behind our house, while still leaving the street in shadow, had just caught their faces, so that their every eyelash was visible. To them came the little Colonel, and only the top of his cap reached the moonlight. We heard his cheery voice. We saw both sentries looking down, presumably helping themselves to his cigarettes.

That waiting moment was very tense. An initial failure would have been deplorable, yet many things made failure likely. At such times as these, the confidence of one's companion counts for much, and I shall never forget Robin's bearing. Anyone who has been in similar circumstances will know what I mean. He went first out of the window. I followed an instant later. . . . And once the first step was taken, once my feet were on that two-inch ledge and my hands clung to the upper strip, the complexion of things altered completely. Anxiety vanished, leaving nothing but a thrill of pleasure. One was master of one's fate.

At one moment we were in view of four sentries (two at our door and two opposite), a Turkish officer who had come to take the air at our doorway, and several passers-by in the street. But no one looked up. No one saw the two men, only five yards away, who clambered slowly along the string-course, like flies on a wall.

After gaining the roof of the next house, we lay flat and breathless behind the parapet, and thanked God we had succeeded in--not making fools of ourselves, anyway.

The parapet was lower than we thought, and in order to get the advantage of its cover it was necessary to remain absolutely prone in the gutter of the roof. In this position, from ten o'clock till half past eleven, we wriggled and wriggled along the house-tops, past a dead cat and other offensive objects, until at last we had covered the distance. Once, during this stalk, my rope got hitched up on a nail, and I had to wriggle back to free it. And once, having raised myself to take a look round, one of the sentries on the Russian house ran out into the street and started making a tremendous noise. I don't know what it was about, but it alarmed me very much, and condemned us to marble immobility for a time.

At last, however, we reached the end of our wriggle. But here a new difficulty confronted us. Directly overlooking the part of the roof from which we contemplated our descent, and less than ten yards away, an officer of the Psamattia Fire Brigade sat at an open window, looking anxiously up and down the street, as if expecting someone to keep an appointment. His window was on a level with us. So intently did he stare that I thought he had seen us. But we lay dead-still behind the parapet, and it became apparent, as time passed and he still stood disconsolate by the window, that we were not the objects of his languishing regard. . . . And meanwhile the moon--the kindly old moon that sees so much--was creeping up the sky. Soon she would flood us with her radiance. Even a love-sick officer of the Fire Brigade could not fail to notice us across the narrow street, lit by the limelight of all the universe. For an hour this annoying Romeo kept watch, while we discussed the situation in tiny whispers, and cursed feminine unpunctuality. But at last, just as we had determined to "let go the painter" and take our chance, he began to yawn and stretch and look towards his bed, which we could see at the further end of his room. "You are tired of waiting: she isn't worth it!" I sent in thought-wave across the street. He seemed to hesitate, then he yawned again, and just as our protecting belt of shadow had narrowed to a yard, he gave up his hopes of Juliet, and retired.

That was our moment.

We stood up, and made the rope fast to a convenient ring in the parapet. Traffic in the street had ceased. The sentries were huddled in their coats, for it was a chilly summer night. Up street, a dog was yapping, and its voice seemed to stab the silence. Before stepping over the parapet I took a last look at the world I left and thanked God.

The waiting was over. In two seconds' time we should have gained freedom, or a slug from some sentry's rifle.

It took two seconds to slip down thirty feet of rope, and two seconds is a long time when your liberty, if not your life, is at stake. I half kicked down the sign-board of a shop in my descent, and Robin, who followed, completed the disaster. In our haste, we had cut our hands almost to the bone, and had made noise enough to wake the dead.

Yet no one stirred. We were both in the street, and no one had moved.

After two and a half years of captivity we were free men once more. The slothful years had vanished in the twinkling of an eye. Can you realise the miracle, liberty-loving reader, that passes in the mind of a man who thus suddenly realises his freedom? . . .

I don't know what Robin thought, for we said nothing. We lit cigarettes and strolled away. But inside of me, the motors of the nervous system raced.

The only other danger, in our hour and a half's walk to our destination, was being asked for passports by some policeman. In our character as polyglot mechanics, whenever we passed anyone, I found it a great relief to make some such remark as:

Lieb Vaterland, magst ruhig sein, Fest steht and treu die Wacht am Rhein.

But Robin, who could not understand my German, paid little heed.

Only once we did think we were likely to be recaught. At about one in the morning, as we were passing the Fatih mosque, we heard a rattle on the cobbles behind us. A carriage was being galloped in our direction. It might well contain some of the Psamattia garrison. We doubled into some ruins, and lay there, while the clatter grew louder and louder.

A few wisps of cloud crossed the moon, that had reached her zenith. Their silent shadows moved like ghosts across the desolation of the city. A cat was abroad. She saw us, and halted, with paw uplifted and blazing eyes.

Then the carriage passed, empty, with a drunken driver. It rattled away into the night, and we emerged, and took our way through the streets of old Stamboul, under the chequered shade of vines.

[Footnote 6: This applies in no way to the Americans, who did everything possible for our men before they left Constantinople. Their assistance was always of the most prompt and practical nature. It may be invidious to mention names in this light account of adventure, but I cannot refrain from giving myself the pleasure of saying how grateful I am to Mr. Hoffman Phillips, of the American Embassy. His name, as also the name of his chief, Mr. Morgenthau, is indissolubly connected with our early prisoners. I wish to thank him from the bottom of my heart, and I know many of all ranks who will join with me in this--far too meagre--tribute to his activities and ability.]

[Footnote 7: Let no one think the clergyman in charge aided or abetted our secular efforts to escape. On the contrary, on a later occasion, when Robin, as a poor and distressed prisoner hiding from the Turks, endeavoured to find sanctuary for a few hours in the church, he was expelled therefrom, so that our enemies should not complain that the House of God was used for anything but worship.]

[Footnote 8: During the afternoon I lost over seven pounds in weight.]