CHAPTER XIII

SHARING A SEPULCHRE

Keeping well under cover, Frank worked his way upwards through the scrub round the north-east shoulder of Sari Bair. Every now and then he stopped, as it were to "sniff the air." He smiled to himself, thinking how like his movements must be to those of a fox that knows that the hounds are out. "I can believe now," he thought, "the huntsman's theory that the enjoyment is not all on one side."

From the height to which he had now ascended he had a bird's-eye view of the pretty little village of Biyuk Anafarta, surrounded by tall and stately cypresses, lying below him in a gap in the hills to the north. He paused for a moment to admire the scene. Just above him was the head of a nullah forming a ravine on the northern face of Sari Bair, and joining as a tributary a larger nullah running westward past the village to the sea. A hundred yards up the hill a large cedar jutted out from the side of the nullah, here only a few feet deep, and towered above the prevailing scrub. Six or eight paces from the tree, near the bank of the nullah, there appeared the stone door of an ancient sepulchre, probably dating back before the Christian era. The stones were perfectly cut and squared, and solidly cemented together. The weather of twenty centuries had but lightly touched them.

At this point Frank redoubled his precautions. The vegetation grew closely about the sepulchre; this solitude was apparently never visited by men; but he could not afford to leave anything to chance. He dropped into the nullah some eighty yards below the tree, and carefully worked his way up the bed of the ravine. Arriving at the tree, he took a final look round, pulled himself up by the roots, and climbed up on the western side, having the massive trunk between him and the men who were hunting for him far away to the east.

At the first big fork the tree was hollow. Letting himself down within the hollowed trunk, he stood upon a litter of leaves, brushwood, and soft detritus, which he stooped in the semi-darkness to stir over. After a while he uncovered a hole about two feet across. Through this he wriggled, into a narrow passage not high enough to walk erect in, ending in a small square room a little higher than the passage, but still too low for the upright posture.

The air was full of the sickly odour of decay. A feeble light filtered through a number of tube-like orifices bored in the stone on one wall of the room. At the further end, reaching almost from the floor to the roof, stood two enormous earthen jars. They were filled with human bones. This little room was the interior of the sepulchre.

Frank had discovered the place by accident a day or two before. He had climbed the tree to learn, if he could, the whereabouts of his pursuers, and discovered the hollow trunk. Thinking that this would afford a secure hiding-place in case of need, though the quarters would in truth be rather cramped, he had dropped down and started to clear a space for sleeping. It was then that, in lifting a mass of brushwood, he had discovered the passage and the chamber beyond.

The discovery set his imagination at work. The building was obviously so much older than the tree that this strange connection between them must be an afterthought. Within the sepulchre he found some articles of Greek pottery which suggested an explanation. Back in the middle ages the peninsula of Gallipoli, then a Greek possession, was overrun by the conquering Ottoman Turks. Was it not possible that some Greek fugitive, fleeing before the barbarians, had lighted upon this hollow tree just as he himself had done, and cut a passage through it into the ancient and forgotten tomb? How many centuries had passed before the Byzantine fugitive, if such he was, had intruded upon the solitude of its fleshless inhabitants?

The stories which the Anatolian captain had related to Abdi did not exaggerate the truth. Frank had acted on the impulse of the moment in hurling Abdi into the ruins of Benidin's bomb-shelled house. He had not taken a moment's thought for the future, nor indeed, after his shattering experiences, was he in a condition to think collectedly. All that he was conscious of was a desperate anxiety to get as far from the Kurd as possible. He ran into the gathering dusk, retaining just enough presence of mind to direct his course away from the lower town. Benidin's house was on the outskirts, and in a few minutes he came into open country. He had met no one, but hearing the rumble of an approaching wagon ahead, he left the road and struck off into the rough ground at the side.

It was now dark. He checked his pace, to recover breath and self-possession. What was he to do? Kopri had perhaps returned by this time in the vessel which was to convey him back to Constantinople, but to retrace his steps and seek the harbour was more than he dared. On regaining his senses the Kurd would certainly raise the hue and cry through the town: Gallipoli would be too hot for the fugitive. What then was left? It had been suggested that he should seek safety in Bulgaria, but the frontier was far away, he had no guide, and he had been so shaken by the recent explosion that he felt a nervous dread of the encounters that were inevitable if he attempted to find his way through strange country. A better course, he thought, was to hide among the hills for a few days, until he had recovered his nerve and will-power. With money in his pocket and a command of the Turkish tongue he might purchase food in some hill village or at some outlying farm.

Guiding himself, therefore, by the stars, he struggled on for a while towards the hilly district south-westwards, intending presently to take refuge in some sheltered spot where he might pass the night. As he went he remembered that off the south-west extremity of the peninsula lay the British fleet; but at this moment the fleet seemed as remote from him as the stars themselves. After a time he heard noises below him--the creaking of carts, the voices of men; at short intervals he saw faint lights. Clearly there was a road beneath, and a convoy was on the road. He stood still; listened; watched. The convoy was moving in the opposite direction to his own course, and from the sound of the wagons he inferred that they were empty. Then they must be returning from the forts at the further end of the peninsula. He knew nothing about the geography of the interior of this tongue of land; but he was aware that a road ran close to the shore of the Dardanelles. That must be a shorter route to the forts than this second road, which apparently traversed the centre of the peninsula; and in a moment or two it occurred to him that the Turko-Germans employed the longer road in returning their "empties" in order to avoid congestion on the more direct route.

Frank waited until the convoy had passed, then groped his way down to the road. It was so dark now that he might trudge the highway with little risk of discovery, and with a greater chance of finding a hovel where with good luck he might take shelter. But fatigue overcame him before he had gone more than a few miles, and he climbed up the hillside again, threw himself down under the lee of a rock upon a stretch of moss, and wrapping his sheepskin garment around him, slept until the verge of dawn.

Resuming his way over the hills, within sight of the road, he saw by and by in the distance a village of considerable size. He was hungry, but his heart failed him; he felt that he could not face inquisitive villagers, and endure their cross-questioning. He passed above the village and went on. From the distance came the rumble of guns. Presently he caught sight of a farm in a hollow of the hills, and turned his steps towards it. As he drew nearer to it he became more and more nervous. How was he to account for himself? What story could he invent that would pass muster with people who probably seldom saw a stranger, and would certainly be suspicious? He could not think of anything that seemed plausible; yet he must have food, and at length, with the courage of desperation, he resolved to throw off the mask. He obtained food there at the point of his revolver, and betook himself with it to a thicket on the hill-top beyond, where having assuaged his hunger he slept through the rest of the day and the night.

Next morning he finished his provisions and set off again on his journey--no longer aimless, for during the night the idea had come to him of making his way to the coast and swimming out to one of the British vessels whose guns he had heard. The project had seemed to him, in the hours of darkness, wonderfully easy; but in the cold light of morning it assumed, as such night thoughts often do, a very different complexion. "Silly ass!" he thought. "The ships will be miles out. I'd never get to them." And his mind was soon occupied with more immediate concerns.

Looking back from his elevated position along the road, he perceived a number of soldiers, not marching in orderly ranks on the highway, but dotted here and there on the heights on either side. In a moment it flashed upon him that the troops were on his trail. This conviction acted as a tonic. There was a definite danger to contend with, a problem on which to exercise his wits. To proceed directly on his former course would be fatal. His best chance of ultimate escape was to worry the pursuers in the difficult hill country and tire them out. And so he had commenced that brief career of semi-brigandage which had up to the present supplied his needs and stimulated his mental activity. Now and then, of course, he was sunk deep in depression. He was very much alone, surrounded by enemies, often hungry, still more often very cold; but the necessity for constant exertion helped him to conquer despondency, and prevented him from dwelling over long on the darker side of things.

Now, as he squatted on the couch of leaves which he had made for himself on the floor of the sepulchre, he pondered his situation seriously and with anxiety. It was clear that a determined effort was being made to capture him, and he ruefully acknowledged to himself that the very successes he had had in obtaining food, clothes, and arms would tell against him: they furnished his pursuers with an additional motive. The troops would certainly begin a methodical search of Sari Bair. They could not fail to discover the door of the sepulchre, and though this was sealed, and there was no entrance to the place from the ground, the entrance through the tree might be discovered by one of them in the same accidental way as in his own case. Fortunately, the surrounding rocks were too hard to show tell-tale traces of his footsteps, but if the pursuers should continue to haunt the neighbourhood, he might find himself compelled to remain in hiding, and the idea of being cooped up in these narrow gloomy quarters was far from inspiriting. The tomb was in truth a dismal abode. The sepulchral vases were not cheerful pieces of furniture. On the previous night he had had an attack of nerves, and climbed into the fork of the tree to sleep. But the physical discomfort due to the attentions of innumerable insects was less endurable than the intangible companionship of ghosts, and ashamed of his weakness he had clambered down again, and fallen asleep to the dull boom of British guns bombarding the forts.

"Well, I've got a rifle and ammunition now," he thought, as he settled himself for his second night's sleep in the tomb. "But I dare not go game-shooting with them. To-morrow I shall have to go foraging again. I'm getting tired of this."