CHAPTER IX

A REHEARSAL

It was two days later.

On the slope of the hill, not a stone's throw from the house where Hermann Wonckhaus was nursing his wounded leg and meditating on carpets, was a modest dwelling, huddled among more pretentious buildings, and so inconspicuous that a passer would hardly have thought it worth while to wonder who lived there. At the rear of this house, hollowed out of the hillside, was a small dark chamber with neither door nor window. Any person who might have been brought there in a state of unconsciousness would have supposed, on waking, that he was sealed up within four walls from which he could not escape.

On this particular day three men were in the room, one elderly, the others young. A small oil lamp placed on a wall bracket gave a dim light, and the air was oppressive with staleness and the flavour of smoke. It was not a place where one would have desired to remain long, but its three occupants had chosen it as the scene of a somewhat important rehearsal.

The elderly man was Isaac Kopri, the astute and capable Armenian contractor to the Turkish army in Erzerum. One of the youths was his son Joseph. The second was to all appearance one of those humble Armenians who are employed in driving caravan horses from the Persian frontier to Erzerum and thence to the Black Sea port of Trebizond. He stood at one end of the room, facing his companions at the wall opposite.

Kopri stepped forward, and, speaking in Turkish, asked sharply:

"Who are you?"

"I am your servant, effendim," replied the young man, "Reuben Donessa, the son of Aaron of the Five Wells."

"Where do you come from?"

"From Bashkala, effendim."

"How old are you?"

"Truly I know not, effendim, but my years may be nineteen or twenty."

"Why are you not in the army?"

"Because it is the will of Allah and the noble governor that I should be dispensed from the war service of the Illustrious."

"Where is your paper?"

"Behold it, effendim."

He took from the breast of his shaggy tunic a dirty crumpled paper, which Kopri took and read aloud. It set forth the style and titles of the Sultan, then those of his deputy the governor of Erzerum, and finally declared: "Certifies that the bearer, Reuben Donessa, is employed in the service of Isaac Kopri, contractor to the army of the Commander of the Faithful."

"Isaac Kopri should employ older men, but your paper is in order. You may go."

"Peace be with you, effendim."

"Very good, very good," said Kopri, handing back the paper. "But you must pitch your voice a little higher. Joseph, say 'I am your humble servant, effendim.'"

Joseph repeated the words.

"That is the tone, mark you," said his father. "Now we will go through it again."

The dialogue was repeated, the driver, who seemed somewhat amused at the gravity of the others, imitating Joseph's reedy intonation.

"That is better," said Kopri at its conclusion. "But remember, effendim, tone and accent are not everything. You must bow, and stand humbly, and cast down your eyes, not look forthright into the eyes of your questioner when you answer him. We Armenians have been oppressed for five hundred years. We move meekly on the face of the earth. You Englishmen bear yourselves differently. You walk and stand as if you were the lords of the world. If you would pass for an Armenian you must remember that in the eyes of the Turk you are less than the smallest grain of dust. Keep that in mind, and all will be well."

Frank smiled as he made a humble salam.

"How will that do?" he asked.

"Very good, very good--with a little more crook in the knees. And now I will explain my plan."

Frank had been rescued by Joseph with the help of Ali, the faithful Kurd, and brought to this secret chamber in the obscure house, from which it was entered by a passage beneath the floor. His escape had raised a commotion in the town. Search had been made for him in all directions until Kopri started a rumour that he had bribed Kurds to pass him through Kurdistan into Persia. Wonckhaus was furious, and had promised a high reward to any one who captured the fugitive.

When Joseph was released, in the early days of Frank's imprisonment, his father thought it politic that he should leave the town, and had taken him away on one of his business journeys into the country. Then, fearing that the Armenians were about to suffer in one of the wholesale massacres which break forth in times of disturbance, Kopri had sent all his family to Constantinople, where they would be for a time, at least, safer than in Erzerum, and whence they might in case of need slip across the frontier into Bulgaria or Greece. He himself had the protection of the military authorities, but this might fail him at any moment; indeed, he had already been forced to part with some of his profits in the way of war contributions.

Having thus disposed of his family, Kopri was now intending to join them. The Turkish army in the Caucasus was hard pressed by the Russians, and in great need of supplies. With the ostensible purpose of fetching provisions, Kopri was arranging to take a large number of mules to Trebizond, to await his return from Constantinople. Most of the mules were already on the road. He would follow at the tail end of the caravan, which was in charge of a few specially trusty men, and his plan was that Frank and Joseph should slip out of the city by night, and join him at Ilija, a village at the foot of the hills to the west.

Kopri was well aware of the risks he was running in assisting the Englishman's escape. But Mr. Forester was an old friend of his, and learning in Constantinople that the merchant, on his return there, had been greatly distressed at being unable to communicate with his son, he had willingly yielded to Joseph's entreaty that they should attempt to rescue Frank. He remembered also how Frank had run risks in defending his house from the mob. Mr. Forester had of course left Constantinople with other British residents at the outbreak of war, but he had left word that he should not travel farther than Malta, where he would remain until he had news of Frank.

The arrangements having been thoroughly discussed, Kopri left the house, where his son was to stay with Frank until nightfall. As soon as it was dark, the two slipped out, and crossing roofs, threading alley ways, stealing over gardens, they came at length to the ramparts of the city. The old walls, defended by sixty-two towers, had long been demolished and replaced by mounds of earth with ditches. Guns were mounted at intervals, and the four gates were closely guarded by sentinels; but between them there were many spots where discreet persons might scale the ramparts, and at one of these an Armenian servant of Kopri's was awaiting the fugitives, with a rope by which to let them down on the outer side.

They had taken the precaution to wear white garments, so that dark figures should not show against the snow that covered the ground. Safely over the ramparts, they hurried by a roundabout route across the snow-clad plain, and near midnight arrived at Ilija, where they found Kopri in a small inn with five muleteers. Here they rested for the night. Next morning they started as soon as it was light.

Few would have recognised Frank in the rough garb of a muleteer. Nor was he so pale as might have been expected after months of confinement and privation. Joseph had utilised the two days of hiding to effect a transformation in his master's complexion. He had lightly stained his face, hair, arms, and the upper part of his body. There must be no tell-tale patches to rouse suspicion. And with his dark skin and rough dirty clothes Frank bore little likeness to the well-dressed fair Englishman for whom Wonckhaus's emissaries had sought high and low.

For ten days the caravan marched over plain and hill, on a road on which the snow had been beaten down and hardened by the passage of many travellers. The mules were laden with articles of merchandise for Constantinople, including a number of carpets in rough bundles. Frank was in charge of one of these bundles.

Scarcely anything broke the slow monotony of the journey. Here they would meet a line of bullock-carts, groaning and creaking under loads of uniforms and equipment for the Caucasian army. Then would come a long string of shaggy Bactrian camels, padding noiselessly along with their drivers in sheepskin caps marching at the side. Once they met a family of turbaned Moslems on horseback, sitting astride their overhanging mattresses, from which hung a jangling cluster of cooking-pots. Sturdy Armenian peasants on foot, Kurdish horsemen, a regiment of infantry for whose passage the mules had to leave the beaten road for the soft snow at the sides, formed part of the traffic which the caravan encountered from time to time.

The journey imposed a considerable strain on Frank, weakened by his imprisonment. But he had a good constitution, and it was gradually re-established by the keen air, and the plentiful food which was obtained at the khans en route. And when, on the afternoon of the tenth day after leaving Erzerum, the caravan defiled into the streets of Trebizond, he was conscious of having recovered something of his old vigour, and refreshed by the sight of the sea on whose waters he would soon be borne to Constantinople. But, not having the gift of second sight, he was far from imagining the strange and perilous adventures into which he was shortly to be plunged.