As I lay half awake, early on the morning of May 15th, I was conscious that an exceptional day had dawned. But my drowsy faculties could not produce, from the dark room of memory, a negative of what was imminent. Then the door opened, and with a clatter of mugs and a cry of the German word "Milch" there entered an Arab milkman, with his tin bowl slung over his shoulder.
I was alert in an instant. Why, of course, we had reached escape day, and we must buy a stock of biscuits for a journey from this dairyman, whose privilege it was to sell us goat's milk, at five piastres a glass, for our breakfast.
But that morning he had brought no biscuits—and this was the first of a heart-breaking sequence of obstacles.
Throughout the day I remained in a state of high tension. Yet my principal concern was for the lack of self-control shown by George, who walked about with shaking knees and unsteady hands and anxious face.
"For God's sake don't show yourself like that to the Turkish officer," said H.
"My dear, I am not brave, and fortune never visits me." His fear was pitiful.
"Pray for fortune then."
And George prayed, melodramatically and in all solemnity: "God what is in heaven, take us quickly to the Arab with horses."
The thermometer of hope quicksilvered up and down every few minutes, throughout the pregnant hours of afternoon. For the ninety-ninth time I examined the packets of raisins, the bread, and the water bottles. For the hundredth time I reviewed the details of our plan.
Between ten P.M. and midnight the Druse was to wait by the station, with long headdresses which should be disguise enough for the moment, because in the darkness a passerby could only see us as silhouetted outlines. Soon after ten George was to take H., R., and me through the side door, as already described, and lead us to the Druse. Then we would slip out of Damascus to the spot where an Arab was waiting with the horses. We must ride over the plain all night, and hide the next day in a certain Druse village, where a hut had been prepared for us. We could buy arms in the village. We would travel without rest throughout the following night and just before dawn reach the mountains outside Deraa, when the second Arab was to take back the horses.