John Willie also procured for us a German staff-map, which included the countryside between Psamatia and San Stefano. White and I had decided, however, that our best plan would be to give the guards the slip during the daytime in one of the winding side streets of Stamboul, to buy tickets openly at the railway station, and to travel to San Stefano as ordinary passengers. Using John Willie's pencilled map, we could then find the place of rendezvous and lie low in the wood until the following morning.
Meanwhile, now that Sunday visits to the city were forbidden, I employed the Bosnian as messenger for letters to Theodore. We had in mind the alternative plan of a stowaway voyage from Constantinople across the Black Sea, and we intended to carry it out if John Willie failed us. We could not altogether trust him, for he continued to demand small loans for preliminary expenses. He showed himself, besides, to be both careless and heedless, so that he seemed a far from desirable companion for a desperate adventure. We found that in conversation with some English Tommies, who were patients in another ward, he had boasted of his plan to take White and myself to Mudros; and we feared that any day, with so many people discussing it, the story might be overheard by an English-speaking doctor.
Possibly that is what happened, for I noticed that each time the Bosnian and I met in the garden we were watched closely. One of the patients—a bearded, shifty-looking Turk with one arm in a sling—made it his business to sit on the same bench, and to listen while I pretended to give instruction in the proper pronunciation of English. Although I warned John Willie to be very careful, he failed to realize the danger, and continued to make us all the more conspicuous by talking in a low voice.
One afternoon he approached me with the English grammar open in his hand, and pointed to a folded note which lay on one of its pages. Two Turkish nurses were passing. Seeing that they looked at the book, I turned the page quickly to hide the note. But the nurses had apparently seen everything, for as they entered the door of the hospital they whispered and turned back. A few minutes later the doctor on duty joined us in the garden, and told John Willie that in future it would be forbidden to talk with British prisoners.
Yet we managed three further meetings, which took place at the wash-house in the evening. Then John Willie disappeared suddenly from the hospital, and we were left to our own resources.
We still had his maps of San Stefano; and when the period set for the escape arrived we should know by means of a pre-arranged signal if he was still prepared to take us to Mudros. This was that on the Sunday morning preceding the first date of rendezvous he was to fly over Psamatia in a Nieuport scout, and perform stunts.
Meanwhile, White and I now lacked a go-between. More than ever it was necessary that one or both of us should see Theodore, and try to get into touch with somebody on the Ukranian steamer Batoum, which I could see from our ward window, moored opposite the Sultan's Palace of Dolma Bagtché.
Every request that we might be permitted to visit the shops was refused, and when White asked to see a dentist in Constantinople he was referred to the military dentist in the hospital. We had almost decided to leave for Psamatia before our time, when chance provided a way out.
My fame as a teacher of English had spread through the hospital. Aziz Bey, a young Turkish doctor, arrived at my bedside one morning, with text-books and a request for lessons. I agreed willingly, and in a few days became quite friendly with him over conjugations, and references to the green socks worn by the son of the gardener.
At that time intelligent Turks, many of whom hated the Germans worse even than they hated the Armenians, were just beginning to realize that the Allies might well win the war. In a conversation Aziz Bey referred to this possibility, and expressed admiration for the British. In particular he praised a man named Meester Djavid Loijorge, who, it appeared, was the principal leader of the Allies. Djavid Loijorge, declared Aziz Bey, was a very great man indeed.