The launch came up to Gallipoli wharf in the night and not long after daylight we were shaken out of our blankets to receive the call of the mutessarif, or local governor, a big, slow, saturnine man in semi-riding-clothes, with the red fez and a riding-whip in his hand, who spoke only Turkish and limited himself to few words of that. He was accompanied by a sort of secretary or political director—a plump little man, with glasses and a vague, slightly smiling, preoccupied manner, who acted as interpreter.
The governor and Philip were addressed as "Excellence," the secretary as "Monsieur Le Directeur," and, considering that all concerned were only half awake, and we only half dressed, the interview, which included the exchange of cigarettes and many salutes, was extremely polite. We joined the mutessarif and his secretary in a stroll about the town.
It was deserted—closed shutters, empty houses and shops, not so much as the chance to buy a round, flat loaf of black bread—a shell of a town, with a few ravenous cats prowling about and forgotten chickens pecking the bare cobblestones. We saw the shell hole in the little Mohammedan cemetery, where four people, "come to visit the tombs of their fathers," had been killed, the smashed mosques, yawning house-fronts, and dangling rafters, and there came over one an indescribable irony as one listened, in this Eastern world of blazing sun, blue sky, and blue water, to the same grievances and indignations one had read in London editorials and heard in the beet-fields of Flanders months ago.
The mutessarif took us to a little white villa on the cliff by the sea, with a walled garden, flat black cedar, and a view of the Marmora, and we breakfasted on tea, bread and butter, and eggs. Meanwhile the hostages had been marched to an empty frame house on the beach, from the upper windows of which, while gendarmes guarded the street-door, they were gloomily peering when we returned to the launch. Philip, uneasy at the emptiness of the town and leisurely fashion in which things were likely to move, started for Lapsaki, across the Marmora, for food and blankets, and Suydam and I strolled about the town. We had gone but a few steps when we observed an aimless-looking individual in fez and civilian clothes following us. We tramped up-hill, twisted through several of the hot little alley-like streets—he followed like our shadow. We led him all over town, he toiling devotedly behind, and when we returned to the beach, he sat himself down on a wood-pile behind us, as might some dismal buzzard awaiting our demise.
He, or some of his fellow sleuths, stuck to us all that day. Once, for exercise, I walked briskly out to the edge of the town and back again. The shadow toddled after. I went up to the basin beside the ruined mosque, a sort of sea-water plaza for the town, and, taking a stool outside a little cafe, which had awakened since morning, took coffee. The shadow blandly took coffee also, which he consumed silently, as we had no common tongue, rose as I rose, and followed me back to the beach.
Out in the Marmora, which is but little wider here than the Hudson at Tappan Zee, transports crammed with soldiers went steaming slowly southward, a black destroyer on the lookout for submarines hugging their flanks and breaking trail ahead of them. Over the hills to the south, toward Maidos and the Dardanelles, rolled the distant thunder—the cannon the hapless fifty, looking out of their house on the beach, had been sent down to stop—and all about us, in the dazzling Turkish sunshine, were soldiers and supply-trains, landing, disembarking, pushing toward the front. Fine-looking men they were, too, these infantry-men, bronzed, well-built fellows, with heavy, high cheek-bones, longish noses, black mustaches, and dark eyes, who, whatever their qualities of initiative might be, looked to have no end of endurance and ability to stay put. Bullock-carts dragged by big, black buffalo cattle, carrying their heads far back, as if their big horns were too heavy for them, crowded the street leading to the quay, and camels, strung in groups of five, came swinging in, or kneeling in the dust, waved their long, bird-like necks, and lifted up a mournful bellow, as if protesting in a bored, Oriental way, at a fate which compelled them to bear burdens for the nagging race of men.
It was to an accompaniment of these howls that a young Turkish officer came over to find out who these strangers might be. We spoke of the hostages, and he at once said that it was an excellent idea. The English and French were very cruel—if now they chose to bombard. … "If a man throws a penny into the sea," he said, "he loses the penny. It isn't the pocket-book that's hurt." I did not quite grasp this proverb, but remarked that after all they were civilians and had done nothing. "That is true," he said, "but the English and French have been very unjust to our civilians. They force us to another injustice—c'est la guerre."
Toward the end of the afternoon the hostages, closely guarded, were marched up into the town and lodged in two empty houses—literally empty, for there was neither bed nor blanket, chair nor table—nothing but the four walls. A few had brought mattresses and blankets, but the greater number, city-bred young fellows, unused to looking after themselves out of doors, had only the clothes they stood in. The north wind held; directly the sun went down it was cold again, and, only half fed with the provisions Philip brought over from Lapsaki, they spent a dismal night,' huddled on the bare floor, under their suitcases or whatever they could get to cover them, and expecting another bombardment at dawn.
We, on the contrary—that is to say, Philip and his two guests—were taken to a furnished house over-looking the Marmora—the house, as it presently appeared, from the pictures of Waterloo on the walls and the English novels in a bookcase up-stairs, lately occupied by the British consular agent. To his excellency a room to himself up-stairs, with a real bed, was given; the historians were made perhaps even more comfortable on mattresses on the dining-room floor. We were all sleepy enough to drop on them at once, but another diplomatic dinner had been planned, it appeared, and Turkish politeness can no more be hurried nor overcome than can that curious impassive resistance which a Turk can maintain against something he does not wish done. It was nine o'clock before we sat down with the mutessarif, his secretary, and the voluble journalist to a whole roast kid, a rather terrifying but exceedingly palatable dish, stuffed with nuts, rice, and currants, and accompanied by some of the wine of Lapsaki, rice pudding, and a huge bowl of raw eggs, which were eaten by cracking the shell, elevating one's head, and tossing them down like oysters.
The dinner was served by one Dimitri, a brawny, slow-moving Greek. Dimitri was dressed in a home-spun braided jacket and homespun Turkish trousers, shaped like baggy riding-breeches, and his complete impenetrability to new ideas was only equalled by the solemnity and touching willingness with which he received them. It was after he had served us in the ignoble capacity of dish-washer and burden-carrier for several days that we were informed one evening by the governor's secretary, in his vague way, that Dimitri was an "architect."