At 3 p.m. our twenty-four hours of grace expired. Once more we went to the Commandant’s office—Hill and I and the four witnesses. The last act of the little comedy was played. The Commandant began with a graphic picture of the horrors of a Turkish prison and the monotony of a bread-and-water diet. It was excellently done, and calculated to give the most phlegmatic of Britishers cold shudders down the spine. Then he told us how much he loved us prisoners, and would we spare him the pain of putting us in jail by giving up the name he wanted? Hill and I were models of firmness in our refusal. Kiazim Bey, with a gesture of hopelessness, indicated he could do no more for us. Then came the sentence. The common jail for the present would remain in abeyance, but until we saw fit to confess we would be confined in a back room of the “Colonels’ House”—a large empty building opposite the office. We would be allowed no communication whatever with other prisoners, and no orderly, but we might have our clothes and bedding. We would not be permitted to write or receive any letters. To begin with, our food could be sent in by the nearest prisoners’ house. If we remained obdurate, we would later sample a bread-and-water diet. No walks and no privileges of any kind, and the threat of a further court-martial and a severer sentence by Constantinople over our heads!
Then something happened which neither Hill nor I had foreseen, and which completely took our breath away. Major Gilchrist in his position as adjutant of the camp made an exceedingly polite and grateful speech. No doubt he thought he was being very diplomatic, for on behalf of the camp he thanked the Commandant for the courtesy and fairness with which he had conducted the trial and for the leniency of the sentence![[19]]
After this “vote of thanks,” our four witnesses left the office. They were good fellows, those four. They busied themselves getting up our kit to our new quarters, and seeing the room swept out and all made comfortable for us. While they were doing so, Hill and I and the Commandant and the Pimple were having a noble time together, recalling the various incidents in the trial and congratulating each other on our successful performances. The Commandant thought it all the best joke of his life, and he made us repeat several times Gilchrist’s pæan of praise, rocking in his chair with laughter.
At last there was a trampling in the hall below. The Chaoush had amassed a guard sufficiently strong to escort us two desperadoes across the street, and was waiting, so the Commandant shook hands with us in turn.
“Remember, my friends,” he said, “you have but to ask for anything you want, and you will get it.”
Then we were marched across to our new prison, the first men in history, so far as we knew, to be sentenced for thought-reading.
CHAPTER XII
OF THE COMRADES WE HAD LEFT BEHIND AND HOW POSH
CASTLE PLAYED THE RAVEN