“Certainly,” was the reply. “Every man would escape if he thought it possible, but Yozgad is as nearly impossible as any place can be, and they are not fools. Their opinion is that escape is too difficult to justify them in bringing the rest into trouble.”

The Spook went on to point out that the more hours out of every twenty-four the camp was on parole the less time would there be for escape; for this reason alone it was advisable to grant as many extra liberties as possible to those who were willing to give parole not to escape while actually enjoying these extra liberties. The Commandant might be perfectly confident that every such parole would be kept. But if close confinement were again imposed there would certainly be escapes.

“Let the Sup. tell them they are welcome to try to escape except when on ‘extra liberties,’ but they have been warned of what will happen to the rest. I do not say nobody will try, but it is most unlikely, especially if they are kept contented.”

Just before we left Yozgad we learned (from Le Patourel, if I remember right) that the escape was planned for early June—six weeks ahead. The Spook immediately sent word to the Commandant that it guaranteed there would be no escape or attempt to escape for at least three months from the date of our departure from Yozgad. This gave the Changri men a free hand until the 26th July, by which date we felt sure they would have made the attempt.[[46]]

It is of course impossible to say what would have happened had Kiazim been left to his own resources. This much is certain: on the morning of the 24th April he intended to keep the whole camp, and especially the Changri men, in very strict confinement. On the morning of the 25th April, the day after the séance, when he called to bid us farewell, and brought us a basket of sweet biscuits for the journey, made by his wife’s own hands, he told us he would follow the Spook’s advice and keep the prisoners as contented as possible. I learn from the book I have just quoted that he kept his promise, and after we left Yozgad the camp was better off in the matter of facilities for exercise than it had ever been in our time. Two days a week there was hunting, once a week a picnic to the pine-woods, and, on the remaining four days, walks; also access to the bazaar was easier to obtain. We can justly claim that the “Black Sheep” of Yozgad brought no harm to the rest of the flock.

CHAPTER XXIV

OF OUR MAD JOURNEY TO MARDEEN

Ever since Major Osman and Captain Suhbi Fahri had certified us insane we had feigned madness whenever any Turk was near, and in the presence of some of the visitors from the camp. We had found no great difficulty in maintaining our rôles as occasion arose, and indeed it was rather amusing to be able to heave a brazier of charcoal at a sentry, or try to steal his rifle, without fear of punishment. For the strain of acting was only temporary. We contrived to give the special sentry who was detailed to prevent us doing harm to ourselves or others such a very hot time that he preferred to do his tour of duty outside our room. So for most of the hours of the twenty-four we were alone, and could be rational. But we realized that from the moment we left our sanctuary and started on our journey to Constantinople, our simulation must be kept up night and day. As soon as we reached Haidar Pasha our escort would probably be questioned about our behaviour en route, and it was well they should corroborate the Pimple’s report of our actions. We agreed there must be no half measures. Alone or together, in sickness or health, to friend and foe, at all times and under all circumstances we must appear mad. O’Farrell warned us that the strain would be terrible, but not even he, doctor as he was, guessed half what it really meant. Nothing but the hope of liberty justified the attempt, and there were times in Constantinople when we doubted if liberty itself (which in those days was our idea of Heaven) was worth it. Pretend to be what you are not and the desire to be what you are grows in intensity until it becomes an agony of the mind. Your very soul cries out to you to be natural, to be your own “self” if only for five minutes. Then comes a stage of fear when you wonder if you are not what you seem—if you can ever be yourself again—if this creature that weeps mournfully when it should be gay, or gabbles wildly about its own grandeur, is not the real Hill, the real Jones. You believe you are all right, but you want to try so as to be sure—and yet trial is impossible; it would spoil everything. For a brief period in Haidar Pasha hospital a former patient came back and wanted the bed Hill happened to be in, so Hill was put in the bed next mine. It seems a little thing, that we should lie there three feet apart instead of ten, but it meant much. That was, for us, the easiest period of our long misery. We did not attempt to talk—we were too closely watched for that—but at night, under cover of darkness, sometimes he and sometimes I would stretch out an arm, and for a brief moment grip the other’s hand. The firm strong pressure of my comrade’s fingers used to put everything right. It was the one sane action in our insane day.

A merciful Providence has decreed that the present must suffice, and the future shall be hidden from man; so though at Yozgad we guessed a little of the horror to come, it did not unduly oppress us. When at 10 a.m. on April 26th, the two best carts and the four best horses in the Changri transport were brought to our door, we made merry with Moïse about this theft from the Afion party. Then we went out into the street. In a mad sort of way I superintended the loading of our belongings on to the carts, getting into everybody’s way and flustering still further the already flustered Turks. (Why do Orientals always seem to lose their heads when starting on a journey?) Hill stood by, perfectly heedless of the tumult that was going on round him, reading his Bible and looking miserable. Behind the barred and latticed windows of the Colonels’ House we could hear the Changri prisoners chuckling at our antics, and a voice hailed us from Posh Castle. We did not look up—our farewells had already been said. By way of giving our escort an example of how to humour us, Kiazim Bey came to the door of his office and told us in Turkish that he was our very good friend, that he was sending us to Constantinople for a holiday, and that the soldiers who accompanied us were there to guard us against the enmity of Baylay and our other English foes. (All this, of course, by order of the Spook.) I bade him a florid and affectionate farewell and mounted the cart. Hill went on reading the Bible and had to be pushed up beside me. The driver struck the horses with his whip. I cheered, and my imitative mania asserting itself, I struck the driver with my fly-flap. This caused a delay. The driver pulled up, expostulating in angry Turkish, and my fly-flap was taken away from me by Mulazim Hassan, who had turned up to see the last of us. By this time there was a biggish crowd in the street. We started again. I hugged the driver, got up another cheer, and began distributing bank-notes among the onlookers. Moïse, who had been warned by the Spook what to do if I was controlled into wasting my money, jumped off his cart and collected them back again. He had hard work explaining to the ragged mob that I was mad and they must not keep the money, but his fear of the wrath of the Spook if he failed lent a new boldness to his speech and authority to his manner. Still, it was not difficult to see he was far from happy when forcing them to disgorge, and that his nervousness increased proportionately with the size and burliness of his victim.[[47]]

Thus, in the two best carts obtainable, with Moïse and two selected gamekeepers in charge of us, and the blessings of the Commandant on our heads, we started forth to face the world as lunatics, and to read the thoughts of the holder of the third clue in Constantinople. It was good fun, getting out into the open after nearly two years of dismal prison life, and I was not a little sorry for Hill. As a religious melancholic he must do nothing but weep or pray or read his Bible, while his heart, if it was anything like mine, was thumping with joy at being quit of Yozgad and moving westwards towards Europe, England, and Liberty! The time was to come when, with hope near dead within me and the stress of an enforced cheerful idiocy weighing me down, I would long to change places with Hill so that I might pray a little, aye—and weep too! But for this one day I was in luck. The Turks put down my happiness to the fact that I was leaving behind the English who were so intent on murdering me, and going to Stamboul to see the Sultan, and Enver Pasha, and become a great man in the Turkish Government. So it was quite in keeping with my type of insanity to be light-hearted, and to let off my high spirits in any old act of lunacy that came up my back; to set the carts racing against one another, to howl Turkish songs in imitation of the drivers, to shout mad greetings and make faces and throw money (to the annoyance of the Pimple) at the amazed passers-by. And from my own private point of view there was some excuse for high spirits—were we not the first two to get out of Yozgad on our own initiative, and were we not being taken on a personally conducted tour at the expense of the Turkish Government, which, if all went well, would end in old England? So I laughed, and shouted, and sang, and was exceeding cheerful, to the great joy of the escort and the drivers, who much preferred this phase of my lunacy to my “dangerous” moods. All the time Hill sat mournfully huddled up, as became a melancholic, but once, when he glanced at me, I noticed his eyes were sparkling. He told me afterwards it must have been a sparkle of anticipation—he was planning his first dinner at Home!