“Pah!” said the Pimple, “you used words you never heard in your life!”
Perhaps! But then, the Pimple did not know as much about me as he thought. My training for India had not been entirely confined to Eastern languages. I have pleasant recollections of summers spent in a French school and a French ’Varsity.
CHAPTER XXV
HOW WE HANGED OURSELVES
On the 29th April, 1918 (an ominous day because it was the second anniversary of the fall of Kut-el-Amara and of the beginning of my captivity), we drove into the little town of Mardeen. Here, on our journey to Yozgad twenty-two months ago, we had rested for a day. We were then travel-worn, footsore and starved. The memories of the awful desert march, the studiously callous neglect with which the Turks had treated us on the way, the misery of being herded and driven and clubbed across the wastes like so many stolen cattle, and sheer weariness of body had nigh broken our spirit. Long afterwards a British officer, captured on the Suez front, who saw the Kut prisoners pass through Angora, told me, “When we saw your mob being driven along I turned to my neighbour and said, ‘By God! Those fellows have been through it! They’re broken men, every one of them!’ You all looked fit for nothing but hospital.” Our batch were officers, and as such the Turks had granted us a little money and a little transport to help us on the way. What the men of the garrison suffered no one can tell. The desert road from Kut to railhead at Raas-el-ain is 600 miles. At each furlong-post set a stone to the memory of a murdered prisoner, and there will still be corpses to spare! That lonely desert track belongs to the Dead Men of Kut.
My second entry into Mardeen was happier than the first. We were travelling in comfort. The twisting of a coat-button made us in fact what that courteous liar Enver Pasha had glibly promised we should be—“the honoured guests of Turkey.” The Spook could get us all the comforts we wanted, and though we still denied ourselves proper food the starvation was nothing, for it was a self-imposed means to an end. In place of a hopeless captivity there lay ahead of us the hope of early freedom. So we bumped joyfully over the cobbled streets and drew up in the market square. We noticed with interest the effects of the pressure of the British Navy. Two years ago the shops had still been full of European goods. Now most of them were shut, and those which remained open were empty of everything but local produce. A restaurant where I had got a good meal for five piastres was now charging forty piastres for a single dish of poor food. Everywhere prices were fabulously high. Last winter, we learned, the town had been swept by typhus. Most of the townsfolk were in rags; at all of which we could have rejoiced had it not been for the starving children. Hill nudged me and silently indicated a little group of them, pallid with hunger, grubbing amongst some refuse in the hope of finding food the dogs had overlooked. The Spook got to work with five-piastre notes, and my Turkish being already good enough to enable me to tell each recipient to run like smoke, the Pimple had a desperate ten minutes. He returned from his last chase puffing and blowing, and bundled me back into the cart. He was very frightened, for he had retrieved very few of the notes.
We went on to one of the three caravan-serais of which the town boasted. These Turkish serais are built on a regular model. A big gateway leads into an open courtyard surrounded on all four sides by buildings. These are usually two-storeyed. The lower storey consists of stables for the horses, the upper of rooms for the men. Round the upper storey runs a fairly broad veranda, which overlooks the courtyard and gives access to the rooms. The veranda is reached by a staircase leading up from the courtyard. Somewhere in the building there is usually a coffee-stall, kept by the caretaker, where light refreshment can be obtained.
As we entered the courtyard the caretaker bustled forward with his bunch of great keys. He opened room after room for our inspection. They were all stone floored, low-ceilinged and devoid of all furniture. This would not have mattered to us. The important point was that nowhere could we see a place to tie a rope above five feet from the floor. The building seemed to have been specially designed to prevent suicide by hanging.
Hill was mooning along with us, reading his Bible as he went and pretending to take no interest in the proceedings, but I knew that the mournful look he bestowed on each room as we entered had taken in every detail. I glanced at him and he gave the tiniest shake of the head. I turned on Moïse.
“Is this the accommodation you offer me, ME, a friend of the Sultan!” I said in simulated rage, twisting my coat-button as I spoke. “This is an insult! Take us where we shall find worthy lodging, or you shall suffer!”