The other party duly informed us that they intended to start. Three weeks afterwards they did. The posta had just left me about eleven, when we heard a shot. Some excitement occurred down below, and postas swarmed up to our house to see if I was there. Search parties were out all night.
We were all confined to our house. Next day I heard that at the last minute the escape was nearly nipped in the bud at the start. This was prevented by our old Bombardier Prosser, who did servant down there. One of the party forgot his watch, and actually sent the bombardier, who was showing them out, back for it. A posta accosted him. He knocked the posta down, and rushing up to his room, shaved his moustache off and got into bed. They had him out and listened to his heart to see, as they did on such occasions, if it was still beating quickly. This would have meant he had just been out.
We remained under "bund" without incident. Hourly reports came that the other party had been captured. But they didn't return. The following notice appeared posted up next day and signed by the commandant.
"Possession of the offensives have been taken. Other officers are requested not to escape, and will be surely shot in bunking. Officers offensive in this fashion, giving their parole, are informed they must be fired at in any case. All are requested to be happy. Do not take rotten advantage of your old postas for God sake. This is final notice before shooting. Let the special one note."
I was voted the special one in my house.
We heard a rumour that the party while trying to avoid the bandits in making for the coast had actually struck the main band, and after getting away, tried to pass off as Germans. They were discovered. I have no wonder—and a letter written by an officer, amateur at Turkish, was taken.
Clumsy as the start was, they have done well, and we all wish them the very best of luck.
So the days dragged on and the nights stood still. Once more summer was over. Once more it seemed we were entering the long stretch of autumn that led into the terrors of winter, with its cold, and scarcity of food that our slender means could not negotiate. But through the nights and days always, always, there was the same range of hills dividing us from the sea. In the first days of September there suddenly appeared in Kastamuni a tall Turkish Mir Ali (full colonel), named Zia Bey, the inspecting officer of the Government. He came to hear our complaints. His visit last year had been hailed with great glee, but we had since learned that these events were shorn of possibilities of increase of liberty. He came, no doubt, to inquire about the escape. We were still heavily under "bund," and so he visited each house. He had a pleasant appearance, was very quiet, and extraordinarily polite, but he did nothing. We stood around his chair while our spokesman told of our petty troubles, the large ones we knew it useless to recount, so we asked for fresh air and money and leave for our British servants to go to the pump without a posta as they were few and we were often thirsty. He noted our points, but promised nothing except one or two.
I heard him ask which was I, and I could see I was still under heavy suspicion about escaping, although my eyelids were so swollen that I could not see at all out of one eye, and only indifferently out of the other. But I was not so blind that I could not see that Zia was the polite type of lazy Turk that in the heart of him has fear. I said nothing of the scheme that evolved itself as we all sat together. It was fatal to hand over one's embassy to another. When he had gone I wrote a letter to him.
My assets were that I had really been very ill from the effects of a shell contusion in my spine for a very long time. Of this I could show nothing except in two places, the vertebræ were parted and irregular, and one had since grown nearer. If one could refer to anything so damnable as captivity being blighted, I might say that bruise has blighted mine. Of the untold hours that I lie awake waiting, waiting, for the roof, sky, and earth to stop pulsating to the pulsation in my spine, no one can ever know. But the eye trouble, originally strain from shell-shock and from grit, is now only bad conjunctivitis, although it looks awfully serious. As first violin of our band my bandaged eye, and, later, my absence, had been conspicuous enough to the Turks. Moreover, I had recently received word from the late Lord Grey and a letter from some friends at the Foreign Office. In one letter a kind inquiry existed about my health, noting the special treatment our enemy prisoners were getting in cases like mine in London, and saying medicine and glasses were being sent me to save my eyes in the meantime. On this I made my case without threatening the Turk, but indicating that they had become aware of my case in London. That I had been so neglected my eyes were imperilled, and that whatever had happened in the past the inspecting officer, at all events, now had the opportunity of giving me in Stamboul the treatment that the Turks got in our best hospitals.