We planned deep into the night, then Jones and I slept.
We awoke lying alongside the jetty among the rocky hills of Panderma. I took Jones on to a train for which we waited an hour or two. He still acted all he could that he was mad, and would, until he got on board, so he said. We got into a crowded carriage, and after a journey lasting all day, reached Smyrna the next morning without mishap from bandits, who had been stopping many trains and holding prominent citizens to ransom. The country was uncultivated, and had been left to run wild. The people remaining were Turks and Greeks. At Smyrna the Dutch Consulate assisted and gave us money. One batch of prisoners had left that morning, and another would leave in two or three days.
Jones and I found apartments along the bay where General Melliss had been. The generals had come straight from Brusa here, and some already had departed. I had got the local operator to repair the wireless station that had been closed down for years. We got into touch with one Commander Heathcote-Smith, formerly Consul at Smyrna, now at Mytilene, and through him we got into communication with the fleet at Mudros. For permission to use this wireless I found de Nari's letter very useful. Mr. Whitall offered me a launch, which, however, would have meant getting to Mytilene, and no further.
The moments of waiting for the reply to our wireless were exquisite. At last, in direct touch with the outside world! Newcombe had been hung up for days here, and had left a few hours only before we arrived. Our wireless answer said that a gunboat was to arrive, and I would then be enabled to get in touch with naval circles direct. That day, Hadkinson invited us out to his father's suburban villa perched high on a hill overlooking a wonderful harbour. One or two officers were here I had known in Kut. They had found their way to Smyrna unassisted in the general chaos.
That afternoon the Monitor 29 entered Smyrna. The once familiar grey of England's Navy—for us a very strange sight indeed—filled us with feelings indescribable. Her two 6-inch guns were elevated. She was spick and span. As the blue uniforms appeared we beheld our first sight as free men. We went on board for a moment. I learned that the captain had very strict instructions that no one was to leave Smyrna without orders. He was there to stand by. He would go to the vacant British Consulate.
I returned at a more leisurely moment, hours later, and in the wardroom had my first respectable whisky. The officers were inordinately kind to all of us, told us news for the twentieth time, and gave us of their best. One of them, a Mr. Underwood, I found knew some friends of mine. He came to dine with Jones and me in the town.
That night a telegram reached us from Constantinople that Satvet Lutfi Bey—the personal friend and secretary of the Prince Subaheddine before the war, during most of which he had been in various prisons, and now hoped to rejoin the Prince and to bring him back as the light of Turkey—would arrive at dawn. Satvet had collected first-rate matters of intelligence from the actual sources, and owing to the duplicity of the police, had got first-hand information of all descriptions.
Before the dawn Hadkinson and I went together to see Lutfi. Our postas we had now shaken off for good. We refused to recognize them. Satvet was a well-bred, well-dressed Turk. His quietness and pale face impressed me. He was a serious and earnest man. We took him along to the Military Governor, who turned out to be Nureddin Pasha, the general who had unsuccessfully tried to take Kut early in the siege. He was delighted to meet me, and delayed a whole queue of Turks and Greeks who were waiting to see him while he described to me what happened on December 25th, 1915. I got his permission to leave the harbour with Satvet. Armed with this I saw Commander Dixon of the Monitor 29 at the Consulate. Dixon was a typical naval officer, physically and mentally robust. He literally pulled me to pieces and my intentions, or as much as he could get out of me, and finally allowed me to send some wireless messages to Mudros, and, if satisfactory replies were forthcoming, to send us there himself. He came to tea with us that night, and told us the reply had come, and that it was fixed that we should leave at dawn in a captured Turkish gunboat manned by officers and crew off the M. 29.
Commander Dixon was a most entertaining and entertainable person. He was delighted to get away from Mudros, which he described as "Fleet, fleet, fleet, with bare hills all around." I was very elated as this was my last night in Turkey. We crowded around the piano and sang glees and songs. I drove back with Dixon to the Consulate to get some directions. As we went along, the town stood at attention, so great was the prestige of the fleet even through this diminutive representative, the monitor.
The scene when the M. 29 entered was one of the greatest enthusiasm imaginable. Crowds jammed the quays and waited there hours. All around the ship the sea was black with boats loaded with people anxious for a glimpse. The Greeks, however, seized the opportunity of getting their own back on the Turk, and made attacks largely unprovoked. They hoisted huge Greek flags over many public buildings, including the hotel where Commander Dixon was staying. This led to blows, and it looked like a general riot.